Barry Jenkins: “Thank You So Damn Much For Writing the Things You Write”
Barry Jenkins thanks writers for inspiring his work while accepting PEN America's Award for Screenplay Excellence at the 2018 LitFest Gala. More
“Language Lives Longer Than People”: Edna O’Brien at the 2018 Literary Awards Ceremony
"Writing isn’t elitist, it is the deepest thing we have. It is as essential to us as our breathing." More
A Conversation with Eisa Davis & Eisa Ulen.
"Born of the bloodfire of struggle for the people. I honor my child with your daughter’s name. May they both be strong forces of love and revolution."These are the… More
‘That Book Wrote Me’
Chinua Achebe delivered the following speech at the close of PEN's 2008 Tribute to Chinua Achebe. It appears in PEN America 9: Checkpoints, along with other excerpts from the… More
Strangely Personal: Growing Up in Chinua Achebe’s House
The year that I turned six, my family moved into a bigger house with a staircase that at first terrified me. The family that had just moved out, I… More
Love Letter
“You’re a really good writer,” she said, “almost as good as your brother Charles. You should read the novel he’s writing.” So I snuck into Charles’s room and… More
Roger Angell: A Sporting Life
And in the off season once, when he was working for the Tigers, working with some teenagers, he discovered a new pitch. He learned that if you take the… More
From the Floor: A Conversation with Grace Paley, Margaret Atwood, and Norman Mailer
We protest the state of the imagination of the PEN International Congress, 1986. We protest the underrepresentation of women on the panels and in the readings. Although nearly half… More
Saul Bellow, Allen Ginsberg, Nadine Gordimer, Salman Rushdie & Others
There has never been much rapport between government and art in the United States. The thing was set up only, on the political level, to create a kind of… More
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