- Home
- Author Archive
Beauty is a Wound
[U]pon her departure, the nineteen other girls followed her into her room, gathered on top of her bed, and resumed their conversation about how to amputate a Japanese soldier’s… More
Welcome Home, Shi Tao
When I started at PEN nearly six years ago, Shi Tao was one of my first priority cases. Now, he's finally free. More
Selected Poems of Anna Piwkowska
They’ll bury us, bury, scatter to dust, / and you, little girl with the blue jump rope, / and the boy who likes to look at the portrait /of… More
Two Views on How Surveillance Harms Writers
Philosopher and former PEN American Center president Kwame Anthony Appiah and Screenwriter Walter Bernstein reflect on what electronic spying means for intellectual and creative freedom More
At the Burning Abyss
No one who studies Trakl can fail to notice his penchant for colors, and some of his interpreters point out that Trakl’s colors express and evoke opposing sensations: White… More
On Translating Franz Fühmann
Fühmann had discovered Trakl’s apocalyptic poems as a soldier, and they shook his faith in Nazism. On furlough at the very end of the war, Fühmann learned that his… More
A Blacklisted Screenwriter on American Surveillance
Screenwriter and producer Walter Bernstein views new revelations of NSA spying through the lens of national and personal history More
PEN Urges Obama to Press Russia on Expression; Russian Writers Speak Out
New laws in Russia barring religious offense and 'homosexual propaganda' are troubling signs of an increasingly restrictive environment for freedom of expression. More
PEN Letter to President Obama in Advance of the G20 Summit in St. Petersburg
PEN sent the following letter to President Obama in advance of the G20 Summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, to urge him to use the opporutnity to express concern over… More
On the Frontiers of Plaster (A Few Notes on Sleep)
Take a man at noon. He stands erect. Overhead is the sun. I won’t say this man has no wish to maintain this position for all time, but it’s… More
Support for the freedom to read with exclusive designs by Todd Parr, Mike Curato, Art Spiegelman, and more!
