PEN America works tirelessly to defend free expression, support persecuted writers, and promote literary culture. Here are some of the latest ways PEN America is speaking out.

  • PEN America raised red flags over President Donald Trump’s executive orders following his inauguration on Monday. Hadar Harris, Washington managing director of PEN America, said: “Let’s not be naive. While some of President Trump’s flurry of executive orders pay lip service to free speech, in reality they frame a frontal assault against it.” Read more about what we are looking out for in the new administration here
  • In response to action taken by the Department of Education dismissing complaints about book bans and referring to them as a “hoax,” PEN America Freedom to Read Director Kasey Meehan called the language “alarming and dismissive of the students, educators, librarians, and authors who have firsthand experiences of censorship happening within school libraries and classrooms.” It’s not a hoax.
  • PEN America launched the 2025 Los Angeles Wildfires Emergency Grant Program to respond to the needs of the writing community. Apply to the grant here.
  • PEN America Florida joined with faith leaders in Miami for a United Voices for Democracy convening, to better understand how Christian Nationalism touches all of our lives, and what we can do about it.  Free expression and the threat of Christian Nationalism.
  • PEN America hosted a webinar on the ways influencers are changing the media landscape as a part of our Disinformation Resilience Training Series. Following what can be considered a breakout year for influencers, the panel, hosted by Kurt Sampsel, looked at the biggest benefits and risks of having them in the information ecosystem. Read the 7 takeaways here.
  • Four poets across two cities came together to form the inaugural Poets Across Lines cohort. Based in PEN Across America cities of Birmingham, Alabama and Tucson, Arizona, the poets underwent four months of mentoring and workshops. They met for a final virtual reading last month and their poems were published in zines by Pansy Press. Read the highlights here
  • The 2024 winners of the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers were published in an anthology by Catapult. The prize, awarded to debut writers published in literary magazines across the country, is an opportunity to spotlight the next generation of fiction writers. The winners convened together for a reading recently. Read more about the prize and what the winners had to say here
  • In the latest Facts Forward interview, PEN America’s Mina Haq spoke to Rachel Kuo, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who specializes in race, social movements, gender, and technology. Among other things, they discussed how the ties between online extremism, patriarchy, and white supremacy affect how disinformation spreads among different identity groups. Read the full interview here
  • In a new PEN Ten interview, World Voices Festival and Literary Programs Manager, Sarah Dillard, spoke to Alishia McCullough about her latest book, Reclaiming the Black Body: Nourishing the Home Within (The Dial Press, 2024). Specializing in somatic therapy and trauma healing, the book argues for a more inclusive practice. Read the full interview here.

See previous PEN America updates