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 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
The PEN Ten with Roxana Robinson
What the writer does is bear witness: we tell the stories of the things that disturb us most, and we try to tell them in the way that will… More
The PEN Ten with Nathaniel Bellows
Art, as a pursuit, has a place and purpose in the “public” sphere. There are few other known forces in the world that can provide such comfort, solace, provocation,… More
The PEN Ten with Je Banach
Writing may be courageous, but reading and speaking about what we read are also courageous acts. The discourse we create when we talk about books is daring just as… More
The PEN Ten with T Cooper
I was at dinner with my folks the other night, and my dad was telling me about a time I was about five, and we were in another country,… More
The PEN Ten with Jimmy Santiago Baca
What is the responsibility of the writer? To toss out like old rotten salad the yearning for fame and money and get busy fighting for human rights and protesting… More
The PEN Ten with Monique Truong
Writers or rather our works begin the conversations about the difficult, unanswerable subjects of life, and often our works keep the conversations going when everyone else would rather forget.… More
The PEN Ten with emily m. danforth
I fear that it sounds too nicey-nice, too passive, which isn’t my intention—writers can and should agitate and expose and upset. But I still think there’s something there in… More
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