Free Speech 2020
Throughout 2020, PEN America is standing up for free speech and your right to speak out. Join us to defend press freedom, fight online harassment, combat disinformation, and uphold… More
The PEN Pod: On Race, Place, and Belonging with Sejal Shah
“I’m certainly thinking about kinship. . . What do we owe our neighbors and fellow humans. . . for whom to be alive is a risk?” More
The PEN Pod: Challenging Our Paradigms with Julia Alvarez
“What [reading] asks of us is to become the other, to become someone else. And those are the same muscles that we use when we’re activists for social justice.“ More
The PEN Pod: On the Small Things We Cannot See That Change Our Lives with Ed Yong
“As journalists, it is our responsibility to resist those easy dichotomies and to find all the missing nuance in the middle that is important, but is also being neglected.“ More
The PEN Pod: On The Importance of Centering Marginalized Narratives with Jaquira Díaz
“I would hope that they would find in my story that my story was not unique, that so many of us go through this suffering in silence.” More
The PEN Pod: Putting Tech Under the Microscope with Ainissa Ramirez
“Since so many things are being put underneath the microscope, I hope that technology, too, will be put there.” More
The PEN Pod: Looking to the Past to Imagine a Better Future with Helen Zia
“Every Asian American in the United States and people with Asian faces all over the world are experiencing this global pandemic of racism and hatred.” More
The PEN Pod: Diving Beneath the Waves with Carmen Boullosa
“Books control, in such a way, their authors, that you only prepare the soil for them, work for them, so they can flourish or be.” More
Mayor De Blasio: Expand COVID19 relief funding to NYC’s literary arts community
We, members of the literary community in New York City, call on you to ensure writers and the literary arts organizations who support them are provided meaningful support. More
The PEN Pod: Looking Through Time with Rebecca Makkai
“Look at the ways that the American healthcare system, in times of crisis, exacerbates the fissures that are already there, the inequalities that are already there.” More