Blog
Filter By:
Advocacy • Analysis • Blog • Commentary • Drama • Essay • Event • Feature • Fiction • Graphic Narrative • Interview • Memoir • News • Obituary • Open Letter • Poetry • Press Release • Profile
Browse By Series:
PEN Poetry Series • Prison Writing • The PEN Ten Interviews • Illustrated PEN • Pen Pals • The PEN World
Browse By Email Subscription:
PEN America News • Educational Censorship News • Works of Justice
Apple Jelly
“Clem! Where you been hidin’? Ain’t seen you in a month o’ Sundays!” “Tell ya what Emmett, you buy me a Pabst an’ I’ll tell ya ’xactly where I been.… More
How to Survive in Prison
Find out your boyfriend got married. Spend as much time in the yard as possible. Learn to fit in. Become someone’s girlfriend. Stop thinking about the outside world. Join… More
I Hear The Train Comin…
Although I’m sure the world outside these prison walls is likely to forget and ignore the human beings banished to these small plots of land, to be abandoned by… More
That’s the Way It Is in Prison
Murf the Surf and I are walking in the rain past the steam plant heading back to the Southwest Unit. The chapel is off to our left, separated from… More
Walk Like a Man
Who’s Your Daddy? My birth mother’s name was Lula Mae. After her death my two sisters, three brothers, and I were taken in by various relatives. Melvin, the… More
The Years In Between
The tall gray wall encircles fifty-five acres of land. Spired towers with narrow steel doors, loophole windows, and floodlights straddle the wall, like spines on a fearsome dragon. Rolling… More
Newspaper Owner and Journalist Shot Dead
Valério Nascimento, journalist and owner of Panorama Geral, was shot dead outside his home in Rio Claro, Rio de Janeiro state, on May 3, 2011. More
ACLU, PEN, and the Film Society of Lincoln Center Present “Reckoning with Torture”
The American Civil Liberties Union, PEN American Center and the Film Society of Lincoln Center will present a special performance of “Reckoning With Torture: Memos and Testimonies From the… More
Support for the freedom to read with exclusive designs by Todd Parr, Mike Curato, Art Spiegelman, and more!
