“Writing Is Spirit”: A Synchronous Meeting with Calligrapher Ömer Basdag
CYAB Committee member Meghan Nuttall Sayres on the Turkish calligrapher Ömer Basdag and the ancient art of handwriting. More
PEN America Translation Committee at BEA 2015
Join PEN's Translation Committee at BEA 2015 for three brief, informative panels focused on topics of perennial interest to those concerned with the art and profession of literary translation.… More
PEN World Voices Festival: Richard Flanagan on Confronting “the Darkness” of Communal Trauma
Richard Flanagan on how his father's traumatic internment at a Japanese POW camp during World War II informed the writing of his Man Booker Prize-winning novel The Narrow Road… More
PEN World Voices Festival: Edwidge Danticat on how “a story is never really yours”
Edwidge Danticat spoke to John Freeman about how stories are community property, what it means to write for others, and finding a sense of home in Haitian art and… More
PEN World Voices Festival: A Night of Prayer and Meditation
The desired effect—of evoking a religious service—was, by my accounting, achieved. As I sat, I felt my pulse slow. The setting, and the task at hand—giving ourselves over to… More
PEN World Voices Festival: The “Proustian Orgasm” of Memoir and Memory
Michael Ondaatje, Luc Sante, and Tracy K.Smith discussed the memoirs that most influenced their own writing and the prickly task of turning family stories into compelling literature. More
The PEN World Voices Festival As It Happened: “Divine Punishment”
There were moments on the panel when Ramirez and Caistor spoke like old friends. They talked about meeting for the first time at the Managua Book Festival in 1986.… More
The PEN World Voices Festival As It Happened: “Armenian Genocide: A Dark Paradigm”
The event was not a bleak centennial memorial but rather an inspiring commemoration of Armenian authors who continue to endure through the cultural lives of their work. More
PEN Workshop Series: Innovate Publicity Now
During the inaugural workshop in PEN’s new Workshop Series we were joined by publicists Katie Freeman, Lisa Vanterpool, and Lauren Cerand, who spoke about how to work with an… More
Combating the Multiplying Challenges to the Right of Free Expression
Journalists—traditional targets of authoritarian governments who want to limit their watchdog role—are being killed in record numbers. At least 61 were murdered in 2014 alone. More