PEN American Center

PEN American Center (PEN), founded in 1922 and based in New York City, works to advance literature, to defend free expression, and to foster international literary fellowship. The Center has a membership of 3,300 writers, editors, and translators. PEN American Center is the largest of the 144 centers that belong to International PEN, the worldwide association of writers that defends those who are harassed, imprisoned and killed for their views. PEN American Center is one of two PEN centers located in the USA, the other is PEN Center USA in Los Angeles, it covers the USA west of the Mississippi.

Full membership in PEN generally requires the publication of one or more books of a literary character, or one or more play produced in a professional venue. Editors with a career of five years or more are also eligible, as are many publishers, agents, and publicists and other members of the literary publishing community. Recently, PEN created an associate tier of membership, which is open to the general public.

Over the years, PEN American Center's membership has included many of the leading lights in the American literary establishment, including Edward Albee, Paul Auster, James Baldwin, Giannina Braschi, Willa Cather, Don De Lillo, Robert Frost, Tony Kushner, Langston Hughes, Thomas Mann, Arthur Miller, Marianne Moore, Susan Sontag, Salman Rushdie and John Steinbeck.

In addition to defending persecuted writers, PEN American Center sponsors public literary programs and forums on current issues, sends prominent authors to inner-city schools to encourage reading and writing, administers literary prizes, promotes international literature that might otherwise go unread in the United States, and offers grants and loans to writers facing financial or Medical Emergencies.

PEN is also a member of the International Freedom of Expression Exchange, a global network of nongovernmental organizations that monitors free expression violations worldwide and defends journalists, writers, human rights activists and Internet users who are persecuted for exercising their right to freedom of expression.