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Dear Friend,
When I wrote my last quarterly letter three months ago, none of us had any idea of what we were about to witness and experience together. Now, turmoil, crisis, and transformation have become our new normal. Having lived through the coronavirus pandemic in its American epicenter of New York City, there is a sense of both trauma and pride, in that we got through the worst and now see heartening trends. But there is no calm after the storm, as numbers tick upward around the country and the debacle of the United States’ handling of the virus seems only to deepen.
At the same time, our country has entered into a long overdue and profound reckoning on issues of racism, police brutality, and entrenched exclusion and inequality that we have not yet rooted out at their source. Change is afoot, driven by an inspiring cohort of Black civil rights leaders. The movement is mobilizing officials and citizens of every race, ethnicity, religion, and background who are belatedly realizing that the most basic premises of our country and our institutions are betrayed by the very structure of our politics, institutions, and habits.
This time is ripe for reimagining a different future, a task that is fitting for PEN America, an organization of writers that stands for the power of literature to offer inspiration, restore faith, and elevate our common humanity. We also witness at every turn how essential it is for PEN America to stand as a stalwart force countering the temptation to silence, ban, and punish speech, whether that of scientists with harsh truths to tell, journalists seeking to hold leaders accountable, or editors striving to deliver credible, bracing reporting and commentary that meets this moment.
At the same time, we have our own work to do as an association with a history that is white, predominantly male, and undeniably elite. Our staff, Board of Trustees, Literary Awards recipients, programming line-ups, and organizational priorities have changed greatly over the years. But our effort to become an inclusive and just organization that reflects the totality of the writing community and effectively elevates lesser heard voices is ongoing—we have more hurdles to surmount and habits to change. We are looking both inward and outward, at our past, present, and future, in a drive to ensure that we live up to this moment and push forward to become a more equitable institution and force in the world.
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Literary Programs and Work with Writers
We believe in celebrating and uplifting Black writers, as well as all those who’ve traditionally been cut out of the literary establishment. Earlier this month, as we opened submissions for our 2021 PEN America Literary Awards, we also announced an increase in the cash purse for the PEN Open Book Award, offered annually to a writer of color, to $10,000. Past winners include Claudia Rankine, Meena Alexander, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, among others.
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This Pride Month, we’re celebrating LGBTQIA+ voices across the spectrum, but have thrown a special focus on Black LGBTQIA+ writers, whom we elevate this June and will continue to celebrate year-round. If you haven’t already, check out this roundup of debuts from Black LGBTQIA+ authors, plus our social threads elevating the work of authors such as Tanya Barfield, Staceyann Chin, Camonghne Felix, Roya Marsh, and Porsha Olayiwola.
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Often the centerpiece of our efforts to uplift new voices  and internationalize the literary canon is the PEN World Voices Festival which, as you know, we could not hold in person this year. But under the leadership of Festival Director Chip Rolley, we reimagined a virtual festival that delivered on its promise of fostering dialogue across divides and elevating essential voices.
Our all-digital festival THESE TRUTHS delivered established and emerging writers to a worldwide audience. We featured musical playlists from writers like Mieko Kawakami and Hari Kunzru; a weekly podcast with conversations among Ishmael Beah, Ben Okri, Álvaro Enrigue, and Elif Shafak; video writing workshops with, among others, Emily X.R. Pan and Janet Fitch; a peek inside writers’ personal lives with authors like Fatima Shaik and Jennifer Egan, and so much more. Plus, as part of the e-festivities, our translation committee led an all virtual “Translating the Future” conference that hearkened back to the 1970 World Translation conference. And unlike the in-person festival, you can explore all this stunning content on-demand, any time.
As part of our reinvention, we’ve harnessed live broadcasting on Instagram to bring you events like this powerful conversation between our own Alejandro Heredia and poet Aja Monet to mark Juneteenth (a must-watch); and we converted our 2020 Emerging Voices Spring Reading into an all-virtual affair.
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 The pandemic’s impact in U.S. prisons has been particularly devastating. Temperature Check, a new rapid response series from PEN America’s Prison and Justice Writing Program, just released a special literary issue featuring book reviews from members of our Prison Writing Committee; an interview with Dr. Nicole Fleetwood, whose recent publication Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration is an astonishing look at creativity behind the walls; and a podcast interview with PEN America Prison Writing Contest winner George Wilkerson, who called in from death row to discuss Crimson Letters: Voices from Death Row, a new collection he co-edited with a roster of individuals brought together by journalist Tessie Castillo.
We’ve also continued our work rallying to support writers, whose financial stability has been rocked by the pandemic. Through our Writers’ Emergency Fund, we’ve disbursed nearly half a million dollars in micro-grant support to writers who can’t make ends meet, and we’ve paired that with city-level advocacy in Los Angeles (see this piece in the Los Angeles Times) in New York City (see this piece in the New York Daily News) to ensure writers and literary organizations are part of efforts to sustain urban cultural sectors amid COVID-19. Last Friday, we delivered a petition to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio on behalf of the literary community demanding more support for writers as the city budgets for the future.
In May, we marked Asian Pacific Heritage Month with a day of virtual workshops, seminars, and live events, as well as a statement of solidarity from writers, celebrities, and activists protesting anti-Asian hatred amid the pandemic. Signatories included Riz Ahmed, Ayad Akhtar, Alexander Chee, Min Jin Lee, Celeste Ng, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and C. Pam Zhang, among others. Read all about it in The Guardian.
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I am proud to say that we were ahead of the curve in paying attention to fraying protections for protest and free assembly rights, culminating in an original report Arresting Dissent: Legislative Restrictions on the Right to Protest. The report was released in early May, on the eve of the murder of George Floyd and the ensuing mass demonstrations across the country.
