Nadia Hashimi is a pediatrician-turned-author who draws on her Afghan heritage to write novels that grapple with poverty, warfare, history, and women’s rights in Afghanistan. Her latest novel, Sparks Like Stars, tells the story of a woman who returns to Kabul years after her family fled the 1978 military coup.
Hashimi spoke to PEN America about the tragic events unfolding in Afghanistan, how readers and writers can support one another, and the prospects for women’s rights in the country moving forward. Read our conversation with Nadia here ››
Write to your member of Congress to ask that they urge the Biden Administration to protect writers and human rights defenders in Afghanistan now.
Excerpts from DREAMing Out Loud featured in Guernica
Last month, 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. Buy your copy here ››
Check out five works from the anthology, excerpted in Guernica this week.
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.
Join us for our final Women in Translation Month reading, happening next week on Thursday, August 26th. Organized under the support of the PEN America Translation Committee, this virtual reading series has brought 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.
Editors of literary magazines, journals, or cultural websites to submit debut short stories to the 2022 PEN/Dau Prizethrough November 15. The twelve winning writers each receive a $2,000 cash prize and will be published by Catapult in their annual anthology, Best Debut Short Stories: The PEN America Dau Prize.
The PEN Ten with Ricardo Wilson: “As the collection developed, I became more and more interested in exploring smaller moments where a hard-won psychic coherence begins to erode. In these moments, it is often the subtle antagonism between the slippery concepts of truth and history, both personal and collective, that ultimately animates the writing.”
The PEN Ten with Katie Kitamura: ““One thing I have learned from having friends who are also writers is that that you can always see the author in the book. . . . I see the imprint of the author in the book in other ways that are to me more interesting and intimate: in the movement of their mind, in the way of telling a story.”
The PEN Pod: Navigating the Debacle in Afghanistan with Ayad Akhtar and George Packer
On this episode of The PEN Pod, we’re joined by author, Pulitzer-winning playwright, and PEN America president Ayad Akhtar and journalist, novelist, and playwright George Packer. Ayad and George discussed this week's events in Afghanistan, what this moment might mean for the U.S.’s role on the world stage moving forward, and threats to freedom of expression today. Listen now.
