Plum is a night for readers and writers where we share writing that excites us.

Any kind of writing, as long as it’s great. And by great, we mean necessary and moving and enlightening and honest and powerful and original and the kind of writing that tells us something we never knew before.

Sometimes it’s new writing; sometimes it’s writing that’s been around for a while but is new in English; sometimes it’s writing that has been neglected or just deserves another look.

"A writer's patria or country, as someone said, is his language. That sounds pretty demagogic, but I completely agree with him. Although I also know that it's true that a writer's country isn't his language or isn't only his language....There can be many countries, it occurs to me now, but only one passport, and obviously that passport is the quality of the writing. Which doesn't mean just to write well, because anybody can do that, but to write marvelously well, though not even that, because anybody can do that too. Then what is writing of quality? Well, what it's always been: to know how to thrust your head into the darkness, know how to leap into the void, and to understand that literature is basically a dangerous calling.”

—Roberto Bolaño