Videos

Roxane Gay, author of Bad Feminist and other books, delivered the Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture at the PEN World Voices Festival. This program contains language that may be offen…

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie delivered the 2015 PEN World Voices Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture and then participated in a Q&A with Andrew Solomon, president of the PEN American Center.

In honor of a PEN conference organized by Norman Mailer 25 years ago, writers discussed how governments can work together across national boundaries, as writers do, to improve the world’s tr…

Nigerian author Wole Soyinka talked about censorship and “a writer’s purpose and responsibility in a climate of forced silence and intolerance.” The Sixth Annual Arthur Miller Freedom to Wr…

Ariel Dorfman talked about his life and work in art and politics. A Chilean-American poet, novelist, playwright, human rights activist, he was part of Salvador Allende’s government in Chile …

In 2007, Daniele Mastrogiacomo, a reporter for Italy’s La Repubblica, was kidnapped by the Taliban and witnessed his driver being decapitated. He talked about his experiences with Italian jo…

Author Christopher Hitchens delivered the 2010 PEN World Voices Festival’s Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture. The lecture was titled “Crucibles: Past and Present.” A conversation betw…

The panel talked about the current economic crisis and what to do about it. Topics included the federal “stress tests” for banks that received federal funding, the causes and implications of…

Egyptian novelist, psychiatrist, and activist Nawal El Saadawi delivered the fourth annual PEN World Voices Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture. Topics included a subtle lack of freedom t…

Moderated by Ms. Linfield, a group of writers discussed topics such as the writer’s role as documentarian, scourge to conscience and action, and moral witness. They also explored whether tha…

David Grossman, an Israeli author and journalist, delivered the Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture. Topics included violence and war, moral judgment, the language of citizens of a sustai…

As part of the PEN/New York Festival of International Literature, moderated by Robert Silvers, authors discussed the impact of religion on politics in a variety of countries around the world…

Authors Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, Ha Jin, Shah Sa, Jonathan Franzen and others read from works that convey the political influence of the written word.