Dear Friend,
For months, students at Central York High School in Pennsylvania have protested against the district’s decision to “freeze” a number of books and educational materials, including titles about Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr., the autobiography of Malala Yousafzai, and even a CNN Sesame Street special on race in America. We put PEN America’s voice behind that student-led movement, and just days ago, the district reversed its ban. The students of York, Pennsylvania now have access to a range of titles and ideas that a small, strident group of people had tried to censor.
But while we won in Pennsylvania, threats to the freedom to learn are only growing nationwide. Since this spring, we’ve been leading efforts in Leander, Texas to fight back against a similar book banning effort. Book bans are, of course, nothing new, but the ones we’re encountering today are borne of a pitched new phase in our culture wars, whereby heightened emphasis on matters of diversity, inclusion, and equity is meeting a determined backlash by some who believe the messages and tactics are dogmatic and even dangerous. There must be plenty of room to debate how our schools and universities tackle crucial and sensitive questions of race, gender, and history—without resorting to censorship.
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Students outside of Central York High School on September 10 to protest the ban. Credit: Jack Lanyard, York Daily Record
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This week is Banned Books Week, and we’ve been crisscrossing the country (masked and vaxxed, of course), bringing authors and readers together to talk about these issues bluntly and from across the political spectrum. We’ve spoken out about efforts to ban Ashley Hope Pérez’ book Out of Darkness, while also chastising Amazon for de-listing a controversial title on transgender identity. As I wrote in the Wall Street Journal, “While people are naturally more vociferous in opposing the censorship of opinions they agree with, a principled approach demands defending even speech you abhor.”
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At our Banned Books Week event in Austin, TX. Credit: Keep It Digital
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Here at PEN America, that’s how we define our work: as coming from a place of principle. That’s what gives us credibility in these debates. Over the past three months, we wrote to the New York City Department of Education condemning the removal of a mural in a Brooklyn School; we called out the Biden Justice Department for not taking sufficient action against state-level laws that criminalize protests; in the wake of revelations about tracking journalists’ phones, we chastised governments around the world for enabling a chilling culture of surveillance that threatens journalists and writers worldwide. In all these instances, it’s our principles that power our advocacy.
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Our track record in freeing honorees like Baktash, Kevyan, and Reza is striking. Of the 48 jailed writers who have received the award since 1987, 44 have been released due in part to the global attention and pressure the award generates.
Iran is just one of a number of governments worldwide that have turned their sights on writers, artists, and free expression advocates. This summer the Belarusian government forced our sister organization PEN Belarus to close amid that country’s ongoing attack on dissent. We made as much noise as possible, with 2,000 of our allies writing notes of support for the writers of Belarus. In addition, we rallied peer organizations to condemn President Lukashenka’s efforts to shutter civil society. And we co-hosted a session at the UN Human Rights Council, “Media Under Attack in Belarus,” featuring government officials from a long list of countries.
While we’ve been in awe of the bravery of our colleagues in Belarus, we’ve been equally floored by the courage of writers and creative voices in Afghanistan. While we can’t say much publicly at this moment, we brought together our Members and supporters to write 6,000 letters to members of Congress demanding that the Biden administration expand and expedite visa processes for writers, journalists, and other free expression advocates in the country. We interviewed experts and authors about how we can all do more to support exiled writers—and I wrote in Foreign Policy how the Biden administration needs to support writers and democratic defenders in exile like those pouring out of Afghanistan to truly promote democracy worldwide.
While we are an organization charged principally with defending writers, our Artists at Risk Connection—or ARC—draws on our expertise and networks to extend similar protections and assistance to artists facing censorship and violence. Cuba, in particular, has long attempted to promote a very specific vision of its artistic heritage while silencing, imprisoning, and abusing those who refuse to tow the party line.
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In addition, last month we teamed up with Skylight Books Los Angeles to present Percival Everett in conversation with David L. Ulin in celebration of Everett’s latest novel, The Trees. We partnered with Brooklyn Book Festival to present Maggie Nelson in conversation with Cathy Park Hong in celebration of Nelson’s latest book, On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint. Our online interview series The PEN Ten and The PEN Pod continued to feature acclaimed authors, including Morgan Parker, George Packer, Nawaaz Ahmed, Katie Kitamura, Maurice Carlos Ruffin, and many more.
In September, we kicked off another cycle of our storied Literary Awards program, announcing the recipients of our 2022 Literary Grants. We also published the third edition of DREAMing Out Loud: Voices of Migrant Writers, an anthology tackling themes of isolation, community and the day-to-day lives of the diverse and essential immigrant population from across New York City. The book collects writings from PEN America’s DREAMing Out Loud program, a tuition-free writing workshop for emerging undocumented immigrant writers available at various CUNY in-person and hybrid campuses throughout the five boroughs. Guernica magazine devoted a special issue to this year’s essays (check out "Dear Achiro" by Achiro P. Olwoch, "Star" by Yesica Balderrama, "The Show of Growth" by Nakeisha Cantzlaar, "Rookie and the Djinn" by t. jahan, and "It’s About Altares" by M. Vázquez Vasquez).
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Earlier this month, our Prison & Justice Writing program concluded Temperature Check—a rapid response series conceived during the early stages of the pandemic to draw attention to COVID’s impact in U.S. prisons—with a final issue reflecting on the state of vaccines in prisons, the latest developments in advocacy efforts, and where past Temperature Check interviewees and contributors are now. And in June, we announced our 2021-2022 PEN America Writing for Justice Fellows, whose works will include memoirs, essay collections, multimedia projects, and longform journalism pieces and bear witness to the societal consequences of mass incarceration. Our 2021-2022 cohort recently met in person for the first time in our New York City offices. Learn more about our fellows and their work here in their PEN Ten interview with us.
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As I wrote, we’ll be gathering on October 5 under robust health and safety protocols at the American Museum of Natural History to host our first in-person PEN America Literary Gala in more than two years. We’re keeping attendance smaller this year, but we hope you’ll join us for the livestream, which will be available here and on our YouTube channel, where we’ll be honoring the extraordinary bravery and careers of our three PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Honorees; our PEN/Audible Literary Service Award recipient Henry Louis Gates Jr.; and our Corporate Honoree Bob Iger. Special guests will include Wole Soyinka, Jodie Foster, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and so many more. It’s a can’t-miss event.
As always, everything we do is made possible by your generous support. If you haven’t already made a year-end gift to PEN America, please consider supporting all the work that we do. We’re grateful for your support as we head into this busy fall season.
All the very best,
Suzanne Nossel
PEN America CEO
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