This year, PEN America’s preliminary documentation of book bans is showing a dramatic increase in books removed from school classrooms and libraries– more than 10,000 instances of bans during the full 2023-2024 school year. For Banned Books Week Sept. 22-29, we invite you to join the writers, readers and activists standing against censorship and support the freedom to read for all.
In a new white paper, we outlined the serious threats to free expression in public schools and colleges proposed in Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s policy blueprint for the next conservative White House. Its prescriptions threaten to accelerate the draconian book bans and erasure of classroom topics that have already impacted hundreds of public school districts in the United States.
The warning signs are clear. Free speech, a cornerstone of American democracy, is at risk: books banned, journalists attacked, and facts distorted. This election season, join writers, journalists, artists, and educators across America and pledge to stand up to book bans and educational censorship, fight disinformation, and defend journalists. Send a letter to your elected officials today: Don’t Censor America.
This week’s Member Spotlight features Pay Dirt by PEN America Member Sara Paretsky. Legendary detective V .I. Warshawski is famous for her cool under fire, her intelligence, her humor, her unflinching courage, and her love of good coffee. But even the strongest people sometimes need a break to recharge, so her friends send her to Kansas for a weekend of college basketball where Angela, one of her protégées, is playing. And that's where trouble finds her. V.I.’s survival depends on keeping one step ahead of players in a game she never intended to play, before the clock runs down.
During Banned Books Week, City Lights and PEN America bring human rights advocates and legal experts to discuss the alarming rise in book bans across the country. They share insights, observations, and methods to counter the suppression of books that address issues pertaining to race, gender, and sexuality. Ever timely, their conversation is a powerful call to action to stand up for the freedom to read.
As the 2024 presidential election approaches, political disinformation is surging — both from within the U.S. and by foreign actors. But what are the biggest dangers? AI and deep fakes? Social media amplification of lies and incitement to violence? Americans’ distrust of the media and other institutions? Just four weeks from the election, PEN America is gathering top journalists and researchers who battle disinformation to let you know what they’re seeing, what concerns them most, and how voters can identify and counter disinformation during the final countdown.
The Power of Women’s Defiance in Iran: ‘We Will Win’
Nine months after Narges Mohammadi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in absentia, Iranian authorities remain relentless in retaliating against Mohammadi for her activism. And yet Mohammadi remained steadfast in words smuggled from her cell in Evin Prison for the Nobel Peace Conference 2024: Woman Life Freedom, held in Oslo, Norway, and celebrating the official launch of the Free Narges Coalition.
Application Deadline: PEN America U.S. Writers Aid Initiative
PEN America is an organization of writers and their allies, and that solidarity is never more important than when members of our literary community face crises. The U.S. Writers Aid Initiative is intended to assist fiction and nonfiction authors, poets, playwrights, translators, and journalists in addressing short-term financial emergencies.
The 2024 application cycle is closing soon. If you need assistance, be sure to apply by October 1 >>
PEN READS
2024 Emerging Voices Fellows | The PEN Ten Interview
For the latest PEN Ten, PEN America’s 2024 Emerging Voices Fellows, hailing from seven states across the country, provide insight into their creative processes, how they’ve developed as artists and writers, and what inspires their literary practice.
When school was out of session this summer, dozens of high school students flocked to classrooms in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles for PEN America Free Expression Advocacy Institutes that taught them to think critically about issues ranging from the ethics of storytelling to disinformation defense.
Application Deadline: Emerging Voices WorkshopLos Angeles
The Emerging Voices Workshop in Los Angeles serves early-career writers from communities underrepresented in the publishing world. This in-person craft intensive shares the goal of demystifying publishing, cultivating literary community, and diversifying the publishing and entertainment industries. The week-long workshop, offered twice annually, provides 15 writers the opportunity to develop a manuscript-in-progress with peers and expert instructors.
Research Director James Tager wrote on laws criminalizing librarians, something that was an outrageous idea just a couple of years ago and now becoming the norm. (Miami Herald)
PEN America’s research was cited in the Publishers Weekly Freedom to Read issue. (Publishers Weekly)
Florida Director Katie Blankenship called the settlement that will return books to shelves in Nassau County, FL “an historic moment in the fight to protect free speech and expression.” (Daily Kos)
Freedom to Learn Program Director Jeremy C. Young spoke about universities restricting DEI under political pressure. (Inside Higher Ed)
Writers at Risk Director Karin Deutsch Karlekar and PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Center Managing Director Liesl Gerntholtz joined The Nobel Peace Conference 2024. (Thred)
PEN America partnered with Little Free Libraries to create an interactive map of book ban hot spots and sidewalk libraries accepting donations. (Publishers Weekly)
NPR cites PEN America’s research in its breakdown of where candidates stand on matters related to education. (NPR)
Booker Prize Shortlist Features Five Women and Authors From Five Countries (Booker Prize)
National Novel Writing Month Faces Backlash Over Allowing AI (The Washington Post)
“This Banned Book Week demands that we join together to turn the page on book bans by saying ‘No more.’ The rising generation of students are being robbed of books that can nurture and guide them in their formative years simply because a misguided movement has caught the ear of politicians eager to gin up culture wars. Enough is enough.”
— Kasey Meehan, Freedom to Read program director
TRENDING @ PENAMERICA
Project 2025 and Education
We broke down the biggest threats to education in the Heritage Foundation policy proposal.
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