PEN Transmissions

October 8, 2019

Editorial: PEN Transmissions x Granta

In a PEN Transmissions interview from July 2019, Kapka Kassabova says that ‘good art by its very nature crosses all borders’. Today, in October, the need for such ‘good art’ is acute. And it’s not just national, physical borders that we traverse: literature moves us across personal, communal, and linguistic borders in particular, vital ways.…

October 8, 2019October 8, 2019

A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

The first in our series with Granta on writers and their translators, Peter Stamm pens new short fiction and Michael Hofmann writes on translating Stamm.

September 24, 2019

What We Have to Build Next

Tanaka Mhishi discusses appearing on a BBC documentary as a male survivor of rape, and what writers can do to tackle sexual harm.

September 10, 2019

All These Write, Not I Alone: A Conversation with Vikram Kolmannskog

A year after the decriminalisation of gay sex in India, we speak to Norwegian-Indian writer Vikram Kolmannskog about writing self, place and queerness.

August 27, 2019September 11, 2019

Against the Current: An Interview with Gwen Davies

Welsh-English translator and editor of New Welsh Review, Gwen Davies, speaks to us about indigeneity, place, migration and translating contemporary Wales.

August 20, 2019September 24, 2019

Turkey’s Endless War on Books

Can Bahadır Yüce writes on self-censorship and the destruction on books in Turkey.

August 12, 2019September 24, 2019

Queer x Kenyan x Communities

Cherrie Kandie talks about the aftermath of being shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Writing for ‘Sew My Mouth’, a story about a lesbian couple in Kenya.

August 5, 2019August 27, 2019

Editorial: Transmitting the Future

Over its last twelve issues, PEN Transmissions has conveyed 35 essays and interviews to readers in over 120 countries. From this month, we will be publishing pieces every other week.

July 31, 2019August 27, 2019

When Utopia Becomes Tangible

No one on the receiving end of harassment or assault should have to feel that they are the ones who have to leave an event, or any event where a harasser is present, or that they are being made to leave literary circles all together and for good.

July 31, 2019August 27, 2019

Editorial: past futures

The four contributions in this issue range from concrete steps to achieve a utopia without sexual harassment and assault, to dystopian visions that are anchored in the more nightmarish aspects of our present, to reflections on how past ideologies have an impact on our present.

July 31, 2019August 27, 2019

Moth Eyes

My grandmother does not remember how she got here. She thinks she might have fallen from a violently rocking house. The house flew past rubber plantations, raging fires, massacres; horrifying scenes like that.