The Box

"I had only been on Rikers for three months and I was already going to the box. I was nervous and didn't want to go." More

Mythologies: A Forum

From Issue 21 of PEN America: A Journal for Writers and Readers, coming your way in two weeks, Mythologies considers stories that have been transmitted to us and the mechanisms of… More

On Difficult Conversations

As I look at the gulf between these bases of support, I’ve been thinking about “difficult conversation”—what that means, how it happens, and what we hope can come… More

Narrative Through Community

Our communities are being polarized and manipulated with competing notions of the truth…How do we address these divisions of outright truth and lie? Research provides a necessary starting point. More

Mayor of San Juan Carmen Yulin San Juan

This Is Not a Good News Story

What gets coded as what, and how, seems an almost week-to-week question posed in our media and discourse…There are tangible consequences to the language and narratives we use. More

Protestors topple confederate statues

Toward New Symbols and Platforms

Interrogating our national symbols is necessary to disrupting and dismantling power, but so is erecting new symbols and stories, or rather amplifying and holding space for stories that have… More

DACA Protest

The Invisible Work Around You

Those of us who are documented have a responsibility to put ourselves on the line, while still centering the stories and voices of those who are most at risk. More

Headshot collage of After Charlottesville panel

After Charlottesville

Claire Messud, Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, Rion Amilcar Scott, and Robert Pinsky reflect on the hatred boiling over in our country. More

Rereading & Rewriting Crime

We can respond to this crisis as a literary community by centering and seriously considering the work that casts prison, prisoners, and the prison state/industry in new light. More