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The PEN Ten Interview Series
The PEN Ten is on the pulse of literary culture to help you discover your next great read. In this interview series, we ask authors 10 questions about their latest work and art.
The PEN Ten with Saul Williams
"It is the challenges we pose to ourselves that bring the greatest honesty, lucidity, imagination, directness. I consider my responsibility as a poet as something related to the journalist,… More
The PEN Ten with Alex Berenson
Nonfiction writers—reporters of all stripes, historians, biographers—have to start and end with the truth as their lodestar. The truth is a painful master. It blinks and hides, disappears entirely,… More
The PEN Ten with Min Jin Lee
Whether in fiction or nonfiction, I want to be a fair and emotionally truthful writer. Also, I think I should tell a story worth the reader’s time and attention. More
The PEN Ten with Jonathan Baumbach
One writes to discover a truth that is truer than what existed before. More
The PEN Ten with Camille Rankine
I like to hear stories from worlds that aren't my own. Sometimes, when I'm listening, a phrase floats into the air and everything else gets quiet, and it's like… More
The PEN Ten with Troy Wiggins
"We all have a preoccupation with mortality because time is such a limited currency for us. Alongside that, I have to reckon with the reality that as a Black… More
The PEN Ten with Heid E. and Louise Erdrich
It seems to me that being a public intellectual is crucial these days. Even if it is out fashion, we all have to fight for the freedom of conscience… More
The PEN Ten with Phenderson Clark
"I have been on the opposite end of a police officer’s drawn weapon on at least three separate occasions in three different American cities. I can still recall… More
The PEN Ten with Olivia Cole
"If we have a responsibility as writers—and I’m not sure we do—ours is to see ourselves as clearly as we think we see the world, to, in the pursuit… More
The PEN Ten with Morgan Jerkins
"Love. I know it's cheesy but I am obsessed with love and how it shapes a reality between two individuals, a reality that others sometimes cannot fully perceive but… More