DREAMing Out Loud is PEN America’s tuition-free creative writing workshop series for young immigrant writers, primarily those who are undocumented, DACA recipients, and/or DREAMers who came to the United States when they were children. This week, PEN America released a third volume of its ground-breaking anthology, DREAMing Out Loud: Voices of Migrant Writers, the first and only annual compilation of literary writing amplifying the experiences of undocumented writers in the U.S.
These 48 plays, personal essays, short stories, and poems announce loudly and proudly that our writers will not be silenced or ignored; they will speak up, act out, and fight back to demand the rights and recognition they and their families deserve. Buy your copy here ››
August is here, and it’s time to celebrate Women in Translation (#WiT) Month! This year, our virtual reading series will gather voices from across time zones for an international celebration. Organized under the support of the PEN America Translation Committee, these events will bring together a total of 15 translators, joined by their authors, working in 12 languages from across the world, including Cameroon French, Canadian French, Chinese, Czech, German, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish. Each reading will be followed by a brief Q&A discussion, time-permitting. Learn more about each session and register here ››
And check out the CLMP (Community of Literary Magazines and Presses)'s reading list for Women in Translation Month, for which CLMP asked several independent literary presses and magazines to share some of the literature they have published that is both written and translated by women. Check out the reading list here ››
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. PEN America’s U.S. Writers Aid Initiative, part of the PEN America Writers Emergency Fund, offers grants for writers in the United States facing acute financial need following an emergency situation.
The PEN Ten with Nawaaz Ahmed: “Strangely, I’m more optimistic today about the possibility of change than I was when I began the novel, despite the even more precarious position the world seems to be in now. . . . Perhaps I’m heartened by all the voices that one can hear now, both voices of change and the opposition, for I can’t but believe that as long as all voices are heard and echoed strongly and publicly, there is hope.”
The PEN Ten with Matthew Specktor: “Everything is lost, eventually. Everything. Writing remains the only way I know to preserve the world as it vanishes all around us, and maybe even the best way to go about experiencing its presence to begin with.”
