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
The Last Word
Italian writer Erri De Luca reflects on his trial following his September 21 court appearance, with statements in both English and Italian. More
Celebrating Arthur Miller’s Centenary: An Events Guide
A variety of events will be held in New York, Michigan, and Spain to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Arthur Miller's birth in October. More
Free Expression Daily Digest: Mon., October 5
Ismayilova hearing scheduled, Bassel Khartabil brought to unknown location, and a Turkish cop threatens a journalist in viral video. More
Perumal Murugan, a Literary Suicide
"The trend in India of writers being harassed and stigmatized for their work is troubling. It is imperative that writers from both inside and outside India support these voices,… More
Releasing Roots: On Translating Vaan Nguyen
Truffles are notoriously difficult to domesticate, and I have taken this to heart as I translate Nguyen’s poems and their unexpected, unpredictable movements and juxtapositions. More
The Truffle Eye
Shadows rest on these benches / and you weep lion tears / and bite me with literary envy, / you bite down hard on my back More
Don’t Pity the Subject Being Smashed, Rage at the Object Doing the Smashing
"That is why The Bluest Eye is dangerous and always situated on a banned books list. It exposes the violence that besets the human condition as a result of… More
The Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture at the PEN World Voices Festival
“So I imagine that the originators [of PEN] believed that what was required, if mankind was not to destroy itself, was an organized reminder that humanity’s survival transcended any… More
Cold War Dress Code: Remembering Inna Lisnyanskaya
Paradoxically, the Metropole affair both silenced Lisnyanskaya as a poet in the USSR and liberated her from the restrictions imposed by publishing (self-censorship being an obligatory tool in the… More