Banned Books Month on PEN American

For Banned Books Month September 2012, PEN American’s The Daily Pen American Blog features daily posts by writers, editors, literary illuminati, and PEN staff about the banned books that matter to them most. Contributors thus far: Amy King on Alice Walker’s The Color Purple; Melissa Broder on Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal; and Matthew Zapruder on Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago.

PEN American Center is the U.S. branch of the world’s oldest international literary and human rights organization. International PEN was founded in 1921 in direct response to the ethnic and national divisions that contributed to the First World War. PEN’s programs reach out to the world and into diverse communities within this country. They promote writing and literature at every level and are founded on the belief that free expression is an essential component of every healthy society.