The PEN Pod: Combating Ideological Exclusion with Julia Rose Kraut
“What’s really the focus though is this tremendous absolute power and discretion held by the executive, and that doesn’t go away.” More
Prominent Jordanian-British Poet Turned Away from New York-Bound Flight
The absence of any grounds for his exclusion raises the troubling possibility that Nasser is being punished and silence on the basis of his opinions and writings. More
Jordanian Poet Denied Entry to U.S.
On September 27, 2014, Jordanian-British Poet Amjad Nasser was denied permission to board a plane bound for New York, where he was to inaugurate the new Gallatin Global Writers… More
Revenge for My Protest?
Forty-five minutes before departure the microphone crackled, the decision on my case was made known, and the woman told me abruptly and without emotion that my entry into the… More
PEN Letter Protesting Exclusion of Ilija Trojanov from the U.S.
On September 30, 2013, German PEN member Ilija Trojanov, a Bulgarian-German writer, was denied permission to board a flight from Brazil to the United States. PEN American Center fears… More
PEN Protests Exclusion of Bulgarian-German Writer from U.S.
PEN said the exclusion of German PEN Member Ilija Trojanov calls to mind our country’s checkered history of barring writers whose political views it disfavors, at a time when… More
Visas Denied to Artists
As an organization devoted to a free exchange of literature and ideas around the world, PEN was pleased to receive assurances from the State Department last year that the… More
PEN Presses for Visa for Palestinian Poet
Yesterday, we got word through our Translation Committee that Palestinian poet Ghassan Zaqtan, whose collection Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me is being released by Yale University Press… More
Fighting Ideological Exclusion in South Africa
South African PEN is protesting the South African government’s failure to issue a visa to the Dalai Lama to attend fellow Nobel Peace Prize recipient Desmond Tutu’s private 80th… More
Advocate’s Visa Delay Stirs Questions
Kerim Yildiz, a leading human rights advocate for the Kurdish people, was for two decades a frequent visitor to the United States. A British citizen living in London, he… More
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