China’s Nobels
PEN American Center's Larry Siems and translator Jeffrey Yang on Liu Xiaobo, Mo Yan, and Liu Xia. More
Literary Awards 2012: Excerpts from the Winning Authors
For more than 50 years, PEN American Center has honored some of the most outstanding voices in literature with its literary awards program. We're proud to present excerpts from… More
PEN/ESPN Lifetime Achievement Award for Literary Sports Writing ($5,000)
to a writer for a lifetime of writing about sports and its dimensions of character and action More
PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing ($5,000)
for an author of a nonfiction book about sports More
On Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried
The Things They Carried has been challenged because of profanity three times. At high schools in Pennsylvania (retained), Mississippi (banned), and Illinois (retained); in 2001, 2003, and 2007, respectively;… More
On William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying
While ideological book banning is infuriating, banning out of ignorance and vague religiosity are, to me, even more galling. William Faulkner’s classic, As I Lay Dying, has been banned… More
On Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five
Throughout the novel, Vonnegut punctuates each horror with the words, “And so it goes.” Nothing protects the Billy Pilgrims of the world from brutality. Innocence is no protection. More
Robie Harris On the Banning of Her Books
How can we hold back writing about powerful feelings, or not include certain information children crave and have the right to know, simply because we are afraid? More
On Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita
Say that Lolita is hilarious and excruciating and sad—no novel ever had a sadder last line—but not boring, surely. We throb with the miserable Humbert as he creeps across… More
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