Interviews & Features
PEN America produces a breadth of interviews and features throughout the year.
The PEN Ten with Muna Gurung
"I write to show that being weak is strong, is daring. As of a year ago, I have begun to write about being a victim of sexual violence at… More
The PEN Ten with A Yi
"Although writers are like any other people, they are a small being in the real world, and can easily be manipulated or used, but they should always have the… More
The PEN Ten with Etgar Keret
"I think that great stories are inherently much smarter than the people who wrote them, because they are not about inventing something but rather about uniquely exposing something that… More
The PEN Ten with Elif Batuman
"I think literature has a collective purpose, which is to process the reality of lived experience, in much the same way that dreams process the reality of waking life." More
The PEN Ten with Ram Devineni, Vikas K. Menon, and Dan Goldman
"Storytellers and artists serve as funhouse mirrors that show us versions of ourselves and the world, not as they are but as they could be. We point the way… More
The PEN Ten with Zoe Pilger
"It seems that total exposure is now a form of concealment, especially in regards to women’s sexuality. We can show everything and nothing at once." More
The PEN Ten with Ladan Osman
"So often we are stuck in contracted stories, or keeping others in manageable narratives. We look, but what are we looking for?" More
The PEN Ten with Mark Nowak
"Workers writing poems, as Jacques Rancière says in Proletarian Nights, is still a pretty radical idea." More
The PEN Ten with Mona Eltahawy
"I believe it's the writer's job to tell society what it pretends it doesn't know." More
Controlled Abandon: A Conversation with Gregory Pardlo
In the realm beyond conventional reason there can be found opportunities to transcend the categories that corrupt our social interactions. More