Interviews & Features
PEN America produces a breadth of interviews and features throughout the year.
The PEN Pod: The Journey to Cloud Cuckoo Land with Anthony Doerr
“Books allow us to slip out of the walls—the proverbial walls or the metaphorical walls—of our own lives. And thank goodness they do.” More
The PEN Pod: On Educational Gag Orders and the January 6 Insurrection Subpoena
“We should be encouraging young people to look at our history through a variety of lenses—through the lens of race, through the lens of socioeconomics, gender.” More
The PEN Ten: An Interview with Truong Tran
“This has gone on for far too long. I have been silent. I have been silenced. These answers, like the book, are the breaking of silence.” More
The PEN Pod: On Diverse Latinx Voices and Identities with Saraciea J. Fennell
“You can imagine how intense it is to navigate the world when you are constantly having to prove your identity, constantly having to reaffirm, ‘This is who I am.’” More
The PEN Pod: On NSO Group Accountability, Payroll Credit for Compensation of Local News Journalists, and Eliminating Facial Recognition Technology from Facebook
“People are unmoored in terms of where to get credible information, and local news really used to fill that void and be a kind of informational anchor for people.” More
The PEN Ten: An Interview with Lisa Hiton
“So often, I read work that is beautifully forgettable. As an example: Pristine couplets have their place, but amid thousands of poems, they tire. Is the couplet arbitrary or… More
PEN Pals: Nikki Grimes and Padma Venkatraman Discuss Challenged Books
“I created my [Dyamonde Daniel book] series so that emerging Black readers would see themselves represented in that genre.” More
The PEN Pod: On Horror and Humor with Melissa Lozada-Oliva
“Humor can just be a tool for showing things that are underneath, and not a shield, and that’s what I was trying to do with this book.” More
The PEN Ten: An Interview with the 2021 Emerging Voices Fellows
“People need stories for different reasons. Perhaps to find the meaning of life or maybe to explore other ideas and worlds. Perhaps to escape from our ordinary lives.” More
The PEN Pod: On Protesting Book Bans with the Students of York, PA
“We saw. . . what was happening at our school and we wanted to take immediate action. . . . Because we knew we had to do it.” More