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 joined PEN Canada and PEN Québec to jointly call for books and knowledge to flow freely across the shared border amid rising political tensions in both the countries. “Literature knows no frontiers and must remain common currency among people in spite of political or international upheavals,” reads the international PEN Charter shared by all PEN chapters. Read more here.
- PEN America criticized the new directive by the Department of Education that threatens funding for K-12 schools that fail to align with the Trump administration’s viewpoint on DEI. “We call on the Department of Education to halt this thinly-veiled campaign of intimidation and ideological censorship, and to support our public schools rather than working to undermine them,” said McKenna Samson, manager of Education Policy at PEN America. Read our statement here.
- PEN America condemned the cancelling of Canadian physician Dr. Joanne Liu’s speech at New York University Langone Health over concerns about humanitarian health crises referencing Sudan, Gaza, and USAID budget cuts. Read our press release here.
- PEN America joined a friend of the court brief filed in the federal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and 24 other media organizations pushing for an Anti-SLAPP law. The so-called SLAPP lawsuits by corporations are brought to intimidate, harass, or silence individuals or groups who speak out on matters of public interest. Read more here.
- PEN America’s Prison and Justice Writing Program released a zine, Verse Among Us, in celebration of National Poetry Writing Month in April. Each year the project engages incarcerated writers by inviting them to participate in writing poetry by mailing in prompts and checking in throughout the month. “This zine itself is a communal space, where writers—separated from each other by state lines, and from society by fences and razor wire—share their poems, and in turn, contribute to a cohesive project,” said Jess Abolafia, Coordinator, Prison and Justice Writing Mentorship Program. Read more here and download the zine here.
- PEN America’s Digital Safety team led a training with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) Higher Education on strategies for allyship online, the third in a three part digital safety series with their members.
- PEN America’s Amy Reid, senior manager, Freedom to Read, was quoted in a story by Inside Higher Ed about DEI related bans in Ohio and Kentucky. Read it here.
- The Houston Chronicle featured PEN America’s report on museum censorship in a story about a recent billlegislature in Texas that would finefines museums for displaying “obscene art.” Read the story here and the full report here.
- On the shelf this week for Shelf Love, our interview series with romance authors in collaboration with Authors Against Book Bans, is Abby Jimenez. Read our full interview here.
- For PEN Ten, we spoke to International Booker Prize winner Geetanjali Shree about her latest English publication, Our City That Year, translated by Daisy Rockwell, 25 years since the original was published in Hindi. Read the full interview here.
