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Coming into Language
On weekend graveyard shifts at St. Joseph’s Hospital I worked the emergency room, mopping up pools of blood and carting plastic bags stuffed with arms, legs and hands to… More
Fears for Safety as Uyghur PEN Member, Writer, and Academic Ilham Tohti Formally Charged
PEN is seriously concerned for the well-being of Uyghur writer, academic, and Uyghur PEN member Ilham Tohti, who was formally charged with “separatism” on February 20, 2014, amid a… More
Return to Sender
The first sentence stopped me cold: “When the assassins come they kill everyone.” More
Notes From the Provincial Town of N
They stared in amazement for a long time at the trucks of the special operations units, which they had never before seen in their town. These, however, remained purely… More
Five Poems by Lisa Olstein
Like everyone, I’ll watch indefinitely while / the meant-to-be lovers stay a lip’s width apart / or a war zone, their shadows overlapping / like animals around a dried-up… More
PEN Staff Calls on Egypt to #FreeAJStaff
PEN staff has joined a journalist-led "selfie" Twitter campaign calling on Egypt to free three Al Jazeera journalists arrested in December, and declaring that journalism is not a crime.… More
Letter to the UN: The Right to Privacy in the Digital Age
The Global Network Initiative has written to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on the occasion of an expert seminar on the right to privacy in the digital… More
Sochi Highlights Need for Olympic Reforms
PEN American Center last week joined over 33 human rights groups in an joint letter to the IOC president, Thomas Bach, recommending that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) carry… More
The Chains That Keep
He sees me staring through the rearview and stops. Every streetlight we pass, his face gets shinier. He unzips his jacket, I notice blood on his shirt. Stabbed, probably.… More
Mass Surveillance in the European Union: Communications and Financial Transactions
The “Data Retention” Directive, as it is known, crossed the Rubicon in terms of mass surveillance by establishing the principle that intimately personal information must be retained in case… More