PEN America works tirelessly to defend free expression, support persecuted writers, and promote literary culture. Here are some of the latest ways PEN America is speaking out.
- PEN America announced the 12 winners of the 2026 PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers, whose extraordinary work will be published in an anthology by Catapult. Check out the writers and their debut stories here.
- PEN America condemned a policy passed by the University of Texas System Board of Regents that limits discussions of “controversial topics” in classrooms. “This policy will harpoon any chance students have of a valuable college education at the University of Texas,” said Kristen Shahverdian, program director for campus free speech. “Not only will this create a stifled classroom environment where certain topics are off-limits for students, but a campus environment where people are afraid to speak and to learn.” Take a look at the full statement, and check out more coverage in Texas Public Radio, Forbes, and Higher Ed Dive.
- In a new blog post, journalist and media studies researcher Kourosh Ziabari shines light on the Iranian writers and journalists who repeatedly put their lives on the line to keep the public informed. “As the world follows the developments of the country with greater anxiety, those who should be telling the story are still largely missing from our social media feeds, newspapers, and TV screens,” he writes. Read more.
- Inside Higher Ed quotes Amy Reid, director of Freedom to Learn, in an article about a Kansas budget bill that may withhold millions from universities teaching “DEI-CRT related” courses. “By using the carrot of funding to mask the stick of censorship, Kansas is not just discouraging universities from including material about race and gender in their courses, but taking away the opportunity for students to strengthen their critical thinking by engaging with new ideas,” Reid said. “How does that align with the goals of education?” Read more.
- In response to a student mental health crisis, a New Jersey school district removed Junot Díaz’s novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao from a high-level English class. An NPR story on the ban quotes Kasey Meehan, the program director for the Freedom to Read, on the decision. “It’s removing the opportunity to offer a kind of mental health literacy to students that may actually need some language to talk about what they’re feeling,” Meehan said. Read the article.
- In this week’s PEN Ten interview, Bo Hee Moon discusses her newest collection, Birthstones in the Province of Mercy, which tells the complicated story of her adoption and imagines what her life with birth mother might have been like. Check it out.
- Across the United States, thousands of books have been removed from public school classrooms and libraries as part of an unprecedented wave of censorship. See the top 10 books banned in the 2024–2025 school year here.
