Featured Honorees
PEN America Literary Awards honorees have produced some of the most exceptional literary works of the past 50 years. Read interviews with or excerpts of work by featured authors and translators below.
Excerpts from Marcelo Cohen’s The End of the Same
There are men on the beach. They are prisoners. Right now they are establishing a routine in order to accommodate various states of rage, depression, and reverie. Most of… More
On translating Marcelo Cohen
Through translation, inventive turns of phrase and expanded linguistic boundaries imbed themselves in our cultural consciousness like the very stories they tell, and it is from these mutations that… More
Excerpts from Dagmara Kraus’s gloomerang
guns in under-burn, time watched her slash sleek dreams / time leeched her guns · under dreams was knit: slash, burn. More
On translating Dagmara Kraus
Dagmara Kraus’s debut poetry collection, kummerang, is an exuberant investigation of a linguistically charged mind. The poems in kummerangrefuse to decide whether they will speak through sense or music,… More
Excerpts from Qiu Miaojin’s Notes of a Crocodile
She had sought me out. I knew it would happen. Even if I had switched to a different section, she would have sought me out all the same. She,… More
On translating Qiu Miaojin
What makes Kerouac or Salinger timeless is not necessarily literary, but perhaps didactic: the fact that there is wisdom to be found at the fountain of youth, no matter… More
Three Poems
I admit, / I’m an unnecessarily handsome / knockabout, nightly drunk to no apparent / effect. But, it’s nice to be worried about. / It’s almost like being cared… More
Glengarry Glen Ross
The Glengarry Highland’s leads, you’re sending Roma out. Fine. He’s a good man. We know what he is. He’s fine. All I’m saying, you look at the board, he’s… More
An Interview with Don DeLillo
Sinclair Lewis called for 'a literature worthy of our vastness.' A novelist tends to feel this spread and breadth in his fingertips (or not) and I’ve tried to bring… More