Interviews & Features
PEN America produces a breadth of interviews and features throughout the year.
Permanent Piece: A Conversation with Brett Fletcher Lauer
It is both the religious authority and mystical confidence coupled with the presentation of the extraordinary as matter of fact that appeals to my sensibility. More
PEN America 15: Maps
In the latest issue of PEN America, we wanted to explore how writers encounter and examine the fictional topographies of their lives. More
Opening Up to the Family of Nations: A Conversation with Tom Fleming
The reason I joined PEN is really quite simple. I had been censored. More
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
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