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
The Seventh Sense
A death cloud hovered over the prison. My Seventh Sense was still dormant. Chico walked around the yard against the flow of traffic—the first omen of doom, and I… More
Convicts and Communities
The reinvestment of dignity into hopeless convicts—which is after all the definition of rehabilitation—is not much in vogue in America. There is little urgency to rebuild broken individuals and… More
An Indeterminate SHU
An Indeterminate SHUChilled gusts slice through razor wirecreeping around the window's edgelike ants teeming over breadcrumbs.Rats intrepidly stalk the tier sniffingremnants of tonight's repast. I pay them no heed.I… More
Paralegal Training for the Formerly Incarcerated
The Paralegal Training for the Formerly Incarcerated (PTFI) is a job-skills training initiative. The program offers a certified paralegal training to formerly incarcerated individuals and helps with job placement.… More
Kitchen Workers
The damp heat grabs me like a childhood monster with clammy paws, pulls me in, smothers my body and makes it hard to breathe. I sweat profusely from the… More
Normando Hernández González Honored by PEN
PEN American Center, the largest center of the international literary organization dedicated to defending freedom of expression around the globe, awarded Cuban writer and independent journalist Normando Hernández González… More
Iranian Independent Publishing Community Gets Fifth Annual Jeri Laber Award
Members of the independent publishing community in Iran, facing increased harassment and persecution under the current regime, have been named by the Association of American Publishers’ International Freedom to… More
Campaign for Reader Privacy Welcomes Testimony by “Gagged” Librarian
Following dramatic testimony today from a Connecticut librarian who successfully challenged an abusive FBI National Security Letter (NSL), organizations representing booksellers, librarians, publishers and writers called on Congress to… More