Dark Corners
As I sat alone at a picnic table eating lunch prepared by a woman in the congregation—chips, BBQ, chicken, corn on the cob, spaghetti, and cake—I was visited by… More
Prison Perspectives on Schopenhauer
Should I look for another philosopher who doesn’t threaten my peace of mind or parole prospects? More
Tears of Blood
Tiffanee likes when I tell her stories; she says it allows her mind to escape the prison of poverty, letting her thoughts run free from this five-by-five-foot tunnel. Far… More
Prison Writing Award Winners: 2014–2015
Announcing the winners of PEN’s annual Prison Writing Contest, one of the few outlets of free expression for the country’s incarcerated population. More
Perumal Murugan, a Literary Suicide
"The trend in India of writers being harassed and stigmatized for their work is troubling. It is imperative that writers from both inside and outside India support these voices,… More
Don’t Pity the Subject Being Smashed, Rage at the Object Doing the Smashing
"That is why The Bluest Eye is dangerous and always situated on a banned books list. It exposes the violence that besets the human condition as a result of… More
Cold War Dress Code: Remembering Inna Lisnyanskaya
Paradoxically, the Metropole affair both silenced Lisnyanskaya as a poet in the USSR and liberated her from the restrictions imposed by publishing (self-censorship being an obligatory tool in the… More
Sacrifice and Self-Censorship before Russia’s “Gay Propaganda” Law
For those of us outside Russia, it’s hard to convey the kind of risk Wilke and her publisher were contemplating. The Putin presidency has committed serious violence—only some of… More
The Power of Voice: On Translating Aurora Venturini
The balance of humor and horror in Venturini's The Cousins owes everything to the author's signature achievement: the voice of the narrator and main character. More
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