Statement: Publisher’s Decision to Pull “Bad and Boujee” Book is “Misguided and Regrettable”
"When debates over books and authors have a racial dimension, they can get heated quickly because they tap into long histories of exclusion and marginalization of people of color… More
The PEN Pod: On Loose Ends and Plot Twists with Lisa Jewell
“The feeling of the book comes first. . . and then the bigger themes that encompass society and where we find ourselves now come much further down the line.” More
The PEN Pod: On Finding the Extraordinary in the Ordinary with Fredrik Backman
“I was going to try to write something about the things that everyday people go around carrying—that feeling that everybody else has their life figured out, except for me.” More
The PEN Pod: Letting Go of Our Illusions with Charles Yu
“This moment and what I think will be the aftermath of it for a long time, is to actually make very real what has felt real for a long… More
The PEN Pod: Creating Inner Worlds with Deborah Feldman
“Use this opportunity to learn to create this rich inner self and this inner world, because later. . . those skills will remain very valuable.” More
The PEN Pod: Finding Hope in Endurance with Emily St. John Mandel
“This is something that our ancestors endured, and something that our descendants will endure, and our society. . . has endured through all of that.” More
The PEN Pod: Confronting Science Fiction and Our Reality with N.K. Jemisin
“None of us could have written a story that had this kind of subplot because our editors would have been like, ‘It's unrealistic, go back and do it again.’” More
The PEN Pod: Connecting through Translation with Ali Araghi
“One function of translation we could think about is the way it shows how literature of other cultures have reacted to similar problems we are dealing with.” More
The PEN Pod: Rediscovering the Joys of Literature with Bernardine Evaristo
“The characters start to come alive, and in a sense, those characters start to speak to me. . . And that, for me, is the magic of writing.” More