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.
The Silent Woman
I stuck the knifepoint into one of the spaces between my black-gloved fingers. Then into the space between the fingers next to it . . . Several men tensely… More
James Joyce: Past Imperfect (1800-1882)
Consequently for him, as time went by, the past was more immediate than the present, and became the chosen playground of his fiction. More
Epic Endeavors
In the twentieth century alone, the Amphitryon myth has been adapted by a French novelist, two German playwrights, an opera composer, an anti-Nazi filmmaker, and Cole Porter. Have we… More
The Forest Unseen
Indeed, the truth of the forest may be more clearly and vividly revealed by the contemplation of a small area than it could be by donning ten-league boots, covering… More
Behind the Beautiful Forevers
It was the moment of the intimate and the familial, before the great pursuit of the small market niche got under way. More
The Black Count
Today, the world is so awash in sugar—it is such a staple of the modern diet, associated with all that is cheap and unhealthy—that it’s hard to believe things… More
The Fantastic Jungles of Henri Rousseau
His home is a shabby little studio, where one pot of stew must last the whole week. But every morning he wakes up and smiles at his pictures. More
Gun Dealers’ Daughter
In the chapel, Baroque music played from invisible speakers, and the haunting tones of a sourceless cantata convinced me momentarily of the presence of God. He was there in… More
Subliminal
He decided to guess who the perpetrator was, even though he had nothing to base his suspicions on, like a poker player going all in with a pair of… More
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