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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 Jean Kwok
After hearing from readers who told me how the book touched and influenced them, I realized that what I say does have an impact. Of course, I need to… More
The PEN Ten with Warren Adler
My obsession is to get it right, plot, characters, atmosphere, logic. I never go to sleep without figuring out what I will write tomorrow. More
The PEN Ten with Harvey J. Kaye
My lifelong hero—ever since I was a boy—is Thomas Paine, the American Revolutionary and radical-democratic pamphleteer. I would love to be identified with his words, words such as “The… More
The PEN Ten with Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo
Fidel Castro as the measure of all things. Why is it that no Latin American writer, after almost a century of tradition with the so-called “novels of the dictator,”… More
The PEN Ten with Amanda Vaill
I'm still surprised to answer "I'm a writer" when people ask me what I do. I wrote as a child—pages of what we would probably call fan-fiction today, extensions… More
The PEN Ten with Michael F. Moore
As an interpreter I’m a bit of a stage mother, pushing the writer or director for whom I’m interpreting to jump into the conversation (Forza! Dai! Sfondi! I whisper).… More
The PEN Ten with Kyle Minor
I wish American writers in general were less anti-intellectual, more interested in the interior life and exterior systems of power. I don't come from a subculture that had much… More
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