That was me once, soaking wet in the rain, one fall long ago; that was me taking a beating from some fat, greasy, gray-haired guy,

What hurts me in all this is that my parents will be forced to bury me before themselves.

Love sowed its blue stars / On our private night

The men stirred, restless. Romans, they wanted blood. The whip, the boot, the snap.

Just hold my hands tightly. I won’t force you to kiss me or do anything.

But even were I to be done away with... those who are like me would remain .

What type did he prefer, Orlando Bloom or Benicio del Toro?

In late April, Abdellah Taïa arrives in New York City for the seventh annual PEN World Voices Festival. Two days before he is to sit down in conversation with Dale Peck for an interview hosted by PEN…

The girl with a ponytail says: “Look at the sky,” and the other says, “The sky sucks.”

I would like to write as if I were in a passing car, with the radio on, which is one of the most delectable sensations I know.

Because even after being forgotten I cannot fade away

I gaze into a horse’s virtuous eyes

Sham-seeming life / gauze-mask-like thoughts

people on two banks / change batch after batch / like summer fireflies

Those who ordered her to kneel on snail shells / are mostly dead

Until I was published, I viewed my stories as my own, personal things, extensions of my mind that could be compared to an article of clothing, changed according to the day and season; or, perhaps, some…

In honor of the seventh annual PEN World Voices Festival and the release of Leeches (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011), Words Without Borders sat down with Serbian writer and translator David Albahari…

The day Osama Bin Laden was killed, I was extolling the benefits of education in western Afghanistan. It was the first week of school for the Dari and Pashto adult literacy program that I managed and,…

Fama is a handsome prince of the Malinké people, but he spends his days in the capital city, far from his people, wandering from one funeral to the next as an uninvited, sometimes unwanted orator.…

Everyone has an opinion about publishing. Who we should publish. What we should publish. How we should publish it. One practically pines for the good ol’ days of the publishers’ gentlemen’s…

PEN created this video of the panel our editorial director, Susan Harris, moderated (and we co-sponsored) as part of the PEN World Voices Festival, with Nadine Bismuth, Nicolas Dickner, Dominique Fortier,…

Here’s a tip for writers eager to cultivate a rarified air of eccentricity: regardless of the weather, wear a big hat! According to Amelié Nothomb, whose outré headgear is her trademark—today,…

The winning titles and translators for this year’s Best Translated Book Awards were announced Friday evening at the Bowery Poetry Club as part of the PEN World Voices Festival. BTBA co-founder Chad…

Argentine writer and human rights hero Ernesto Sábato has died at the age of ninety-nine. Sábato was the author of The Tunnel (1948), On Heroes and Tombs (1961), and The Angel of Darkness…

Much of what is said and written about Afghanistan in the West today is still tainted by an outside perspective on the situation

The great Buddha had broken to pieces and disintegrated into millions of smaller Buddhas.

Where did you board the wrong airplane? Tehran? Istanbul? Frankfurt?

The man next to me is licking the sweat on my arm.

I have told you several times to throw that to the dogs, not to give it to the Kabulis.

Sarwar was shot through the air like a glittering bird.