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Steamrolling Onto the World Stage
In two weeks’ time, the Olympic games will be over, athletes and foreign guests will depart, and Olympic kitsch will proliferate in many homes in the form of tchotchkes… More
India: Writers Defend Best-Selling Book
PEN Members in India have expressed their concern at reports that Penguin has agreed to withdraw Wendy Doniger’s book The Hindus: An Alternative History from circulation. More
Le Quoc Quan Writes from Prison
Jailed Vietnamese blogger and human rights lawyer Le Quoc Quan has launched a hunger strike to protest the refusal by prison authorities to provide him access to legal counsel,… More
Gay Propaganda: Olga & Irina
What country are we living in and in what year, when priests bless half- drunk nationalists that pelt people with rocks while the police look on and then load… More
Gay Propaganda: Sergei
There wasn’t a single gay man among them. There were grown men next to me, who’d come down with delirium tremens, schizophrenia. That’s when I learned that madness is… More
Putin, Ventriloquism, and Free Speech
The Russian government has gotten back into the story business. This is bad news for people who like to tell stories of their own, but good news for people… More
ICPC Member Li Jianhong Conditionally Released from Detention
UPDATE: Writer Li Jianhong, a member of the Independent Chinese PEN Center (ICPC) who served as its Writers in Prison Committee Coordinator until the end of 2013, was conditionally… More
Why Do You Write? Adult and Teen Writers Speak Out
Unlike posh private schools, the inner-city public and charter high schools have no money to bring authors; yet they have enthusiastic readers and writers who deserve support. More
Freedom of Expression Under Threat in Egypt as Journalists Languish in Prison
PEN calls on Egypt’s interim government to comply with its international obligations to respect freedom of expression, and to release anyone held solely for the peaceful exercise of their… More
“The ongoing crackdown on civil society is truly unprecedented”
Those who dare speak out—be it about their sexual identity or their discontent with governmental policies—are threatened with punishment and blackened in the eyes of society. More