New York City, November 1, 2011—The Board of PEN American Center, the largest branch of the world’s oldest literary and human rights organization, voted at their meeting on October 20, 2011, to appoint Peter Godwin and Clinton Ives Smullyan Jr. as at-large Trustees.
“We are all delighted to be joined on the Board by these two very distinguished people from the worlds of business and journalism, and I look forward very much personally to working with them myself,” said PEN President Kwame Anthony Appiah.
Peter Godwin, a 2010 Guggenheim fellow, is an award winning foreign correspondent, author, documentary-maker and screenwriter. Born and raised in Africa, Godwin studied law at Cambridge University and international relations at Oxford University. After practicing human rights law in Zimbabwe, he became both a foreign and war correspondent for the London Sunday Times and the BBC, and has reported from over 60 countries. He has written for an array of magazines and newspapers including National Geographic, New York Times Magazine, Men’s Journal, and Vanity Fair (for which he was a 2009 finalist for the Michael Kelly award).
Godwin is the author of six non-fiction books, including Mukiwa, which received the George Orwell prize and the Esquire-Apple Waterstones award, and When a Crocodile Eats the Sun-A Memoir of Africa, which won the Borders Original Voice Award. His latest book is The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe. He has taught writing at the New School, Princeton, and Columbia.
Clinton Ives Smullyan Jr., a member of Brown University’s undergraduate class of 1972, is President and CEO of Mosbacher Properties Group LLC and Mosbacher Properties, Inc., where he has overseen the management and development of residential and commercial real estate since 1973. Between 1994 and 1996 he served as Chairman of the Executive Committee of DJA Partners, a joint venture between Dow Jones and AEGON USA. He also served on the International Advisory Council of Chase Manhattan Bank before their dissolution in 2000. Smullyan is a longstanding member of the Boards for the John Carter Brown Library, The Jamestown Foundation, and the Rockefeller University Council. In addition to his accomplishments in business and philanthropy, Smullyan is a collector of 17th and 18th century English lexicography.
Officers of the PEN American Center Board of Trustees include Executive Vice President John Troubh, Vice Presidents Ron Chernow and Victoria Redel, Treasurer Maria B. Campbell, and Secretary Roxana Robinson. Trustees include Susan Bernofsky, Edward Burlingame, Anne Burt, Morgan Entrekin, Wendy Gimbel, Jeri Laber, Joanne Leedom-Ackerman, Claudia Menza, John Oakes, Christian Oberbeck, Tess O’Dwyer, Hannah Pakula, Walter Pozen, Theresa Rebeck, Susanna Reich, Hamilton Robinson, Jr., Esmeralda Santiago, Elissa Schappell, Rose Styron, Annette Tapert, Lynne Tillman, Monique Truong, Danielle Truscott, Davis Weinstock, and Jacob Weisberg.