International literary figures to have appeared at the festival include John Banville, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Salman Rushdie, Irvine Welsh, William Styron and Nadine Gordimer.

The festival's origins are in London in the late 1970s, when PWF president Michael March began organising poetry readings at Keats House.

Writers from various countries were invited to Prague as a crossroads between East and West to present their work and their culture to an international audience in the form of discussions and readings.

The main media partner of the PWF is the British daily newspaper The Guardian, which often refers to festival events, issues, and news on its cultural pages.

The PWF Foundation publishes books and helps to organize concerts (such as Ed Sanders and the Plastic People of the Universe) and movie screenings, as well as art exhibitions (such as Dada East?