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.
An Oresteia
What are you waiting for? You have your / orders–strew the ground with fabrics, / now! / Make his path crimsoncovered! / purplepaved! redsaturated! 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
Greed’s Prisoner
even the ashes don’t belong to you, his body / in the prison of the Communist Party / so that the spirit-cell you built / without a door without… More
Irrawaddy Flowing on the Road
Irrawaddy Flowing on the RoadI won't cry, Mother.On the nightsI closed all the doorsTurned off all the lightsAnd slept quietlyI sighed asking myselfWhat mistakes had I made.The first dayNext… More
Me and My Dreams, Part 1Me and My Dreams, Part 1
Saturday, December 22, 2007The night I got to Singapore my dreams occurred again. It had been a while since I had had these dreams while I was in Burma.I… More
Marie Étienne: King of a Hundred Horsemen
Translated from the French by Marilyn Hacker, who received the 2009 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. Preface by Marilyn HackerMarie Étienne has always composed poetry and prose alternately or simultaneously,… More
Buried Child
I haven’t got anything under the sofa! Now mind your own damn business! Jesus God, you come into the house outa the middle of nowhere, haven’t heard or seen… More
All the Pretty Horses
In his sleep he could hear the horses stepping among the rocks and he could hear them drink from the shallow pools in the dark where the rocks lay… More
Cities of the Plain
Well there was all these jackrabbits in the road. They’d set there and freeze in the lights. Blap. Blap. I looked over at Gene and I said: What do… More
Support for the freedom to read with exclusive designs by Todd Parr, Mike Curato, Art Spiegelman, and more!
