Home > Members Speak Out PEN MEMBERS SPEAK OUT Since the 2004 launch of the PEN Campaign for Core Freedoms, we've posted this collection of articles and comments published by PEN Members in an effort to create an online community where Members may share their ideas and their work, as well as offer their support to PEN's mission. If you are a PEN Member and have published an article on a relevant topic, please e-mail us and let us know. July 20, 2007 | Martín Espada & Bill Moyers in Conversation There are very tangible outcomes as a result of feeling inspired. And we have no way of knowing this as poets when we put our words into the air. And paradoxically, even the most political poem is an act of faith. Because you have no way of quantifying its impact on the world. >> More July 1, 2007 | Martha Southgate | Writers Like Me I am a 46-year-old writer of “literary” fiction. I’ve had three novels published — the first for young people, the last two for adults. All have won minor prizes, been respectfully reviewed and sold modestly. I’ve been awarded a few fairly competitive fellowships and grants. The business is full of fiction writers like me. With one difference: I’m black, born and raised in the United States. >> More June 3, 2007 | Roxana Robinson | The Novelist and the Curious Cabbie I was standing on the curb, uptown, my hand raised for a cab. It was evening, and the sky was clear and the air cool. I had plenty of time, and I was happy: I was on my way to an international literary festival. >> More May 2007 | Akbar Ganji | The View From Tehran Most Iranians, I believe, share a broad outlook on American foreign policy: they think that Iran is valued only for its vast energy resources and its role in regional politics and that Iranian culture and economic development and the peace, welfare, and basic rights of Iranian citizens are largely irrelevant to American policymakers. >> More April 1, 2007 | Sara Paretsky | Refusing to allow pressure to silence a critical voice I'm not a fan of propaganda novels, novels written to show four legs are better than two, or that women deserve to be raped and beaten, or that men are testosterone-crazed thugs. But I don't know how to divorce myself and my fictions from the urgent concerns of my life: Who is allowed to speak? Who listens? Who is silenced? >> More March 26, 2007 | George Packer | Betrayed America’s failure to understand, trust, and protect its closest friends in Iraq is a small drama that contains the larger history of defeat. >> More January 14, 2007 | Roxana Robinson | Drowning in Apathy Global warming is no longer an ominous possibility, but a reality: There is no longer substantive disagreement within the scientific community about its existence. The Bush administration's own 2004 report stated that greenhouse gases are the "result of human activities and are now higher than they have been for about 400,000 years." It's happening, now, and because of us. >> More November 27, 2006 | George Packer | Save Whomever We Can Recently, I asked my friend what he would do if U.S. forces began to withdraw from Baghdad. Osman, an utterly secular Sunni who despises the religious extremists of both sects, replied, "I would have to be protected by Al Qaeda." >> More October 9, 2006 | George Packer | Keep Out State and Homeland Security have interpreted the language of the Patriot Act so loosely that, according to official documents released under the Freedom of Information Act, anyone who is guilty of “irresponsible expressions of opinion” can be refused entry to the United States. >> More September 28, 2006 | Ron Chernow | National Press Club Remarks I think we should always be alarmed when there’s a growing imbalance betwen what the government knows about its citizens, and what those citizens, in turn, know about their government. >> Read more September 24, 2006 | Edwidge Danticat | Does It Work? For many who remember what it means to live under a dictatorial regime, a regime in which citizens must leave work or school to witness public executions, torture is not just an individual affliction but a communal one. >> More September 24, 2006 | Ariel Dorfman | Are We Really So Fearful? It still haunts me, the first time—it was in Chile, in October of 1973—that I met someone who had been tortured. >> More September 10, 2006 | Colum McCann | Burning From the Inside Out How quickly we have gone from stunned victim to the torturer with the hoods. The bully in the sandbox cried for a moment and then kicked the living daylights out of the rest of the class, simply because he could. >> More September 10, 2006 | Francine Prose | Places of the Heart It took two years for me to be able walk to the end of my block and not feel a visceral shock each time I looked down University Place and saw that the World Trade Center towers weren’t there. >> More August 18, 2006 | Marguerite Feitlowitz | The shadow world of a 'dirty war' The law provides us with a rational, commonly ratified code of morality. In subverting this shared deference to law, the Bush administration, with its zeal for secrecy, intimidation and shadowy alliances, endangers us all. >> More August 1, 2006 | Akbar Ganji | Money Can't Buy Us Democracy The battle between freedom and despotism in Iran remains unresolved for deeply internal reasons. It is, I am convinced, a problem with profound historical and cultural roots. >> More May 2006 | Jhumpa Lahiri interview | KGB Bar Lit I don't see myself playing a political role, but I do think that it's vital to contribute to a broader understanding of freedom of expression and of cultural tolerance and exchange, especially given the extent to which these values have been threatened in recent times. >> More March 30, 2006 | Lucy Kavaler | A Case Minder Enters a Bizarre World I enter a bizarre world where sentences are handed down for charges that are grossly exaggerated or blatantly false. Eshkevari’s case began quite innocently when he attended a Berlin Conference with the approval of the Iranian government. >> More