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Jailed Cuban Journalist to Receive PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award
PEN American Center today named Normando Hernández González, a Cuban writer and journalist who was arrested along with 74 other journalists and democracy and human rights activists in a… More
Sara Paretsky: Refusing to allow pressure to silence a critical voice
The night we began our invasion of Iraq -- March 20, 2003 -- I was speaking at the Toledo public library. The day before, my speakers bureau told me… More
Quixote at 400: A Tribute
SALMAN RUSHDIE: We’re gathered here to praise what many people would call the greatest novel ever written: El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha (The Ingenious Knight, Don… More
The Power of the Pen: Nuruddin Farah & Jonathan Franzen
NURUDDIN FARAH: On my first day at school, a teacher, a man who was teaching me and who knew my name, asked me what my name was. And I… More
Confronting the Worst: Writing and Catastrophe
PEN America 7: World VoicesWith Svetlana Alexievich, François Bizot, Carolin Emcke, Philip Gourevitch, Ryszard Kapuscinski, and Elena Poniatowska; moderated by Susie Linfield.This talk was presented, in slightly different form,… More
International Noir
ROBERT POLITO: Noir is commonly thought of as an American genre, if it’s in fact a genre. The films “noir” was first used to describe back in the 1940s… More
The Power of the Pen: Entire Discussion
SALMAN RUSHDIE: A butterfly flaps its wings in India and we feel the breeze on our cheeks in New York. A throat is cleared somewhere in Africa and in… More
Minae Mizumura: Crossover Artists: Writing in Another Language
"Crossover Artists: Writing in Another Language," with Minae Mizumura and Shan Sa, appears in PEN America 7: World Voices. This conversation was presented, in slightly different form, at the… More
The Way We Love Now: Who Wrote the Book of Sex?
WAYNE KOESTENBAUM: This panel’s title pays oblique homage to the late Susan Sontag, whose 1986 short story “The Way We Live Now” itself honored Anthony Trollope’s 1875 novel, The… More
A History of Trauma
KHALED MATTAWA: What’s ringing in my ear now is the adverb “originally,” and I want to discuss with Hanan and Fadhil the issue of origins. My question for them… More