Blog
Filter By:
Advocacy • Analysis • Blog • Commentary • Drama • Essay • Event • Feature • Fiction • Graphic Narrative • Interview • Memoir • News • Obituary • Open Letter • Poetry • Press Release • Profile
Browse By Series:
PEN Poetry Series • Prison Writing • The PEN Ten Interviews • Illustrated PEN • Pen Pals • The PEN World
Browse By Email Subscription:
PEN America News • Educational Censorship News • Works of Justice
After a Bomb Threat
After a Bomb ThreatI am waved to a nichewithin a crowd of bodies,half of them stripping down,The remainder uniformed in blue.Here, I will bare myselfin the pallor of shame,have… More
Poetrical Muralism
Growing up in the aftermath of the Chicano Movement of the 1960s and 70s, my generation and I were the beneficiaries of an abundance of free Chicano health clinics,… More
A Three-Strikes Sojourn
“Dey, wake up. You have court today.”Oh man. Here we go. Judgment and sentencing. I was about to feel the entire weight of the drug war era justice system… More
Arrests in America (Fuzzy Math)
Arrest by race, 2000 in AmericaTotal Arrests: 9,068,977Total Violent Crime Arrests: 414,420In the all arrest category:Whites were arrested in 6,324,006 cases, at 69.7%Blacks were arrested in 2,528,368 cases, at… More
World’s Oldest Prisoner
I’m glad all you folks could be here today. Makes me feel wanted. Of course, I’ve been wanted off and on for most of the past century.I was surprised… More
Origami Heart
When I pick one up at mail call I feel it slide back and forth in the flimsy blue and red striped airmail envelope, a core of your words and so much emptiness enclosed. More
Why I Care
Doing outreach work in the Bayview-Hunters Point area of San Francisco can be fun, also dangerous, as the district has seen countless shootings of youth. I was working as… More
Gregory Rabassa
As one who works at spreading an awareness of what people are writing and saying in other languages through translation, I have long celebrated the labors of PEN American… More
Mavis Gallant, “August,” & What Cannot Be Said
This year, at the restaurant La Rotonde in Paris, I once again had lunch with Mavis Gallant and several other expatriate writers. I mentioned that when I returned to… More