PEN’s New Members / New Books Party: December 5
Calling all Professional Members! PEN President Peter Godwin and Membership Committee Co-Chairs Elinor Lipman & Rob Spillman invite you to PEN’s annual New Members/New Books Party More
Win Two Tickets to PEN’s Stand Up for Freedom event at Galapagos
What’s so funny about freedom of expression? Tweet #penstandup to fill us in on the funny side of the First Amendment. Win two tickets to PEN’s September 19th Stand… More
Barnes & Noble PEN Writers’ Emergency Fund Bookfair
On Wednesday, September 19, a percentage of your purchase made at the Park Slope Barnes & Noble or at BN.com at anytime will support the PEN Writers’ Emergency… More
PEN Poets at Lit Crawl NYC: September 15
Next Saturday, September 15, PEN America will host three amazing poets for Lit Crawl NYC. Join us in the outdoor patio of Bantam, on the Lower East Side, for a… More
Stand Up For Freedom!
Enjoy an evening of political comedy and commentary, as New York's top progressive performers joke, jab, rant, vent, prod, provoke, and revel in their right to express themselves at… More
Puppet-Making and Parades: Free Workshops Coming Up
In the lead up to this year’s World Voices Festival, PEN is teaming up with Processional Arts Workshop (PAW) for a series of drop-in workshops to create giant puppets… More
Moving Forward, Looking Backward
httpv://youtu.be/siXPcM0Jn_U Ten years after the first detainees of America’s war on terrorism arrived at Guantanamo Bay, we must ask ourselves: What needs to be done to repair the damage caused… More
PEN Translation Committee Member Sylvie Kande at Columbia 11/14
Sylvie Kandé will read excerpts from her neo-epic poem, La quête infinie de l’autre rive: Épopée en trois chants (Gallimard, 2011), followed by a discussion on the theme of… More
Reading from The Taxi Project by Martha Kuwee Kumsa
I was released in September 1989 after a decade of torture and incarceration. Even though my imprisonment was limited to the radius of the prison compound—Ethiopia itself was a… More
Alert Us
Are you an artist at risk or know someone who is?
PEN America On 
"Like most Americans, you might believe books have a settled status in our culture—that even if they contain sexual material, they’re protected by the #FirstAmendment," writes @dankois.
Now, Republicans in VA are asking a judge to change US obscenity law. https://slate.com/culture/2022/08/book-banning-republicans-gender-queer-obscenity-supreme-court.html
“When we read these books... everyone is in agreement that (they) are very educational and should be allowed in our classrooms,” says Vandegrift High School Banned Book Club co-founder Alyssa Hoy. "They start very tough conversations that need to be had.” https://nextcity.org/urbanist-news/how-teens-are-pushing-back-on-book-bans
A teacher in Florida wanted to inspire Black children with pictures of Martin Luther King Jr., Harriet Tubman, Colin Powell and George Washington Carver.
He has resigned because, he alleges, a district employee removed the pictures as "age inappropriate."
https://www.pnj.com/story/news/local/escambia-county/2022/08/10/escambia-county-florida-teacher-said-pictures-black-american-leaders-removed-his-class/10276112002
