Mark Your Calendars: The PEN America World Voices Festival
We announced a mind-boggling lineup for our 2023 World Voices Festival, led by festival chair Ayad Akhtar and guest chairs Marlon James and Ottessa Moshfegh. Ta-Nehisi Coates will deliver the Arthur Miller lecture which will be livestreamed. Speakers include John Irving, Roxane Gay, Reza Aslan, Min Jin Lee, Sarah Polley, Amor Towles, Padma Lakshmi, Masha Gessen, Jelani Cobb, Ben Okri, Han Kang, Imani Perry and so many more. The festival takes place on May 10-13 both in Manhattan's Greenwich Village and Los Angeles with selected events available online.
Our CEO Suzanne Nossel and Washington director Nadine Farid Johnson each testified before Congress about free expression in schools as the sole witnesses called by Democrats. Nadine testified on the issue of “parents’ rights” and Suzanne spoke on campus speech, saying “This escalating battle for control over free expression in education should worry us all.” Suzanne’s testimony on campus speech >> Nadine’s testimony on censorship >>
10 Surprising Things Banned in U.S. Schools
It’s not just books being banned in schools across the country. The song Rainbowland by Dolly Parton and Miley Cyrus, the Muppets classic, The Rainbow Connection, The Addams Family musical, a movie about Ruby Bridges, and Michelangelo’s David are among the surprising things that have been controversial, or banned, in 2023.
PEN America recently released a letter signed by more than a dozen other civil liberties, digital rights, and anti-censorship organizations opposing federal legislation and proposals that seek to impose a wholesale ban on social media platform TikTok in the United States. Read the joint letter >>
Ann Patchett reminded us of the importance of bookstores in our communities when she reached out after the school shooting in Nashville to welcome everyone to visit hers. “If you don’t know what to do today and you don’t know where to go, come here and be with us and hold a dog and just know that we care.”
PEN Ten interviews this month featured poets Sunu Chandy and Rushi Vyas as well as novelist Gina Chung, who isn’t just the author of the hotly anticipated debut Sea Change, she’s part of the PEN America family and the person who used to send these newsletters.
HOW TO BE AN ALLY WHEN YOU WITNESS ONLINE ABUSE
Thursday, April 6, 2023 | 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm ET
Tuesday, May 16, 2023 | 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm ET
Virtual Events
In this free, one-hour, interactive training, we’ll give you the tools you need to intervene safely and effectively in online abuse using Right To Be’s 5Ds of bystander intervention.
Does posthumous editing go too far? Suzanne Nossel was quoted in a New York Times article about revisions to works by Agatha Christie, Roald Dahl, Ian Fleming and more. (New York Times)
PEN America trustee Masha Gessen spoke to David Remnick about what we talk about when we talk about transgender rights. (New Yorker)
WHAT WE'RE READING
“Closed by Order of the Governor”: Teachers in the Crossfire of Florida’s War on Public Education (Mother Jones)
Millennials Aren’t Killing ‘Objective’ News — The Market Is (New York Magazine)
A group of Duval County students spoke with their local news station to complain about book bans in their Jacksonville school. These astute fourth graders questioned why grown ups would take books out of classrooms and stymie their efforts to become better readers. One bemoaned that, "...all the award winning books were removed."
