Press Releases
PEN America experts are available for interviews with the press. Please direct inquiries to Suzanne Trimel, communications and media consultant, at [email protected].
At a time of unprecedented attacks against the free press, PEN America Members are taking action. Join us today.
Risking retribution, Iranian lawyer pleads for jailed husband’s release
PEN American Center and PEN Canada, two leading centers of International PEN, today issued an urgent appeal for the release of four prominent writers and translators imprisoned in Iran. More
Burmese poet, Uighur historian to receive PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Award
PEN American Center today named Aung Myint, a Burmese poet serving a 21-year prison term for distributing a press release to foreign diplomats and press, and Tohti Tunyaz, an… More
Vanessa Leggett to receive 2002 PEN/Newman’s Own First Amendment Award
PEN American Center today named Vanessa Leggett, the freelance writer who was jailed in a federal detention center in Texas for 168 days for refusing to bow to a… More
PEN fights Bush executive order on presidential papers
PEN American Center has joined the legal battle to reverse President Bush's executive order limiting access to presidential papers and to authorize the National Archives to administer the Presidential… More
PEN applauds release of Mexican general
Writers throughout North America hailed the release of a Mexican general jailed for more than eight years for essays advocating human rights reforms for the armed forces in Mexico. More
PEN American Center deplores sentencing of Russian military journalist
PEN American Center today expressed deep disappointment over the news that Grigory Pasko, the Russian military journalist who has been on trial for reporting on the dumping of nuclear… More
PEN seeks quick action by Fox administration following IACHR ultimatum
Representatives from PEN centers in North America and Europe called on President Vicente Fox to comply with the two-day deadline the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) has issued… More
PEN American Center protests prison transfer for Iranian translator
PEN American Center today expressed deep concern over the news that Khalil Rostamkhani, an Iranian translator sentenced to 8 years in prison for helping to arrange a conference sponsored… More
PEN opposes preliminiary injunction halting publication of The Wind Done Gone
PEN American Center, the national association of writers, today joined a number of First Amendment and anti-censorship organizations in calling on a Federal Appeals Court to reverse a lower… More
Iranian publisher, Uzbek novelist to receive 2001 Freedom to Write Awards
PEN American Center today named Shahla Lahiji, a publisher who is one of 19 Iranian writers and intellectuals prosecuted for participating in a conference in Berlin last year, and… More
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My latest op-ed on school librarians. @becalzada @technolibrary @MaryWoodard @KPekoll @OIF #Freadom @ashleyhopeperez @halseanderson https://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/outlook/article/school-library-book-banning-bill-gop-abbott-lege-17857122.php?utm_source=marketing&utm_medium=copy-url-link&utm_campaign=article-share&hash=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuaG91c3RvbmNocm9uaWNsZS5jb20vb3Bpbmlvbi9vdXRsb29rL2FydGljbGUvc2Nob29sLWxpYnJhcnktYm9vay1iYW5uaW5nLWJpbGwtZ29wLWFiYm90dC1sZWdlLTE3ODU3MTIyLnBocA==&time=MTY3OTcwNDU3Nzg4MQ==&rid=NDBiMmRkY2UtYTdjZC00NWU2LWE0NmQtMDZmMTlkNWE2OGIw&sharecount=MQ==
#ChildrensBooks
“#FirstAmendment rights do not stop at the schoolhouse door,” PEN America’s Nadine Farid Johnson reminds
@JudiciaryGOP, highlighting the need to prepare students for "life in a participatory democracy, one that requires us to debate, to understand & to discuss." #StudentsRights