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PEN Journeys: Joanne Leedom-Ackerman

For a century, PEN (Poets, Essayists, Novelists) has brought together writers to celebrate and share literature and to defend those who write. PEN has laid the foundation for a global community of writers who seek out facts, celebrate the creative imagination and champion freedom of expression. PEN Journeys: Memoir of Literature on the Line reflects a time when the world was opening up—the Berlin Wall fell; the Soviet Union broke apart; democracies were ascendant around the globe—and PEN, the world's oldest writers and human rights organization, was often at the forefront. In many countries writers like Václav Havel led the way as they were released from prison. The year 2021 marked the centenary of PEN International and English PEN, and 2022 marks the centenary of PEN America, PEN France and many other PEN centers in over 100 countries around the world. PEN Journeys spans three of those decades and tracks PEN's centrality to many of the events, to the individual writers, and to the author's own story as she moved to Europe with nine and eleven-year-old sons who also intersected with this time and with events to come. The period was also a time when this sprawling organization, now with 157 centers, was finding it needed to reorganize and had its own revolution. PEN Journeys is filled with anecdotes of writers, including those well-known like Salman Rushdie, Orhan Pamuk, Günter Grass, Ken Saro Wiwa, Anna Politkovskaya and others and those less known but courageous writers. Writers set the guardrails for free societies. Their freedom and freedom of expression are vital for a democratic citizenry. PEN, the only literary organization with consultative status at the United Nations, holds watch. 

#PEN Journeys Joanne Leedom-Ackerman