A Disability Activist Is Asked to Change Her Speech By Boston University Her Response: In Future Speaking Contracts, No Changes will be Allowed
Free speech is for everyone; using accessibility tools to screen speech that could otherwise not be pre-reviewed flies in the face of this principle. More
Unsealed: In Spite of Prison Walls
In e-messages sent from a Michigan prison, writer Leo Carmona describes the value of finding and losing community between facility transfers. More
Jennifer Baker on Restorative Justice in Young Adult Fiction
Jennifer Baker, author of "Forgive Me Not," speaks with PEN America's "Works of Justice" podcast about how she wrote restorative justice into her young adult novel. More
PEN America Criticizes U.S. Human Rights Record at the U.N. Human Rights Committee
PEN America submitted a report to the United Nations Committee on Civil and Political Rights, criticizing the human rights record of the United States on free expression, discrimination, and… More
Unsealed: On That Old Rock Pile Prison Quilt Project
In this essay, Jeff Elmore explains his process of making paper collage quilts in prison, which he sends to anyone interested in receiving them. More
Introducing The Freewrite Project Zine
PEN America’s Prison and Justice Writing Program presents a zine featuring work from creative writing workshop participants in Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. The workshops were framed around curriculum developed… More
Turning Sentences Around
In this Works of Justice exclusive, Robert Lee Williams reflects on how PEN America's "The Sentences That Create Us: Crafting a Writer's Life in Prison" (Haymarket Books, 2022) helped… More
These Books Are Banned in Urbandale, Iowa School District
PEN America sent an open letter to the Urbandale, Iowa school district to reverse an order to remove a list of nearly 400 titles. Here are some of the… More
The Culture Wars Are Coming for College Accreditation
An aspect of higher education governance has increasingly been targeted in legislative censorship efforts: college and university accreditation. More
On Prison Art and Music
PEN America Prison and Justice Writing Program Manager Robbie Pollock highlights three projects centered on making music from prison: Heartbeat Opera, Die Jim Crow Records, and a recent book… More