As we approach the mid-point of 2026, we invite professional members of PEN America to join us in New York City for an evening of literary celebration, complete with light bites, drinks, writing prompts, readings, and mingling! We will be welcoming literary hosts who will read from their works and sign copies of their books.
This summer salon will launch our new partnership with The Writers Room, the nation’s oldest and largest urban writers’ colony. It is New York City’s only not-for-profit workspace dedicated entirely to the creation of literature in all of its forms. The Writers Room is providing the benefit of application waivers exclusively to PEN America’s professional membership, so you can use the evening to also get a tour of the space!
Attendance is free to all professional members of PEN America, but RSVP is required. Plus ones are welcome.
Members can visit the benefits page to RSVP. Not a member? Join today!
Literary Hosts
American Book Award winner Fatima Shaik is a longtime member of PEN America and the Writers Room. She authors novels and narrative nonfiction, most recently Economy Hall: The Hidden History of a Free Black Brotherhood, called “lyrical, mysterious, and always captivating” by the New York Times. Her fiction, What Went Missing and What Got Found, about a New Orleans community before and after Hurricane Katrina continues to lead Goodreads’ list of “Great African-American Short Story Collections.” Shaik’s work appeared in Oprah Daily, Literary Hub, In These Times, Callaloo, The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Essence Magazine and more. In 2021, she received her home state’s highest honor for prose, the Louisiana Writer Award, for contributions to “literary and intellectual life exemplified by a contemporary writer’s body of work.” www.fatimashaik.com
Hafeez Lakhani was born in Hyderabad, India, and raised in suburban South Florida. His fiction and essays have appeared in Crazyhorse, Exposition Review, Salt Hill Journal, Tikkun, The Cortland Review, and The Southern Review, among other publications. He has received fellowships from PEN America and the Center for Fiction, has been recognized twice with a Notable Essay in Best American Essays, and has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize.
Sarah Wang is the author of the novel New Skin (Little, Brown, 2026) and teaches creative writing at Barnard College. Her writing appears in The New Yorker; The Atlantic; London Review of Books; The Nation; The New Republic; Harper’s Bazaar; and others. She has been awarded fellowships from MacDowell, NYSCA/NYFA, PEN America Writing for Justice, Center for Fiction, the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, and Kundiman. She is a Kenyon Review Workshop Scholar, a Sewanee Writers’ Conference Scholar, a Tin House Scholar, a finalist for a Nelson Algren prize for fiction, and the winner of a Barbara Deming Award.