PEN America (before 2016, PEN American Center) is a national non-profit membership organization consisting of writers, literary professionals, supporters, and readers which promotes freedom of expression through events, literary programs, awards, and grants. The PEN American Center was established in 1922 in New York City as a branch of the P.E.N. Club, a group founded by writer Catherine Amy Dawson Scott in London, United Kingdom, in the previous year. P.E.N. was originally an acronym for Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists, and Novelists, and its founding members included Joseph Conrad, Elizabeth Craig, George Bernard Shaw, and H.G. Wells, with John Galsworthy as its founding president. Founding members of PEN American Center included Booth Tarkington (its first president), Willa Cather, Eugene O’Neill, and Robert Frost.

By 1948, the P.E.N. Club had become PEN International, and had established its first charter, which declared its support for “the ideal of one humanity living in peace in one world,” and its opposition to censorship. In 1963, PEN American Center established its first literary awards, and in 1966, the Grants and Awards Committee was formed for the creation of fellowships and prizes for selected writers. By the 1970s, PEN American Center had also begun holding workshops, and had developed its Prison Writers Program to support the literary work of incarcerated persons in the United States, and to award selected authors.

In 1986, the PEN American Center co-sponsored a symposium at the New School for Social Research with Helsinki Watch and University of California Press entitled, “Adam Michnik and Human Rights,” in honor of Polish author and journalist Adam Michnik’s publication of Letters from Prison and Other Essays. The Michnik symposium was the first known PEN-sponsored event at The New School, and this was followed in 1989 by a PEN American Center symposium on censorship entitled, “Red, White, and Censored,” featuring writers Judy Blume and Allen Ginsberg.

Once The New School had established a graduate program in creative writing in 1996, additional PEN American Center events were co-sponsored by the MFA in Creative Writing Program. In April 2005, with author Salman Rushdie as president, PEN American Center held its inaugural World Voices Festival of International Literature, and several events in the week-long festival were held at The New School, again sponsored by the MFA Creative Writing Program. Additionally, in 1999, PEN American Center and the MFA in Creative Writing Program established a collaborative series of events entitled PEN Forums, which included themes such as: twentieth century legacies (contemporary writers commenting on writers of the past), publishing, and the PEN Book Group (a panel of writers discusses a chosen literary work).

As of 2025, the president of PEN America is author Jennifer Finney Boylan. World Voices Festival events have continued to be held at The New School as recently as April 2025, under the co-sponsorship of the MFA in Creative Writing Program.

References

“Board of Trustees.” PEN.org. Accessed August 26, 2025. https://pen.org/board-of-trustees/.

Course Catalogs, 1919-2017, New School Course Catalog Collection, NS.05.01.01, The New School Archives Digital Collections, New York, New York.

“The History of PEN.” PEN.org. Accessed August 26, 2025. https://pen.org/the-history-of-pen/.

“Sponsors and Partners.” PEN World Voices Festival. Accessed August 26, 2025. https://worldvoices.pen.org/sponsors/.