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Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora
The scrawny street vendor in Hanoi studies my eyes, my lips. “Brother,” he says, “yours is not a Vietnamese face. It’s a face that has not known suffering.” Then… More
Writing Myth Now
The very first storyteller was, I think, a journalist. He was the man who reported on what was happening “out there.” Through the ages it was he who journeyed… More
The Power of the Pen: 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 California there’s… More
Editor’s Note
The first annual PEN World Voices Festival brought together 125 writers from around the globe for a week of intense conversation about language, culture, crime, catastrophe, death, sex, religion—the… More
PEN Congress reasserts the role of literature in a world without peace
Horst Köhler, Federal President of Germany, welcomed more than 450 writers from PEN Centres around the world to Berlin at the opening ceremony of International PEN’s annual Congress. President… More
PEN Remembers Literary Scholar, Biographer, and PEN Member Virginia Spencer Carr
Carr was born on July 21, 1929 in West Palm Beach, FL and graduated from Florida State University. She earned her master’s degree in English from the University of… More
Turkmen Writer Defeats Travel Ban, Arrives in United States to Receive PEN Prize
Capping a week of high diplomatic drama, prominent Turkmen novelist and dissident Rakhim Esenov boarded a plane last night in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan to travel to the United States, where… More
Turkmen Authorities Threatening to Prevent Writer from Accepting PEN Prize
PEN American Center is protesting an attempt by the government of Turkeminstan to prevent prominent novelist and dissident Rakhim Esenov from traveling to New York to receive a 2006… More
On Faith & Reason
Nothing that happens in my country matters In the large scheme of things But when I am there Breathing the dusty air of the dry months A cruel April to defy Eliot I know… More
PEN expresses alarm over detention of Gambian independent paper editor & manager
Your Excellency, On behalf of the 3,100 members of PEN American Center, an international organization of writers dedicated to protecting freedom of expression wherever it is threatened, we are… More
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