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
Across the Rooftops
In my evil dreams I had seen myself approach her with lascivious intent—with a cold thin cruel sexual mouth just parted slight-ways—and I went deep then to find a… More
Galileo Was a Moron
So in [Galileo's] opinion everything in the world and in life—all the people and trees and shells and starfish and seahorses and traffic lights and jellyfish—can be broken down… More
Voices from Ukraine and Belarus Part II
Biblical tradition heavily also had a strong influence on Ukrainian literature and poetry in particular. In short, there has always been an active exchange going on, even when at… More
Voices from Ukraine and Belarus Part I
Nobody has yet cancelled Joseph Brodsky's formula that a poet shouldn't interfere with politics, unless politics interfers with a poet. In the authoritarian Belarus there are all kinds of… More
Letter to Europe
to see the web that your rivers / have created, like lines on the / palm of a hand. From these, fol- / lowing the Rhine and the /… More
Two Poems by Cathy Park Hong
as a boy, my father used to trap / little brown sparrows, bury them in hot coal, / and slowly eat the charred birds alone / in the green… More
Tell Us What #FreeExpressionIs
1. In a tweet to @PENAmerican, finish the sentence"#FreeExpressionIs..." in 100 characters or less.2. Follow PEN on Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr. #FreeExpressionIs a right that every writer should enjoy. But… More
A Philosophy of Walking
In departures on foot there is always something final which is lacking from other forms of transport that make it possible to turn back, where nothing is irreversible. And… More
Ovid to His Book
Go on your way now, book, and speak for me / in places that I love, but cannot be, / saluting those whom I have come to meet /… More
A Freedom to Write Retrospective: Nasrin Sotoudeh
Each week leading up to the PEN Literary Gala and the conferrence of the 2014 PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award on May 5, PEN will feature the story… More
Support for the freedom to read with exclusive designs by Todd Parr, Mike Curato, Art Spiegelman, and more!
