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2015 PEN Literary Gala: Andrew Solomon
These welcome remarks were delivered by PEN President Andrew Solomon at the 2015 PEN Literary Gala. More
Lincoln Song
A collaboration with illustrator and author Maira Kalman, this musical piece is inspired by Abraham Lincoln’s pocket watch, which was made to tick again in 2014. More
Book Groups, Librarians Support USA FREEDOM Act
The Campaign for Reader Privacy, a coalition including PEN American Center and booksellers, publishers, librarians, and authors, is asking the House of Representatives to quickly pass without weakening the… More
2015 PEN Literary Award Winners
BOOK AWARDS PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction ($25,000): To an author whose debut work—a first novel or collection of short stories published in 2014—represents distinguished literary achievement and suggests great… More
Bottoms of the Oceans
Fifteen years later her life was hijacked. All the bottoms of the oceans were marked by her thoughts and the possibility that her little girl was lying there among… More
The PEN Ten with Elif Batuman
"I think literature has a collective purpose, which is to process the reality of lived experience, in much the same way that dreams process the reality of waking life." More
PEN World Voices Festival: A Night of Prayer and Meditation
The desired effect—of evoking a religious service—was, by my accounting, achieved. As I sat, I felt my pulse slow. The setting, and the task at hand—giving ourselves over to… More
The Tubman Sisterhood
Not only was Donya about to become Egypt’s first woman president, she was also openly bisexual and a poet, the perfect antidote to decades of hypermasculine Egyptian politics. More
PEN World Voices Festival: The “Proustian Orgasm” of Memoir and Memory
Michael Ondaatje, Luc Sante, and Tracy K.Smith discussed the memoirs that most influenced their own writing and the prickly task of turning family stories into compelling literature. More