The $25,000 award, established by Newman and his long-time business partner, literary biographer A.E. Hotchner, is presented to a United States resident who has fought courageously, despite adversity, to safeguard the First Amendment right to freedom of expression as it applies to the written word. "One of the basic guarantees of the Bill of Rights is freedom of the press, freedom to write and publish without any abridgement," Newman said at a press conference in the PEN office in 1992 announcing the establishment of the award. "It is to safeguard and promote that freedom that we have established this award. To paraphrase Voltaire, it is our philosophy that although we may disapprove of what you write, we will defend to the death your right to write it."

The award is designed to highlight the efforts of people whose achievements on behalf of the First Amendment have not otherwise garnered recognition through institutional affiliation or public visibility. Those who have been nominated in the past include writers, publishers, journalists, editors, booksellers, schoolteachers, and librarians. A candidate may have called for the reinstatement of a newspaper or magazine editor whose writing led to dismissal, worked to restore a banned book to a library's shelves, or performed any other extraordinary act to defend freedom of the written word.

Each individual candidate is suggested by a nominator, who may or may not be affiliated with the literary, journalistic, educational, legal, or human rights communities. For each case, an application form is completed. The award is presented at the annual PEN benefit dinner in New York City in late spring. Each year, a new panel of five judges is selected by PEN's Freedom to Write Committee. The judges consist of prominent writer/PEN members, public figures with experience in freedom of expression issues, and experts in the field of the First Amendment.

1993
Recipient: CLAUDIA JOHNSON restored literary classics - including Steinbeck, Chaucer, Aristophanes - that had been banned from Florida classrooms; defended student production of A Raisin in the Sun.
Judges: Rev. Calvin Butts, Frances FitzGerald, Morley Safer, Nadine Strossen, Barney Frank

1994
Recipient: CAROLE MARLOWE, Arizona drama teacher who resisted district censorship of a play selected for student production.
Judges: Barbara Handman, Aryeh Neier, Rita Dove, Camille Paglia, Armistead Maupin

1995
Recipient: JOYCE MESKIS, Denver bookstore owner who successfully challenged a Colorado law barring stores open to children from selling novels and art books with sexual content, and who continued to sell Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses in 1989, donating 25% of proceeds to anticensorship organizations.
Judges: Alice Hoffman, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Tony Kushner, Michael Massing, Oren Teicher

1996
Recipient: CISSY LACKS, Missouri high school Creative Writing teacher fired for "failure to censor her students' creative expression."
Judges: Adward Albee, Julia Alvarez, Caroline Kennedy, Gara LaMarche, Jessica Mitford

1997
Recipient: NANCY HSU FLEMING, defeated a corporation's attempt to silence her written concerns about possible groundwater contamination caused by a local landfill.
Judges: E.L. Doctorow, Cornelius Eady, Judith Krug, Grace Paley, Kathleen Sullivan

1998
Recipient: TERRILYN SIMPSON, Maine writer and journalist harassed for her attempts to cover local industrial health hazards.
Judges: Joan Bertin, Leon Friedman, Bette Bao Lord, Kurt Vonnegut, Sean Wilentz

1999
Recipient: RELEAH LENT, Florida high school teacher and student newspaper advisor who has struggled to defend literature in the classroom and press freedom for students.
Judges: Chris Finan, Margaret Marshall, Terrence McNally, Victor Navasky, David Remnick

2000
Recipient: DR. WILLIAM HOLDA, President, Kilgore College, who defended the production of Tony Kushner's play Angels in America in Kilgore, Texas.
Judges: Luc Sante, Mary Gordon, Wendy Kaminer, Michelle Goffey, Marjorie Heins

2001
Co-recipients: DELORIS WILSON, high school librarian in West Monroe, Louisiana who fought to preserve access to library materials banned for sexual content, and ALBERTO SARRAÍN, Cuban-émigré theater producer who challenged Miami-Dade County's ban on public funding to arts organizations performing work by artists currently living in Cuba.
Judges: Joan Bertin, Martin Garbus, Gara LaMarche, Scott Spencer, Vera Williams

2002
Recipient: VANESSA LEGGETT, freelance writer who was jailed in a federal detention center in Texas for 168 days for refusing to bow to a sweeping subpoena of confidential source materials.
Judges: K. Anthony Appiah, Leon Friedman, Marjorie Heins, Lance Liebman, Bill Maher

2003
Recipient: JERILYNN ADAMS WILLIAMS, a Texas librarian who successfully turned back an attempt to remove books from circulation at Montgomery County public libraries.
Judges: Philip Gourevitch, Francine Prose, Anthony Romero, Patricia Schroeder, Patricia Williams

2004
Recipient: BARBARA PARSONS LANE, one of eight incarcerated writers who were sued by the State of Connecticut after contributing to Couldn't Keep It To Myself: Testimonies from our Imprisoned Sisters, a moving anthology of stories and essays by women who participated in a creative writing workshop led by Wally Lamb at York Correctional Institute.
Judges: Stanley Crouch, Lucy Dalglish, Eve Ensler, David Horowitz, Grace Paley