Supreme Court Establishes a New Frontier for Book Bans |
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‘Spineless Capitulation’ in $16M Paramount Payout |
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CBS News parent company Paramount Global paid President Trump $16 million to settle a lawsuit instead of standing behind its news division and fighting for a free and independent press. The settlement of the baseless litigation sent a clear message: When the president dislikes certain news coverage or outlets, he will both weaponize the law and threaten massive regulatory consequences to corporate owners as tools of suppression.
Read our statement >>
Read coverage in the Los Angeles Times >> |
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6 Ways Public Media Cuts Would Harm America |
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After the House voted to support President Trump’s request to rescind $1.1 billion in funding for the Corporation of Public Broadcasting (CPB), which provides financial support to both National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), the request heads to the Senate, which is expected to vote later this month. These cuts would disproportionately harm local and rural stations, hastening their decline, and threaten support for emergency weather alerts, among other devastating effects. Read more >>
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Submit Entries to the 2026 PEN America Literary Awards! |
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Since 1963, PEN America has honored outstanding voices in translation, fiction, poetry, science writing, essay, biography, and drama. Publishers and editors may submit titles that are publishing in 2025 for consideration until August 20.
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Poet Dena Igusti’s journey as a queer, Muslim, first-generation American of Indonesian descent, born and raised in Elmhurst, Queens, is a tale of self-discovery, identit(ies), and perseverance. For our latest Member Spotlight, Igusti spoke about their play What You Are to Me, and encouraged their peers –- especially BIPOC queer literary professionals –- to continue telling their own narratives.
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| Disability Pride Month
We are commemorating Disability Pride Month with a reading list of banned books featuring characters who are neurodivergent or who have a physical, learning, and/or developmental disability. We found that 10% of banned books in the 23-24 school year contain neurodivergent or disabled characters. Since characters with disabilities are already underrepresented, restricting these books has an outsized impact. |
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Celebrating Pride Month in Florida
PEN America Florida hosted three public literary events in celebration of Pride Month, featuring acclaimed authors Jonathan Capehart, Kristen Arnett, and Alejandro Heredia. MSNBC host Capehart discussed his memoir, Yet Here I Am, while Arnett and Heredia delved into their novels, Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One and Loca. “I was reading about Frederick Douglass,” Capehart told the audience, “and I realized I was reading it as a free, out, gay Black man, living in Washington, D.C., married to my husband. When I thought about the distance between that moment in history and the life I’m living now, I felt some comfort. We’ve been through worse as a country. We’ll get through this too.” Read more >>
On Chilled Academic Freedom in Indiana
The shuttering of about one in five degree programs across Indiana – including in education, English, journalism, foreign languages, gender studies, African American and diaspora studies, history, dance, music, theater, and philosophy – is another step toward eroding higher education. “When lawmakers tie a university's ability to offer programs to minimum enrollment numbers, they're not just making budget decisions. They're narrowing the scope of inquiry,” said Amy Reid, a senior manager of PEN America's Freedom to Learn program. “It may not look like censorship, but it chills academic freedom just the same.” Read in the Indianapolis Star >>
When the Mob Isn't 'Just Online'
Award-winning reporter Alia Dastagir critically analyzes online abuse faced by women in To Those Who Have Confused You To Be A Person (Crown, 2025). When an investigative story for USA Today made her the target of an online mob, Dastagir turned to the experiences of 13 other women, and she chronicles the impact that online violence has on them and how they chose to respond. Read the interview >>
Recommended Reading: The PEN Tens
In our latest PEN Ten interviews, Bram Stoker Award-winning author Cynthia Pelayno spoke to us about her newest thriller, Vanishing Daughters, which combines ghost stories with serial killers while addressing systemic violence towards women. Nishant Batsha told us about A Bomb Placed Close to the Heart, a fictionalized retelling of a love story between an Indian philosopher and an American student during WWI. Read the interviews >>
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“We’ve only just begun to let our stories out into books. Now is not the time to erase us again.” |
— Charlotte Sullivan Wild, author of Love, Violet, a book at the center of Mahmoud v. Taylor |
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