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 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
The PEN Ten with Eric Bogosian
"We are no longer living in an era of the printed word radiating outward from author toward readers. Words come in short bursts, ideas ping-pong, thinking itself has become… More
The PEN Ten with Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor
"Are they influences? My obsessions are numerous and varied and therefore lead me to my greatest obsession: to be still, to know silence within, to be so still that… More
The PEN Ten with Dorothy Tse
"Every word becomes dangerous when words fall into a wave of social movements." More