Call Number:

C0760

Repository:

Princeton University Library: Manuscripts Division

Extent:

• 294 boxes
• 130 linear feet

Language:

English

Preferred Citation:

Identification of specific item; Date (if known); P.E.N. American Center Records, Box and Folder Number; Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

Date:

1922-2008 (inclusive) and 1930-1989 (bulk)

Creator:

PEN America

Form:

Audio cassettes., Audiotapes., Business records., Correspondence, Printed ephemera, Speeches., and Videocassettes.

Abstract:

Consists of files created by P.E.N. American Center as part of its regular business operations since its founding in 1922. Includes material on governance and policies, programs, awards, and financial aid granted to authors, and the center's involvement with International P.E.N. and other P.E.N. organizations worldwide. The collection is especially notable for its extensive author correspondence and occasional original manuscripts, as well as audio and video recordings of P.E.N. programs and events.

P.E.N. American Center (PEN America) is the United States branch of International P.E.N., a worldwide non-profit organization of writers, editors, and translators that advocates for freedom of expression, freedom of the press, and "the ideal of one humanity living in peace in the world" (P.E.N. charter). Founded one year after International P.E.N. in 1922, P.E.N. American Center is one of two P.E.N. centers currently located in the U.S. (the other is in Los Angeles) and one of more than 100 centers of P.E.N. International worldwide.

P.E.N. American Center sponsors a variety of literary, literacy, and advocacy programs. Among the center's prominent activities are the advocacy program Freedom to Write, which defends censored or persecuted authors; the financial aid program Writers' Emergency Fund, which gives small emergency grants to authors who face acute financial difficulties; the Prison Writing Program, which promotes writing among prison inmates; and World in Translation, which recognizes American translators. The center also awards a number of literary prizes in the categories of fiction, nonfiction, drama, poetry, biography, children's/young adults' fiction, and translation.

P.E.N. American Center currently has a membership of over 7,000. The center counts Arthur Miller, Norman Mailer, Susan Sontag, Salman Rushdie, and Princeton professors Edmund Keeley and Kwame Anthoy Appiah among its past presidents. Its current president is Jennifer Egan. In addition, past members include James Baldwin, Willa Cather, Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, Thomas Mann, Marianne Moore, Paul Auster, and John Steinbeck, among others.

The P.E.N. American Center Records consist of files created by P.E.N. American Center (PEN America) as part of its regular business operations. They document the history and activities of the center since its foundation in 1922.

The collection contains files documenting the center's literary awards, grants, and financial aid given by the center, program files, and files pertaining to the center's advocacy for freedom of expression. Further included are files that document the center's decision-making processes and policies, including executive and committee files, fundraising files, and membership files. The conference files and files on other branches and centers document P.E.N. American Center's role in International P.E.N. and its interactions with organizations of P.E.N. worldwide. In addition, the collection contains audiovisual material documenting P.E.N. events and publications created by or under the auspices of P.E.N. American Center.

The collection is especially notable for its documentation of authors' and editors' creative processes and intellectual leanings, manifest in the executive correspondence files and the manuscripts and committee files that pertain to the center's literary awards. More than 1500 hours of audio and video recordings of P.E.N. programs and events, dating back to 1966, also document lively conversations between writers and artists, Nobel Prize winners in literature, economics, science, and peace, social reformers and activists, and philosophers, including Toni Morrison, Saul Bellow, Pablo Neruda, Arthur Miller, Susan Sontag, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Allen Ginsberg to name only a few.

The P.E.N. American Center Records are arranged into twelve series. Material transferred from P.E.N. subsequent to the original 1994 transfer is represented in this finding aid with the appropriate series but may be shelved physically apart.