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On Translating Eka Kurniawan
Beauty is a Wound is pointed about the havoc appetite has wreaked upon a place and people of idyllic beauty...Kurniawan implicates his readers, who can’t help but take pleasure… More
The PEN Ten with Julia Fierro
John F. Kennedy said, "Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names." I’d revise that message: "Forgive your enemy, but never forget their story." More
PEN Member Shi Tao Released from Prison
Chinese poet, journalist and member of the Independent Chinese PEN Centre (ICPC) Shi Tao, 15 months before the end of his 10-year sentence. More
Selected Poems of Anna Piwkowska
They’ll bury us, bury, scatter to dust, / and you, little girl with the blue jump rope, / and the boy who likes to look at the portrait /of… More
On Translating Anna Piwkowska
t is easy to identify with Piwkowska’s poetry, but it is also easy to become enthralled by the incantatory rhythms, to want to stay forever in her world of… More
One Way of Doing Battle
When I touched my wrist to my chest / it was shorthand for love. // When I returned & the house was empty // I carried his body with… More
Two Views on How Surveillance Harms Writers
Philosopher and former PEN American Center president Kwame Anthony Appiah and Screenwriter Walter Bernstein reflect on what electronic spying means for intellectual and creative freedom More
Self Timer
You can tell when a photograph was taken by a missing person. At once the room is draftier, an open warning. Since they’re not here, those in the photograph… More
At the Burning Abyss
No one who studies Trakl can fail to notice his penchant for colors, and some of his interpreters point out that Trakl’s colors express and evoke opposing sensations: White… More
On Translating Franz Fühmann
Fühmann had discovered Trakl’s apocalyptic poems as a soldier, and they shook his faith in Nazism. On furlough at the very end of the war, Fühmann learned that his… More
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