Interviews & Features
PEN America produces a breadth of interviews and features throughout the year.
The PEN Pod: On Filipino American Activism and Journalists as Storytellers with Michi Trota
“Journalists are not here to tell people what to think. . . we’re [telling] them why they should think about this, and how it fits into the larger context.” More
The PEN Ten: An Interview with Jubi Arriola-Headley
“I’ve always thought of the process of writing poetry as one of exposure, as a laying bare, as an offering, even. . . So, once I write a poem,… More
The PEN Pod: On Loose Ends and Plot Twists with Lisa Jewell
“The feeling of the book comes first. . . and then the bigger themes that encompass society and where we find ourselves now come much further down the line.” More
The PEN Pod: On Finding the Extraordinary in the Ordinary with Fredrik Backman
“I was going to try to write something about the things that everyday people go around carrying—that feeling that everybody else has their life figured out, except for me.” More
The PEN Pod: On the Debates and the Future of Race and Bias Training with Suzanne Nossel
“This is an administration that, from the beginning, has denigrated the role of the press, has called the press the enemy of the American people.” More
The PEN Ten: An Interview with Yamile Saied Méndez
“My job as a writer is to tell my characters’ truth and hope that it will help the reader see the truth in themselves.” More
The PEN Pod: On Knowing We’re Not Alone with BIll Konigsberg
“The misfits have stories to tell. People who feel that way have more of a need to read in some ways, so I think it’s a perfect marriage.” More
The PEN Pod: Unpacking the Presidential Debate and Disinformation with Suzanne Nossel
“The worst thing in the world would be for the president to say something that would be disproven. That has been lost in this administration.” More
The PEN Pod: On Campus Free Speech and Devalued Black Lives with Eddie Cole
“Things are the same in the sense that college presidents are still grappling with how to deal with, say, the traditional white supremacists that disrupt the speech on campus.” More
The PEN Ten: An Interview with Jenny Bhatt
“I’m brown, female, middle-aged, immigrant, late-bloomer, Indian, Gujarati, American, South Asian, wife, sister, daughter. All of these make me the writer that I am.” More