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On Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn
It’s a luxury in our country that banning books is by and large an academic argument...[W]hen we have a discussion of “banned” books in this country, what we are… More
PEN Protests Exclusion of Bulgarian-German Writer from U.S.
PEN said the exclusion of German PEN Member Ilija Trojanov calls to mind our country’s checkered history of barring writers whose political views it disfavors, at a time when… More
Call for Submissions for 2014 Literary Awards
The PEN Literary Awards are the most comprehensive in the United States. Each year, with the help of its partners and supporters, PEN confers more than $150,000 to writers… More
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
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
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
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
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