Jul 5, 2017
A PEN Ten interview with Deborah Smith, the translator of The Accusation, a short story collection by an anonymous North Korean writer.
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A PEN Ten interview with Deborah Smith, the translator of The Accusation, a short story collection by an anonymous North Korean writer.
"When I was six I wrote down, 'When I grow up I will write books.' So, I always knew. I experience this drive as a calling, something neurological."—Sarah Schulman, writer and AIDS historian
Sarah Schulman will participate in PEN America Presents: The Reading for AIDS Remembrance this Thursday in NYC. Here's our 2016 interview with her.
On writing, ruins, and defining censorship—a PEN Ten interview with Kristen Radtke, author of the graphic memoir Imagine Wanting Only This. @pantheonbooks
"Be honest and brave and try to make the world a bit more beautiful, which is in no way the same as making it more pretty (though that is also nice)." Molly Crabapple on being both an artist and a writer in this 2014 #PENten interview. Catch Molly Crabapple on May 5 at her PEN World Voices Festival event Art and the End of Times with Molly Crabapple.
“Every time I write about same-sex love I experience the same thrill (the thrill of speaking it, as it were, out loud) and the same terror that I am opening myself up to hatred from homophobic family and friends.” In this week’s PEN Ten interview, writer Shani Mootoo discusses the power of Toni Morrison's prose, the commodification of writing, and the legislation of identity. Mootoo will be a panelist at the event Forbidden: Too Much in Love at the at the 2017 PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature in May.
“I think the work of art is to resist the flattening effect of party and ideology, to insist on the complexity and infinite value of individual lives and the communities they form.”
In this week’s PEN Ten interview, novelist Garth Greenwell discusses censorship, democracy, and the relationship between art and politics.
Greenwell will participate in the event Portraying Gay Male Life Today at the 2017 PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature in May.
“One writes to discover a truth that is truer than what existed before.”—Jonathan Baumbach
Lauren Cerand interviews Jonathan Baumbach for this week’s PEN Ten series.
“Do writers have a collective purpose? I'm not sure, but what we do is write the world as we see it. We witness and record and remember and when we're at our best, we instigate change, even if in small ways.”
Read The PEN Ten interview with Roxane Gay before catching her Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture on May 1, 6pm at Cooper Union in New York City. Part of the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature, she’ll be in conversation with poet Saeed Jones after the lecture. Get your tickets.