PEN AmErican centEr AnnuAl report 2009-2010 NEXTNEXT>>>> PEN AmErican centEr AnnuAl report July 1, 2009 – DEcEmbEr 31, 2010* PEN AmERICAN cENTEr BoArD oF TRUSTEEs, 2009-2010 Kwame Anthony Appiah (President), Maria Campbell (Treasurer), Ron Chernow, Francisco Goldman, Beth Gutcheon, Jessica Hagedorn (Vice President), A.M. Homes (Vice President), Laurence J. Kirshbaum (Executive Vice President), Jhumpa Lahiri, Joanne Leedom-Ackerman, Jaime Manrique, Claudia Menza, David Michaelis, Michael F. Moore, Steven Pleshette Murphy, John Oakes, Walter Pozen, Victoria Redel, Susanna Reich, Hamilton Robinson, Jr., Roxana Robinson (Secretary), Esmeralda Santiago, Elissa Schappell, Scott Spencer, Annette Tapert, Lynne Tillman, Monique Truong, Danielle Truscott, Doug Wright, Steven L. Isenberg (Executive Director), Leon Friedman (General Counsel) PEN AmERICAN cENTEr sTAFF Maggie Abam (Staff Accountant), Antonio Aiello (Web Site Editor), Nick Burd** (Manager of Membership and Literary Awards), Robyn DesHotel (Director of Finance and Administration), Jonathan Dozier-Ezell (Prison Writing Coordinator), Alena Graedon (Manager of Membership and Literary Awards), Annmarie Granstrand (Membership and Writers’ Fund Coordinator), David Haglund (Managing Editor, PEN America), Sarah Hoffman (Freedom to Write Coordinator), Steven L. Isenberg (Executive Director), Meghan Kyle-Miller (Development Associate), Stacy Leigh (Readers & Writers and Open Book Director), Charles Leung (Associate Web Site Editor), Caro Llewellyn*** (PEN World Voices Festival and Public Programs Director), M. Mark (Editor, PEN America), Linda Morgan (Development Director), László Jakab Orsós (PEN World Voices Festival and Public Programs Director), Jessica Rotondi (Executive Assistant), Larry Siems (Freedom to Write and International Programs Director), Stefanie Simons (Readers & Writers and Literary Awards Associate), Tim Smalls (Prison Writing Mentorship Program Coordinator), Jackson Taylor (Prison Writing Program Director), Elizabeth Weinstein (PEN World Voices Festival and Public Programs Manager) ____________________________________________________________ *PEN American Center has changed its fiscal year from July 1 - June 30 to January 1 – December 31. As a result, this report covers a one-time 18-month period from July 1, 2009 to December 31, 2010. **replaced by Alena Graedon in October 2010 ***replaced by László Jakab Orsós in October 2010 P en A m E r i c an c ente r ann u A l r ep o r T 2 0 0 9 - 2 0 1 0 0 2 << P r E v i o u s NEXT >> TABlE oF CONTENTs c l i c k pa g E # T o j u m P T o s E c T i o N 04 Welcome letter 06 Freedom to Write 09 campaign For core Freedoms 11 PEN World Voices FestiVal oF international literature 15 public programs 17 readers and Writers 18 open book 18 prison Writing 19 international program 20 PEN america: a Journal For Writers and readers 21 literary aWards 24 membership 24 membership committees 25 Writers’ Fund 25 PEN.org 27 PEN american center branches 28 in memoriam 29 Financial report 30 donors 38 get inVolVed P en A m E r i c an c ente r ann u A l r ep o r T 2 0 0 9 - 2 0 1 0 0 3 << P r E v i o u s NEXT >> WElcomE Letter Dear Friend of PEN, All of us who stand with PEN understand how crucial it is to protect free expression everywhere. Writers, like other artists, are indispensable to a society because they express and deliberate its ideas and ideals. We all profit from the lively exploration— in poetry and prose, fiction and non-fiction, books and movies, television and blogs—of the challenges that face us singly and together. In spite of the economy’s continued uncertainty, your steadfast commitment to our work has helped us free imprisoned writers and journalists, challenge torturers, mobilize writers as human rights advocates, challenge First Amendment violations, and sustain a rich conversation of voices from this country and abroad. As we have from the very beginning, we have brought together writers and readers across national, cultural, and religious divides. We are immensely grateful for your support. Nothing quite so embodies our efforts over the past year as the conferral of the Nobel Peace Prize on Liu Xiaobo, China’s most renowned writer and political activist. PEN has been leading the international campaign for Liu, who was a past president of the Independent Chinese PEN Center, our colleague organization on the ground in China. Through a protest rally viewed worldwide, the promotion of a Congressional resolution recognizing Liu’s critical role in the struggle for free expression in China, petitions, and delegations to Beijing, we have kept up the pressure to free Liu and the other jailed writers and journalists in China. PEN’s targeted advocacy work has also focused this year on the release of writers and journalists of conscience