Suzanne Trimel

Senior Advisor, Communications and Media

Suzanne Trimel rejoined PEN America as a senior communications and media advisor in 2022 after a 2019 consultancy in communications and development. She has extensive experience working with organizations to drive ideas into the public conversation on priorities ranging from education and global human rights to health and the environment.

A journalist for a decade in New York and Washington, she served as vice president for public affairs at Barnard College and earlier, associate director of public affairs at Columbia University from the late 1990s to 2008. She then joined Amnesty International as U.S. media director where her work focused on human rights and social justice in the U.S. and abroad. In recent years, she has worked as director of communications at Outright Action International and as a consultant on branding, public relations and media and as a writer with the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition, the International Budget Partnership, and the Hearing Health Foundation.


Articles by Suzanne Trimel

Friday March 15

New Book Examines Why Reading Matters in America’s Prisons and How Ordinary Citizens Can Make a Difference

The book is a collection of inspiring stories from the prison book movement and a guide for people who want to swell its ranks.

Friday January 19

Conservative Commentator Bill O’Reilly Hits the Roof Over His Books Being Banned in Florida

O’Reilly now views the bans in a different light, arguing that Florida lawmakers wrote a law whose wording was too vague and needs to be rewritten.

Organizational
Monday December 11

Jennifer Finney Boylan on PEN America, the Crisis for Free Expression and the Power of Storytelling

Jennifer Finney Boylan | PEN America President and Chairwoman By: Suzanne Trimel | December 11, 2023 Jennifer Finney Boylan has been elected president and chairwoman of the PEN America Board…