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
Suite Française
1Hot, thought the Parisians. The warm air of spring. It was night, they were at war and there was an air raid. But dawn was near and the war… More
The Selected Poems of Wang Wei
At Cloud Valley with Huang-fu Yüeh1 Bird-Cry CreekIn our idleness, cinnamon blossoms fall.In night quiet, spring mountains standempty. Moonrise startles mountain birds:here and there, cries in a spring gorge.3… More
House of War
The Building looms over the Potomac across sixty years of war and peace, through six decades of memory. A forbidden temple even now, when I am older—imagine how the… More
Cut off the Ears of Winter
Cut Off the Ears of WinterCut off the ears of winterthey have overheard too much,where incinerators burn,where rubble-strewn streetsare covered in dust from the remodeling.Again, the doe-man in mauve… More
Writers Like Me
I am a 46-year-old writer of “literary” fiction. I’ve had three novels published — the first for young people, the last two for adults. All have won minor prizes,… More
Writing Melitte
In my young adult novel Melitte, I did not let readers know that she was a slave until the third chapter. I wanted them first to identify with the… More
Hiding Franz Fanon
Scene 2(Building Major Lenny Bealy sits behind his desk, hunting and pecking on a dummy terminal. A knock sounds on the door.)Major: Yeah. C’mon in, Shakir.(Enter Shakir, wide-eyed.)Major: Close… More
PEN American Center Urges Rejection of Academic Boycotts
PEN American Center has released a statement of principle opposing academic and cultural boycotts, saying such actions threaten the internationally guaranteed right to freedom of expression. More
PEN Honorary Member Nguyen Vu Binh Released in Vietnam
PEN American Center welcomes the early release on June 9, 2007 of Vietnamese journalist Nguyen Vu Binh. More