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Interviews & Features

PEN America produces a breadth of interviews and features throughout the year. 

The PEN Ten Interviews • Pen Pals Prison Writing

The PEN Ten with Nathan Deuel

When you've lived and worked in places where writing can get you killed, where the act of telling the truth can take down powers, it's hard to have anything… More

The PEN Ten with Uwem Akpan

If secondary school girls are being abducted for learning how to read and write, the whole enterprise of reading and writing is destroyed and a whole generation of girls… More

The PEN Ten with Lawrence Venuti

The translator ... bears an enormous responsibility, not just in relation to the source text, but in representing a foreign culture. Translations can create or strengthen stereotypes of foreign… More

The PEN Ten with Rigoberto González

Observation is posing interesting questions. Surveillance is getting specific answers. Only one of those is meant to be used against the private citizen. The line, then, depends entirely on… More

The PEN Ten with Daniel Handler

Writers have a collective purpose precisely because the notion of a public intellectual has fallen out of fashion. The most interesting ideas, the most crucial philosophies, are always secrets… More

The PEN Ten with Maud Newton

For me at least, the things that feel most daring to write or to say don't really sound all that earth-shattering to other people. I remember the first time… More