February 24, 2006 | Fatima Shaik | Masking New Orleans On Mardi Gras Day, the nation will be looking to New Orleans to see if we are wearing masks. >> More January 1, 2006 | Roxana Robinson | Watching As the World Vanishes It was shameful, everyone agreed afterward, that no one did anything at the time. Because people knew it was happening. >> More December 22, 2005 | Fatima Shaik | Christmas in New Orleans Picture Santa’s sled with a rolling kitchenette attached and you have some idea about the size of a FEMA trailer. >> More October 12, 2005 | Salman Rushdie | Test for East and West The work room of the writer Orhan Pamuk looks out over the Bosphorus, that fabled strip of water which, depending on how you see these things, separates or unites—or, perhaps, separates and unites—the worlds of Europe and Asia. >> More September 19, 2005 | Bell Gale Chevigny | A Shock to the System When their government turned its back on them, survivors of the 1985 Mexico City earthquake were galvanized into political action. Katrina survivors may take a similar lesson from today's disaster. >> More September 11, 2005 | Alice Sebold | Living With the Dead These tragedies, it's worth remembering, grant us an opportunity to understand what is perhaps our finest raw material: our humanity. >> More September 4, 2005 | Anne Rice | Do You Know What It Means to Lose New Orleans? I know that New Orleans will win its fight in the end. I was born in the city and lived there for many years. It shaped who and what I am. >> More September 4, 2005 | Richard Ford | Elegy for My City I write in the place of others, today, for the ones who can't be found. And there is a blunt ending now, one we always feared, never wished for, do not deserve. >> More August 2, 2005 | Gerald Posner | The Kingdom and the Power In May, Ali al-Domeini, a leading poet, and two scholars were given long prison sentences for having circulated a letter they had written to Crown Prince Abdullah calling for political, economic and social reforms. >> More April 24, 2005 | Salman Rushdie | Books vs. Goons A butterfly flaps its wings in India, and we feel the breeze on our cheeks here in New York. A throat is cleared somewhere in Africa and in California there's an answering cough. >> More April 17, 2005 | Salman Rushdie | The Pen and the Sword In January 1986 I came to New York for a gathering of writers that has become a literary legend. >> More April 16, 2005 | Eliot Weinberger | What I Heard About Iraq I heard that Saddam Hussein, in solitary confinement, was spending his time writing poetry, reading the Koran, eating cookies and muffins, and taking care of some bushes and shrubs. >> More February 7, 2005 | Salman Rushdie | Democracy Is No Polite Tea Party I recently returned from a trip to Britain, where I discovered, to my consternation, that the government is proposing a law to ban what it is calling "incitement to religious hatred." >> More February 5, 2005 | Bobbie Ann Mason | Home Economics It takes just a dozen guys with giant D-9 bulldozers about a year to wreck a mountain. They dynamite it, then shove the shattered vegetation and topsoil (called spoil or overburden) down into the valleys, followed by chunks of bedrock. >> More January 6, 2005 | Marguerite Feitlowitz | The Torturer General It seems surreal: The president's nominee for the highest legal position in the land is a proponent of torture. >> More January 6, 2005 | Mark Danner | We Are All Torturers Now At least since Watergate, Americans have come to take for granted a certain story line of scandal, in which revelation is followed by investigation, adjudication and expiation. >> More November 24, 2004 | Edwidge Danticat | A Very Haitian Story When the international and combined Haitian forces left Bel-Air, gang members came to my uncle's home, told him that 15 of their friends had been killed and said he had to pay for the burials or die. >> More September 29, 2004 | Salman Rushdie | Campaign for Reader Privacy press conference Why does the government need the power to search records of people who are not suspected of being terrorists or agents of a foreign government? >> More September 19, 2004 | Edward Hirsch | Poet's Choice PEN believes that it is urgently necessary to review the USA Patriot Act and the full range of antiterrorism laws and orders enacted since Sept. 11, 2001. >> More September 13, 2004 | Francine Prose | Reading Is a Prime Defense Against Assault on Our Rights The word "patriotism" is increasingly being used as a bludgeon with which to attack critics of the shameful war in Iraq, as a gag to silence dissenters accused of being unpatriotic. >> More August 29, 2004 | Ariel Dorfman | Liberty’s Language As the ultimate guardians of language and its complexity, writers have always felt the need to deal with the great crises of their time. >> More August 10, 2004 | Paul Auster | We're in the Process of Losing Our Country The PEN Club has rules that prohibit support for a political candidate, however, it's an organization that has always fought for freedom of expression in different countries, and, as Salman Rushdie reminded us during that meeting, it's important not to ignore a problem when it knocks on our own door. >> More August 10, 2004 | Salman Rushdie | Terrorism, Intellectual Freedom, and the Patriot Act Will we become our enemy or not? Will we become repressive as our enemy is repressive? Will we become intolerant as our enemy is intolerant? Or will we not? >> More May 11, 2004 | Luc Sante | Torturers and Terrorists So now we think we know who took some of the photographs at Abu Ghraib. The works attributed to Specialist Jeremy Sivits are fated to remain among the indelible images of our time. >> More March 8, 2004 | Tony Kushner | Homophobia's Reach American democracy provides inspiration by example (rather than by military occupation) to people all over the world who are seeking justice and freedom. >> More Home | Site Map | Copyright / Privacy Policy | Contact Us © 2004-2012 PEN American Center. All rights reserved.