Blog

As unrest continues in Turkey, we revisit Elif Shafak’s thoughts on her experience of transitioning to English from her native tongue and rediscovering the richness of an extinct Turkish language.

The PEN Ten is PEN America's new biweekly interview series curated by Lauren Cerand. This week is Rachel Rosenfelt, co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of The New Inquiry.

his hair was like furry lining brushed and see-through and he was pale, his pinkness had a descent in it, like he had warmed down

Airports always pour a nice shot. Something about being that close to distance makes bartenders understand suffering. That Thursday he was headed fourteen cities away from anyone he knew and the brown was fortification. He would say things like that to himself, “was fortification.”

From a 2006 PEN Event, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist James Risen speaks with former Paris Review editor Philip Gourevitch about the importance of a free press, the demagoguery of 9/11, the greatest strategic failure in American history, and breaking the NSA spy story

Noo Saro-Wiwa on a harrowing and humorous visit to a dog show in Ibadan in her moving memoir, Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria.

Dot Devota reads three poems from MW: A Field Guide to the Midwest, a selection of which first appeared in the PEN Poetry Series.

As part of Barnes & Noble's ongoing series, "Writers on Writers," PEN Board Member and Publisher of OR Books John Oakes will moderate a conversation on the importance of advocacy through fiction. Joining him will be past winners of the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Social Engaged Fiction: Susan Nussbaum, Naomi Benaron, and Hillary Jordan.

Long before I became a writer, I knew one day I would tell the story of my family during the Khmer Rouge regime. Even in the midst of that ordeal, as I lost one family member after another, I felt I would have to explain why I, hindered by polio, was still alive when those stronger and healthier, more fit to survive the brutality, had perished.

Today PEN America extends a hearty and booming congratulations to longtime member and festival participant A.M. Homes, whose most recent novel, May We be Forgiven, was just awarded the prestigious Women's Prize for Fiction, formerly known to many a book lover as the Orange Prize.