Interviews & Features
PEN America produces a breadth of interviews and features throughout the year.
The PEN Ten: An Interview with Nathalie Handal
“A poem is the music of mystery, and until we embrace mystery, we can’t fully be.” More
The PEN Pod: Looking to the Past to Imagine a Better Future with Helen Zia
“Every Asian American in the United States and people with Asian faces all over the world are experiencing this global pandemic of racism and hatred.” More
The PEN Pod: Tough Questions with Suzanne Nossel
“This [question of surveillance] is something we, as a free expression organization, have concerns with.” More
The PEN Pod: Diving Beneath the Waves with Carmen Boullosa
“Books control, in such a way, their authors, that you only prepare the soil for them, work for them, so they can flourish or be.” More
The PEN Ten: An Interview with Genevieve Hudson
“At their best, stories reveal the truth. They help us see the impact we have on ourselves, on our society, and on our planet.” More
The PEN Pod: Keeping Hope Alive with Jewher Ilham
“Only standing up, speaking up, on my father’s behalf, on Uyghurs’ behalf, to work on something, then we can at least try to make a small change.” More
The PEN Pod: Defending the Freedom to Write with Karin Deutsch Karlekar
“[It’s] important to not just look at numbers and to give trends a human face, and to really look at the individual cases of writers and intellectuals behind bars.” More
The PEN Pod: Looking Through Time with Rebecca Makkai
“Look at the ways that the American healthcare system, in times of crisis, exacerbates the fissures that are already there, the inequalities that are already there.” More
The PEN Pod: Tough Questions with Suzanne Nossel
“The power of disinformation online, we see, is enormous.” More
The PEN Ten: An Interview with Ishmael Beah
“I was taught, and know for a fact, that stories are medicine. . . Life will always break all of us in one way or another, and stories will… More