Host B.J. Novak Affirmed: “Real ideas are making a comeback. And books are at the forefront of that.”
LINKS to access Getty photos:
Arrivals: https://dam.gettyimages.com/selects/pen-america-2026-spring-literary-gala-arrivals
Program: https://dam.gettyimages.com/selects/pen-america-2026-spring-literary-gala-inside
(NEW YORK)— At a time of mounting censorship, rising jailing of writers and anxiety over artificial intelligence’s impact on creativity, PEN America brought together more than 600 writers, publishers, journalists and arts and entertainment luminaries in New York City Thursday night for its annual Literary Gala honoring outstanding contributions in literature and the defense of free expression.
Amid a constant drumbeat that AI is coming for creators, Host B.J. Novak – the actor, director, comedian, and two-time bestselling author – used his opening monologue to push back against fears that technology could ever eclipse human creativity. “Real life is making a comeback,” said Novak. “Real ideas are making a comeback. And books are at the forefront of that.” He noted: “Bookstores are booming. Movie theaters are booming. Concerts are booming. And real heroes of thought and ideas and expression are on the rise.”
A highlight of New York City’s literary calendar and known for bold commentary and red-carpet wattage, the gala – now in its 16th year — celebrated the freedoms to read, write, and speak while recognizing individuals and organizations that take risks to defend these rights. This year honorees include: bestselling and prize-winning author and Nashville bookseller Ann Patchett (Bel Canto, The Dutch House); Oscar-nominated film producer Jason Blum (Get Out, Black Phone 2, BlackKkKlansman); the Rutherford County Library Alliance of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, which mobilized against book bans and defended a fired local library director, and Iranian writers Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee and Ali Asadollahi prosecuted and jailed for their work. Iraee remains in prison, reflecting the deepening repression of writers in Iran as PEN America’s latest Freedom to Write Index , released this week, reported a sharp rise in arrests of Iranian writers.
PEN America’s Co-CEOs Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf and Summer Lopez emphasized the organization’s core mission—defending the freedom to write and protecting persecuted writers worldwide—as the program began.
Rosaz Shariyf said: “Whenever writers and expression come under attack, we refuse to be silent – whether those attacks are driven by the government, or commercial interests, or the politics of the moment.”
Lopez said: “Writers are vital to this moment, to this movement, and to everything we do at PEN America. They help us make sense of what’s happening. They remind us of storytelling’s power to imagine a better world. That’s why they are so often the first to come under attack. And the first to fight back.”
She then asked every writer in the hall to stand to be recognized.
At the reception outside the hall, quotes from more than 40 authors reflecting on free expression and free speech were displayed on a massive screen near the dinosaur models in the museum’s main lobby as part of PEN America newly launched America Speaks, a multimedia project to mark the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The project explores the unfinished exercise of free expression in the United States, gathering perspectives from people across the country to spark conversation and debate.
Patchett received the PEN/Audible Literary Service Award for her “singular humane voice” as a novelist and also for her dedication to independent bookselling and nurturing a vibrant literary community through Parnassus Books, her bookstore in Nashville. Blum was recognized with the Business Visionary Award for his “daring and diverse” films that transformed horror from a niche genre into “a driving force of contemporary culture”— often with social issues like racism and class at their core— through Blumhouse, his horror movie powerhouse.
With notable writers such as Edwidge Danticat, Walter Isaacson, M. Gessen, Amy Tan, Azar Nafisi, Carl Hiaasen and Walter Mosley among more than 50 author-table hosts (books were the centerpieces) in the iconic “whale room” at the American Museum of Natural History, speakers tackled today’s divisive issues— censorship, notably— some with rousing calls to action on free expression and protecting writers in peril. Writers in the audience included the gala co-chairs: David Remnick, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Colette Bennett, and Karen Mehiel.
Among the honorees, audience members and award presenters were authors whose books have been banned in the crisis of education censorship in U.S. public schools that PEN America has documented since 2021. Patchett herself had two novels banned in Florida schools and has spoken out against bans. Last week in a new report, PEN America said censorship of nonfiction books in public schools doubled in the last school year in what it called “an embrace of anti-intellectualism.”
Novak, in his monologue, encouraged the audience to deliver the inspiration needed by the rising generation of writers and other creators. “Writing is glamorous. Reading is glamorous. Freedom of speech is glamorous. It is rock and roll. It does deserve a gala that could be a centerpiece in a romantic comedy or a heist movie.”
He said: “Everyone in this room was inspired by some literary rock stars. For me it was watching Red Sox games on Channel 38 and realizing that Stephen King has Red Sox season tickets. It was seeing posters of Jack Kerouac and Charles Bukowski at Newbury Comics alongside Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain and knowing their books were stolen and wondering why. It was seeing James Baldwin quotes and Joan Didion pictures on tote bags and looking that stuff up too. And we know that those people were emulating their own literary rock stars.
He added: “We need to replenish that well, so that human beings in publishing continue their run,” he said. “ We need the next generation of literary glamour. To make people read books and think “I want to do this. I want to write this, publish it, protect it – it’s cool. Kids have to look up to something. Let it be something good. People should aspire to literary glamour because it doesn’t get any better.”
Patrick Ryan, the novelist and short story writer (Buckeye, In Mike We Trust), presented the award to Patchett, turning an amusing story about the day 27 years ago she helped him climb a muddy incline on a hike in Italy (they were participating in a writers residency there) into a metaphor for her lifelong magnanimity.