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In it, we document that since 2015, 116 state bills limiting First Amendment rights have been introduced, while 23 have passed. Our timely, original research positioned us at the forefront of efforts to call out encroachments on assembly rights in the context of protests against anti-Black violence.
The brutality of attacks on protesters and reporters covering those demonstrations has been nothing short of astonishing (as The New York Times wrote, I called it a “dystopian spectacle”). Alongside our network of chapters nationwide, we’ve called on mayors, police chiefs, and governors to protect First Amendment rights for protesters and journalists. We also launched a new events series on journalist safety to equip those covering the protests to stay safe physically, digitally, and psychologically. If you need some literary inspiration as you head to demonstrations or cheer them on from home, check out this list of author-recommended protest books.
As we did last year, we marked World Press Freedom Day by bringing this global day of awareness to our Members and chapter cities. We profiled journalist heroes who’ve risked their own lives and wellbeing to cover the pandemic and its consequences. We also helped push forward a resolution on Capitol Hill acknowledging the key role journalists play—while also protesting attacks on the press from the White House and from politicians allied with him.
Speaking of, in March we received news that a federal court will allow our lawsuit against President Trump to proceed. We originally filed in 2018 on behalf of our Members, arguing that the president has used the powers of his office to punish reporters whose coverage he dislikes. Recent fights we have waged on behalf of authors whose books President Trump has attempted to suppress are yet another reminder of how important it is to resist this White House’s wanton approach to the First Amendment.
We continue to play a key role driving forward the public and policy debate on the crisis facing local news outlets across the country. Since the launch of our report Losing the News: The Decimation of Local News and the Search for Solutions last fall, we've been working with leading members of Congress on a bipartisan basis to introduce legislation that would carry forward one of the report’s main recommendations—the creation of a congressional commission on the future of local news. And as the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the collapse of local news outlets around the country while at the same time underscoring the life-or-death importance of trustworthy, community-specific information and reporting, we have spoken out and marshaled a coalition of over 50 organizations to urge Congress to include support for local journalism in stimulus bills. Senator Richard Blumenthal has cited our work in his calls for direct federal aid to local news amid the pandemic.
The spread of coronavirus disinformation gave new urgency to a national media literacy program that has brought training and tools to more than 6,000 virtual participants over the last three months, and has equipped hundreds of librarians and educators to protect against propaganda and falsehoods relating to the pandemic, politics, and the news writ large.
With campuses emptying out, our pathbreaking work on free speech at universities has been reoriented for the virtual classroom through a series of campus speech seminars reaching thousands. Later this month, we will host our first-ever PEN America Campus Speech Summer Institute, a two-week intensive program for over 100 high school and college students from across the country.
And we haven’t even talked about what’s been happening globally.
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At the beginning of May, we released our inaugural PEN America Freedom to Write Index 2019, an annual global count of the writers and public intellectuals unjustly detained or imprisoned worldwide. In what will now be an annual census, we showed that at least 238 writers and public intellectuals were imprisoned or otherwise detained in 2019. The top three jailers: China, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. Read the Index report here, see our new searchable database of writers at risk, and click here to check out coverage of the report in The Washington Post.
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We also announced our 2020 PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Awardee, Chinese essayist and human rights defender Xu Zhiyong. Just last week, Xu was formally arrested by Chinese authorities, but he had already been under detention after writing an essay calling on President Xi Jinping to resign over his government’s fumbling of the COVID-19 crisis, among other missteps. As I told the Associated Press, we elected to honor him to highlight the life-or-death role writers have played amid the pandemic. “We really see the catastrophic consequences of muzzling those who try to tell the truth.”
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We continue to mount a pressure campaign against Saudi Arabia for the freedom of our 2019 PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write winners. This May marked two years since one of those women’s rights activists, Loujain Al-Hathloul, was detained. Before the lockdowns set in, we caught up with her sister Lina here in New York City to hear about why she believes the fight for his sister’s freedom is one we should all rally behind. Watch the full video here.
We mourned the death of Egyptian filmmaker Shady Habash, who died after 800 days in pre-trial detention in Cairo. We responded by rallying a global advocacy campaign for a full investigation into his death and for the release of all prisoners of conscience in Egypt (watch our Julie Trébault discuss the case on the BBC). We were heartened when later this spring Egyptian authorities released web designer Mustafa Gamal.
This summer will be anything but quiet for us. We have an incredible lineup of Authors’ Evening fundraisers. And we’ve announced the addition of three exceptional new Trustees: National Book Award winner Susan Choi, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage, and global business leader Richard Sarnoff. We’re so honored that they are willing to devote their time and energy to PEN America.
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I also hope you’ll consider joining me for a slate of virtual events pegged to the publication of my book Dare to Speak: Defending Free Speech for All, which comes out in late July. And each Friday, make sure to tune in to our daily podcast The PEN Pod to hear me discuss the major challenges free speech and free expression face amid all that’s going on here in the U.S. and globally. And if you haven’t already, please subscribe to the podcast. In just the last few weeks, we featured Elizabeth Levy, Lisa Ko, Jaquira Díaz, Ainissa Ramrez, Ruben Quesada, and Karla Cornejo Villavicencio.
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As always, we rely on you, our friends and Members, for your valuable support. Please consider making a donation to PEN America today to keep this impactful work going, or consider becoming a Member of PEN America. Join the 7,500 readers and writers nationwide who passionately join us in defending the freedom to write.
In solidarity,
 
Suzanne Nossel
Executive Director, PEN America
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