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Immunization Through Fear: Banning R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps
I assert that the original Goosebumps series and all the subsequent spin-offs are so popular (over 300 million sold, making Stine the second most best-selling children’s author of all-time)… More
Two Poems from Metaphysical Dog
In a labyrinth of blankets in the garage // at seven / with a neighbor boy // you learned abasement // learned amazed that what must be / obliterated… More
Australian Psycho
PEN staffer Jordan DeBor talks about the ban on Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho in Australia, where the book is censored for “graphic violence, sexual content, and its potential… More
Mounting Concern for the Safety of Writers
PEN International welcomes the police investigation into the shocking murder of Indian writer Sushmita Banerjee, killed in Kharana, Afghanistan, on September 5, 2013. More
Leading Writer, Journalist and Activist Wajeha Al-Huwaider at Risk of Imminent Imprisonment
PEN International is alarmed by unconfirmed reports that writer and activist Wajeha a-Huwaider and fellow activist Fawzia al-Oyouni’s appeals against their June 15, 2013 conviction and sentence have been… More
Where the Wild Things Aren’t: On the Banning of Sendak
With his work Sendak acknowledges darkness and fear, and provides an introduction to complicated thinking, the basis for reason and, fundamentally, humanism. The very things that protective censors wish… More
On Translating Matieu Caragiale
One of the central texts of Romanian literature, its singular, impossibly ornate Romanian weds so well to its decadent subject that asking the work to embrace English seems a… More
from Rakes of the Old Court
“The precepts,” continued Pashadia, “of elementary good breeding state: neither the knife in fish and vegetables nor the fork in cheese, and, in no case, the knife in the… More
Wish You Were Here: The Perks of Being Banned
The humanities are in crisis, they say, and I am telling you this because the banning of books is another kind of restricted access: If you reduce the amount… More
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