imprisoned in Cuba, Iran, Afghanistan, and Sri Lanka; and on the U.N. Human Rights Council, where we contributed to the rejection of a proposed treaty criminalizing religious defamation internationally. At home, a major lawsuit filed by PEN and other organizations and the assistance of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton helped bring an end to our government’s practice of “ideological exclusion.” We celebrated by producing an event with Tariq Ramadan, an Islamic scholar and now Oxford professor who was denied a visa on religious grounds six years ago when Notre Dame offered him a tenured position. Our Core Freedoms Program concentrated on promoting accountability for torture and other post-9/11 human rights abuses of detainees in U.S. custody and building a consensus for reform. In partnership with the ACLU, we launched the compelling and innovative “Reckoning with Torture” documentary project, which reached sold-out audiences in New York and Washington. The sixth annual PEN World Voices Festival demonstrated the power of literature to promote a more expansive world view by bringing an international literary fellowship to New York. More than 100 writers from 40 countries participated, among them Ben Okri (Nigeria), Maziar Bahari (Iran), Alina Bronsky (Russia), Ariel Dorfman (Chile), and Roddy Doyle (Ireland). Prominent P en A m E r i c an c ente r ann u A l r ep o r T 2 0 0 9 - 2 0 1 0 0 4 << P r E v i o u s NEXT >> American or U.S.-based writers, including Toni Morrison, Shirley Hazzard, Sebastian Junger, and Jonathan Lethem, helped draw audiences for important international authors who are not yet well-known in this country. Public events held under the aegis of the Festival, included Iran: A Conversation about the Elections, Protest, and the Future, which was held immediately following Iran’s disputed election before a sold-out house at the 92nd Street Y. The 2010 PEN Literary Awards was a lively affair with Don DeLillo receiving the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction and the addition of three new awards: the PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing, the PEN/Edward and Lily Tuck Award for Paraguayan Literature, and the PEN/W.G. Sebald Award for a Fiction Writer in Mid-Career. This report covers the period from July 1, 2009 through December 31, 2010, marking a change in our fiscal year to conform to the calendar year. The one-time eighteen-month cycle necessarily affects some year-to-year comparisons, but the improvement to our financial planning capability that the changeover will bring more than justifies the temporary complications. We would like to express our gratitude to you by sharing an excerpt from the invitation PEN American Center received to the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony: Your outstanding work has inspired many Chinese freedom fighters like Mr. Liu and myself. Your brilliant efforts in “Free Liu Xiaobo” are truly admirable and indispensible to our cause, hence we would like to take this opportunity to thank you and to become personal friends “with you. I earnestly hope that you will join us in Norway to share the glorious moment in celebrating Mr. Liu’s courage and accomplishment. - Yang Jianli, former political prisoner and friend to Liu Xiaobo It is a thank you to all of you who have contributed so generously to PEN. ” With warmest regards, K. Anthony Appiah Steven L. Isenberg President Executive Director P en A m E r i c an c ente r ann u A l r ep o r T 2 0 0 9 - 2 0 1 0 0 5 << P r E v i o u s NEXT >> FrEEDOM To WRITE Writers who are subjected to state censorship, threatened with imprisonment “or menaced by violent forces in their society clearly merit the support of those of us who enjoy freedom of expression. There are things a writer never takes for granted, like the long life he will need to live in order to write the long novel he is trying to write. Maybe freedom to write belongs at the top of the list, on behalf of those writers who face the grim reality of being enemies of the state. -Don DeLillo ” Since 1921, PEN has been the leading international voice on behalf of persecuted writers and freedom of expression. PEN American Center is the largest of the 145 centers of International PEN in 104 countries. For over 50 years, the Freedom to Write Program has fought censorship and defended imprisoned and persecuted writers around the world. Recently, we have seen alarming evidence of more governments using violence and imprisonment to silence their citizens’ voices, including those of China and Egypt, and now many more countries in the Middle East. That is why PEN American Center’s free expression work is more important than ever to put pressure on those governments that try to bury their divisive issues and silence their dissenters.