Interviews & Features
PEN America produces a breadth of interviews and features throughout the year.
Tunisia, One Year Later: A Conversation with Sihem Bensedrine
Just for telling the policeman who arrested you that it was your right to protest, you would pay for it. You would be sent to prison. You would lose… More
Journey of the Sentence: A Conversation with Susan Bernofsky
In a way the scene exists to show you that lifestyle; if you translate it into something more neutral, then the scene loses a lot of its function and… More
Flavor of Words: Brian Selznick and Paul O. Zelinsky in Correspondence
And how do you understand the meaning of “work”? The term has rankled me ever since I was an undergraduate art major, standing in awed incomprehension of my professors’… More
Activist at Heart: A Conversation with South African Cartoonist Zapiro
Zapiro is South Africa’s most celebrated cartoonist. His penetrating cartoons hold the country’s power brokers to account, lampooning everyone from former president Nelson Mandela to the late cricket star… More
Slow Strokes: A Conversation with Ishion Hutchinson
A continuous influence is the Jamaican landscape, especially where I am from, Portland, in the east of the island. The influence of the land (and the porous land, the… More
No Standard Way: Five Questions for Susanna Daniel
As for the “End of Men,” I enjoyed the Atlantic piece, but I just can’t buy the idea that as women rise, men fall. More
Keeping Up with the Kids: Five Questions for George Dohrmann
Spending so many years around the players and the parents, it created a different dynamic than the one I typically have with subjects. I was more invested, although it… More
Free Expression in RSA: A Conversation with South African PEN’s Margie Orford
South Africa ended a civil war not through a fight to the death, but rather by saying we’ll just stop fighting and have a braii (barbecue) together and be… More
Interrogate the Slow Jam: A Conversation with Gabrielle Calvocoressi
I grew up in a very small town; my eyes are not great and I did not walk well for a long time, so I spent a lot of… More
My Face, My Attention, My Soul: A Conversation with Kevin Simmonds
I am now a poet. It’s as simple as that, really. The inclination to do it is in me. My face, my attention, my soul—all of those things are… More
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