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The First Novel
The First NovelBe my heroine, whispers the Novel to the Novelist.Love me and die for me! orders the Novel to the Novelist.Poetry, please lend me your blade, cries the… More
Literature & Power: Writing about Politics, with John Ralston Saul, Oksana Zabuzhko, Shashi Tharoor, Tomás Eloy Martinez, Francine Prose, and Bernard-Henri Levy
Does the history of the last century offer much support for the view that the literary imagination has any special purchase on political wisdom? Can literature mitigate the pressures… More
Literature & Power: Writing About Politics
I know that French writers are supposed to speak too long, so I will try to be short. I don’t think that the power of literature has to do,… More
History of My Face
My lips came with a caravan of slavesThat belonged to the Grand Sanussi.In Al-Jaghbub he freed them.They still live in the poor section of BenghaziNear the hospital where I… More
The Last Iraq
The Last IraqEach night I sit Iraq on my tableand pinch his earsuntil his eyes fill up with tearsof joy.Another cold winter, crisscrossed by jet fighters.Soldiers sit on a… More
Literature & Power: Writing about Politics, with John Ralston Saul, Oksana Zabuzhko, Shashi Tharoor, Tomás Eloy Martinez, Francine Prose, and Bernard-Henri Levy
My greatest shock came not from critics proclaiming me a witch who deserved to be burned were it not for our civilized times, but from crowds of enthusiastic female… More
Larry Siems: Ken Saro-Wiwa: The High Price of Dissent
Larry Siems is a poet and director of the Freedom to Write and International Programs at PEN American Center.In the spring of 1995, Ken Wiwa stood in for his… More
Going Out for a Walk
It is a fact that not once in all my life have I gone out for a walk. I have been taken out for walks; but that is another… More
On the Avenue
I didn’t know him, but he knew me. He knew Harlem, he knew poetry, he knew Jesus, and he knew my mother. He knew sin. I did not know… More
Freedom Fighter
As an international organization dedicated to the advancement of literature, PEN works to spread literacy in all communities, and to defend freedom of expression. For that reason it is… More