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Sharing Your Truth
Novelist and former PEN staffer Nick Burd kicks off our second annual Banned Books Month with some insight into the banning of his novel, The Vast Fields of Ordinary.… More
2013 Banned Books Month
Staring on Monday, September 23, PEN will begin posting essays from this year’s Banned Books Month, featuring PEN members, supporters, and staff—writers and editors of all backgrounds and genres—who… More
Two Poems by Frances Richard
there is no end / there is no end / one version of this only creates happiness / earth-movers across the street / festooned with colored ribbon while demolishing… More
PEN Presses Cameroon and Ethiopia on Free Expression at the United Nations
PEN led a coalition of human rights groups at the UN Human Rights Council to press for greater free expression in Ethiopia and Cameroon. More
from Nine Buildings
Yao Nan said, every year we come to grave-sweeping time, and only then does it feel like spring. He could never understand why we’d wait for springtime, when flowers… More
On Translating Zou Jingzhi
‘Nine Buildings’ works through what he [Zou] witnessed and suffered as a child and young man, all the while retaining his customary spare, elegant prose and detached vision. More
Veteran Journalist Jailed for Libel, Facing Effective Life Sentence; Fears for Health
PEN International is concerned for the health and well-being of Rodney Sieh, founder and editor of award-winning newspaper FrontPageAfrica, who was jailed on August 21, 2013, because he was… More
PEN Award Winner Nasrin Sotoudeh Freed
PEN American Center today welcomed the release of Iranian journalist and lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, calling it “a victory for all men and women fighting for justice for their fellow… More
Selected Poems of Wang Xiaoni
The night of the typhoon, the sky was full, the world destroyed. // From west to east, herds of black cattle rolled on their heads / the wind’s hoofs… More
On Translating Wang Xiaoni
The Chinese social and interpersonal landscape has been changing at breakneck speed for the last thirty years, and as witness to these seismic shifts, Wang Xiaoni consistently adopts an… More