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 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
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
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