He said: “For the last 27 years, I’ve watched Ann do this again and again. For people like me, for organizations that work to get books into the hands of children in underserved communities, for the residents of Nashville when they had no bookstore left, for the residents of Tennessee when their arts funding was on the chopping block, for emerging writers wondering if there’s still a reason to write books, for readers who recognize themselves in her novels, and for so many others—Ann has extended her hands.“
Reflecting on the evening with the grace and wisdom she is celebrated for in her nine novels, Patchett said: “I know this is my moment to speak out against the oppression of writers around the world and the suppression of free speech, not to mention the threat to democracy that is book banning, but really, I just want to tilt back my head and look at that whale.” (The room takes its name from the 94-foot-long, 21,000-pound foam and fiberglass model of a blue whale that is suspended from the ceiling.)
In the museum she called one of her favorite places in New York City, she said: “The history of nature is made up of both extreme beauty and violence, volcanos and butterflies, shifting tectonic plates and marsupials, the bones of the stegosaurus and the light of Milky Way. Together it represents the story of extinction and rebirth, of what is known and what remains unknown.”
“Our lives are as miraculous as they are brief,” Patchett said, “so while we stand against injustice, we must also never fail to see that there is a whale hanging from the ceiling. If you think these are the darkest times, take a walk around this museum. The darkness and light cycle through every day, and right now we are here, alive and together, and for this I am enormously grateful.”
The Business Visionary award was presented to Blum by Maya Hawke, the actor (Wishful Thinking), singer-songwriter, and the filmmaker’s goddaughter. Calling Blum “the godfather of horror,” she told the audience: “I grew up in a family that believed stories matter. And one of the things I absorbed early, from Jason as much as from anyone, is that the stories a culture tries to look away from are usually the ones most worth telling. Horror has always known this. Long before the rest of culture caught up, horror was giving voice to the experiences of people who didn’t have many other places to see themselves, or their awkward and specific and human feelings on movie screens. That is not an accident of the genre, it’s identity.”
Drawing laughter from the audience, Blum quipped: “I got a 490 on my Verbal SATs. My wife did not want me to admit this publicly!” Then he talked about his favorite books and authors as a child— Chronicles of Narnia, Judy Blume, The Hardy Boys and Agatha Christie– saying only later did he come to understand that these books taught him “about right and wrong.” Agatha Christie, he noted, “taught perhaps that justice is a little different than the law.”
Making the case that storytelling helps build values like empathy, he said: “The truths embedded in fiction are harder for powerful institutions to dispute. … The leadership of this country and many other countries have used their power to make us all feel like we’re living in different realities. The very notion of a “fact” has become totally politicized. And so fiction, and the popular mainstream genre fiction, can be a powerful tool for delivering values that are complicated and nuanced.”
Presenting the PEN/Benenson Courage Award to the Rutherford County, TN Library Alliance, MSNOW journalist and author Ali Velshi (Small Acts of Courage: A Legacy of Endurance and the Fight for Democracy)— who since 2022 has interviewed 165 authors whose books were banned on his weekly “Velshi Banned Book Club”— said: “Book banning is not a fringe movement. It is a coordinated political project. One with funders, with lawyers, with model legislation. But that coordinated project will fail. The censors thought the country was with them. The country is NOT with them. The constitution is not with them. And the reason the book banning project will fail is sitting in this room tonight.”
Accepting the award on behalf of the alliance, Keri Lambert, the vice president of the all-volunteer group, said libraries “are one of the few institutions that truly belong to everyone, regardless of age, income, background, or beliefs.” She said the Rutherford County Library Alliance “understands something fundamental: defending libraries is really about defending democracy itself. A healthy community depends on informed citizens, open dialogue, and the freedom to explore ideas. Libraries make all of that possible.”
Alliance Communications Director Tatiana Silvas, a high school English teacher, dedicated the award to Luranne James, the county’s library director, who was fired in March for refusing the library board’s order to restrict LGBTQ+-themed children’s books. Silvas said: “She left a legacy of dedicated service to the principles of intellectual freedom. She intentionally put her job on the line to protect the right to read of every child in our community.”
Hundreds of books have been pulled from Tennessee schools and libraries in recent years through a combination of local censorship advocates, harmful legislation, and directives from public officials.
PEN America President Dinaw Mengestu, the acclaimed novelist, introduced the PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Award honoring Iranian writers Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee, who is imprisoned in Tehran, and Ali Asadollahi, who was arrested in January but granted bail after detention. The award annually recognizes a writer imprisoned for their work.
Mengestu said of the two writers: “They staked their lives on writing even in the face of extraordinary risks. Between the two, they have spent years in and out of prisons and despite that, they know that their voices will shape the future. Their imprisonment, he said, “leads us to imagine: ‘What if we protected everyone’s free expression rights to the same degree as we protect our own.”
Iraee has faced more than a decade of repeated harassment and detention for her writing and activism on human rights. She has been imprisoned in Tehran since September 2022. After being violently arrested in January, Asadollahi was physically abused in detention and released on bail in March following mounting international pressure.
On Tuesday, PEN America reported that over 400 writers are imprisoned globally, marking a significant rise in persecution. The latest Freedom to Write Index highlights a sharp rise in arrests in Iran.
In a statement, Ali Asadollahi wrote: “This is how censorship works: it rewards the familiar and the safe. It demands forms that don’t cause trouble. That is why in oppressive systems anyone who experiments—anyone who insists on new forms—becomes a problem. In a world of forced repetition, creating a new form, a new way of imagining, is in itself an act of defiance.”
Amir Ahmadi Arian, a writer and journalist, and Fariba Rad, a human rights activist, both living in the United States, accepted the award on behalf of the honorees.
Of the 55 jailed writers who have received the award since 1987, 46 are currently released in part due to the international attention and pressure the award generates.
About PEN America
PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect free expression in the United States and worldwide. We champion the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world. Our mission is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible. Learn more at pen.org.
Contact: Suzanne Trimel, [email protected], 201-247-5057