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Listen to this blog I’ve just returned from PEN International’s 90th World Congress in Oxford, England whose theme was “Writers in a World at War.” PEN originally planned to celebrate its Centenary in Oxford in 2021, but the global pandemic disrupted that gathering. This 90th Congress was co-hosted by English PEN, and while it was…
Listen to this blog Affirming progress—“We won’t go back…” doesn’t prevent us from remembering and building on the past, acknowledging the ties that bind and helped us make the progress we’ve made and built the foundation from which we launch. With this in mind, I looked back to a brief moment in time to see what…
Listen to this blog After days of sun and blue skies and high, muggy temperatures, the clouds closed in, the sky darkened and the rain came. It was a relief. My morning routine is to get up early and sit outside before the sun starts to bake so that I can gather my thoughts for the…
With fraught political climates on the ground in many countries—at least 64 countries face elections this year with democracies in the balance—and with discourse often less than inspiring, I find myself looking up and into the clouds and the sky above for an uncluttered view. That instinct was further encouraged by a book I recently…
Poised on the threshold of summer, of university protests and disrupted graduations, of US political conventions in July and August, of threatening weather with tornados and hurricanes churning on both US coasts and in the middle of the country, I pause in a patch of early morning sun to savor and seal a moment of…
In the early years of this century—2004-2007—I was elected the International Secretary of PEN International, a position at the time responsible for overseeing the running of the day-to-day operations of the global organization, along with a small staff. (During my term we hired the first paid executive director.) PEN’s international organization includes four standing committees—the…
Four out of the first six book events for my new novel The Far Side of the Desert occurred in the rain with downpours in two cities. Such is the peril of a March pub date, but better than snowstorms in January. A pleasant surprise was how many friends and new readers showed up anyway. A…
July, 2007 A Moorish king and queen bobbed momentarily above Samantha Waters’s scrambled eggs as if waiting to be fed. Outside the second-floor windows of the Hostal dos Reis Católicos, 12-foot puppets of kings and queens and devils and saints peered into the dining room then lurched away toward the square. Samantha leaned over the…
Sitting in an easy chair with my laptop desk and computer, I look out over the river on this winter’s day—frozen ground, chunks of ice littering the lawn, an American flag fluttering out the window and four white Adirondack chairs by the water ready for occupants in the spring. The land and the river edged…
Nobel physicist Albert Einstein advised: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking that created them,” and he urged a new way of thinking. Embedded in the advice was the challenge to understand what that thinking was. Einstein was considering the state of affairs after a world war and the devastation of atomic bombs…
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