Dystopia Gets Personal: Laila Lalami & Megha Majumdar

All PEN World Voices Festival tickets are non-refundable. Please confirm the time and location of your event before finalizing your purchase.

A woman is incarcerated indefinitely because an algorithm predicts she might be a threat. A woman is fleeing climate disaster only to have her passport stolen by a desperate thief trying to feed his family.

In Laila Lalami’s The Dream Hotel and Megha Majumdar’s A Guardian and a Thief, the line between dystopian fiction and reflections of our current reality is blurred. Tackling surveillance culture, the algorithms absorbing our data, climate catastrophe, and global inequality, these novels remind us that political and societal forces intimately shape our daily lives.

Moderated by PEN America Co-CEO Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf, this discussion will look at the collision between the future and the present, and between the personal and the political.

The 2026 PEN World Voices Festival is a celebration of world literature and free expression. The 2026 edition will be the 21st World Voices Festival. Over four days, over 140 writers from over 40 countries will be featured in 40+ engaging talks, panels, readings, and activations in New York City and greater Los Angeles.

Visit for more information about the entire festival, as well as PEN America.

This venue is ADA compliant. The space is accessible via elevator.

ASL interpretation is available for this event by request only. Please reach out to our Box Office team at [email protected] by April 16th to request.

Please ask a Box Office Attendant or festival representative upon arrival for directions to accessible seating if preferred.

For further information on accessibility in this space, or to make a request, please contact [email protected]

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher PEN America