This recording comes from the PEN America Archives. Consisting of over 1800 hours of audio and video material, the PEN America Archives showcase the intersection of literature and free expression through the voices of some of the most prominent writers, intellectuals, and activists from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and in collaboration with Princeton University, the archives not only illustrate the institutional trajectory of PEN America, but also highlight the voices and words of poets, essayists, novelists, and others who resist the infringement of free expression. The entirety of the PEN America Archives will be made available online to the public this summer.

“The most bitter opposition to women writers occurs when they move out of marked gender categories of discourse and trespass in areas considered outside of their realm.”

In honor of this week’s 2017 PEN World Voices Festival and its line-up of events on topics of gender and power, please enjoy this recording of Aicha Lemsine speaking about gender-specific censorship in Algeria and the role of democracy in combating human rights violations and violence against women.