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Three Questions with Cathy Park Hong
In literature, dystopic narrative has been used hubristically as a way to face one’s own mortality. An aging author, say someone like John Updike, conjures an apocalyptic narrative because… More
Victory for Net Freedom Advocates as Brazil Passes Landmark Internet Legislation
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff signed the Marco Civil into law, a welcome victory in the battle for free expression and net freedom in South America's largest economy. More
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