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 Other America: Black Lives and the Police State
With the deaths of so many black Americans at the hands of both police officers and white vigilantes who have escaped punishment, we are coming to see that two… More
PEN DIY: Wesley Stace on How to Lead a Double Life
Armed with his guitar and a Bulleit on the rocks, the incomparable and prolific Wesley Stace (also known as John Wesley Harding) took the stage on December 1 for… More
Renewed Charges Against Pınar Selek Make a Mockery of Turkish Justice System
Trumped up charges against Selek, a Turkish sociologist and feminist, of involvement in the 1998 Istanbul Spice Bazaar explosion were renewed today at the 15th High Criminal Court in… More
Lamentations of a Coconut Tree
This short story from the 2014 Neustadt Prize-winner was published after years of civil war following independence from Portugal in 1975 and is a chronicle of Mozambique's rebirth. Becker… More
Everything Full of Weight: On Translating Mia Couto
"My great satisfaction in translating this collection is not simply to be able to propose a different way of looking at our own familiar world, but to be part… More
PEN Honduras Welcomes IACHR With Hope
The visit comes at a crucial juncture for human rights, of which the right to freedom of expression is particularly vulnerable. More
Iranian Writers Speak Out on Censorship
This is the seventh year that freedom of expression defenders are marking December 4 as the Day to Fight Censorship, as initiated by the Association of Iranian Writers. It… More
from In the Gun Cabinet
I / was / delicate / as a child / lived / one too / many lives, I / loved me as myself / I was my brother … More
Remembering Saïd Mekbel, Twenty Years On
Today marks the 20th anniversary of the death of Algerian journalist Saïd Mekbel. The morning of his assassination, Mekbel had with seeming prescience written a poetic and polemical last… More
Auction of First Edition Classics Annotated by Their Authors Raises $1 Million to Benefit PEN American Center
Philip Roth’s American Pastoral Top-Seller at $80,000. Underworld by Don DeLillo Fetches Second Highest Bid of $57,000. More