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Burning Ants
My brother Credence says people who leave are deluding themselves about what’s out there. I just think they’re cowards. Mr. Tofu Scramble says I should go anyway, that it’s… More
PEN Appears Before Supreme Court
PEN and other human rights organizations challenge the U.S. government's secret NSA surveillance program. More
A Banned Books Wrap Up
This September, PEN American Center reached out to writers, editors, literary illuminati, and PEN staff to write about the banned books that matter to them most. Below you’ll find… More
Fears for the Health of Prominent Human Rights Lawyer, Journalist, and Writer
PEN International is seriously concerned for the health of prominent writer, journalist, and lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, who is said to be very weak as a result of a hunger… More
Cosmopolitan Readers
The idea is that a novelist who is ambitious enough to want a global audience, and who does not want to be imprisoned by his or her own language,… More
On Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary
The problem of Emma is the problem of desire. Her only métier is desire, and its top percent, love. Emma lusts for gratification through commodity and body and makes… More
Mausoleum of Lovers
One by one I began to rip off in chips the made-up skin of the little mannequin, and this gives him leprosy by leaving the exposed white wax on… More
On Translating Hervé Guibert
Le mausolée des amants makes every essential demand upon me; the sensual exigencies, and cruel untempered forms of address in this epistolary work...mark the rest of us as gilt… More
On Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl”
I saw, for the first time, what it really means to be a poet—to have the habit of mind where the universe reveals itself through linguistic forms the way,… More
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