
The PEN Ten with Je Banach
Writing may be courageous, but reading and speaking about what we read are also courageous acts. The discourse we create when we talk about books is daring just as… More

The PEN Ten with Jimmy Santiago Baca
What is the responsibility of the writer? To toss out like old rotten salad the yearning for fame and money and get busy fighting for human rights and protesting… More

The PEN Ten with Monique Truong
Writers or rather our works begin the conversations about the difficult, unanswerable subjects of life, and often our works keep the conversations going when everyone else would rather forget.… More

The PEN Ten with Alexander Chee
At some point recently I realized I mostly read about assassins. Assassins and sex work—in particular, I'm fascinated by the new porn narratives, the way porn has moved on… More

The PEN Ten with Karen Emmerich
The writer might have no responsibilities whatsoever, but the translator has only responsibilities—or at least that’s the popular perception. That’s why we’re always failing—according, again, to the popular perception.… More

The PEN Ten with Roxane Gay
Do writers have a collective purpose? I'm not sure, but what we do is write the world as we see it. We witness and record and remember and when… More

The PEN Ten with Shya Scanlon
Unfortunately, too little progress has been made, globally, since Solzhenitsyn smuggled his Nobel acceptance speech out of the Soviet Union as negatives in a tape deck in 1970. Even… More

The PEN Ten with Alissa Nutting
"I think writing should be a sacrifice, and feel like one—how else could the act of constructing narratives, stories, lies, deceptions, ever be kept honest, if not through demanding… More
One of the great pleasures of reading is the ability it affords us to peek inside the heads of fellow humans, in all their flawed and glorious diversity.
One of the great pleasures of reading is the ability it affords us to peek inside the heads of fellow humans, in all their flawed and glorious diversity. More
I could be compelling on the page in ways I couldn’t be in person.
I could be compelling on the page in ways I couldn't be in person. More