PEN Out Loud focuses on amplifying diverse voices and convening vital conversations with authors, poets, journalists, artists, and activists.
This winter, these conversations shift our focus inward, providing a necessary pause to examine who we once were, who we are now, and who we’d like to become. Following a fraught year in which we were challenged to reckon with our past, confront our present, and reimagine our future, we turn to literature to engage our minds and reconnect with ourselves—physically, mentally, and emotionally.
Each event this season explores the core of our humanity, generously interrogating our understanding of—and capacity to experience—passion and desire, grief and resilience, nourishment and love, reflection and hope.
Tuesday, February 9 at 8pm ET/5pm PT
PEN OUT Loud: R.O. Kwon and Garth Greenwell with Melissa Febos and Brandon Taylor
Bestselling authors R.O. Kwon and Garth Greenwell join PEN Out Loud to launch their dynamic anthology of short fiction, Kink: Stories. A singular collection that illustrates “love, desire, BDSM, and sexual kinks in all their glory with a bold new vision,” Kink features some of contemporary fiction’s finest writers. The two editors of the anthology will be joined in conversation with contributors Melissa Febos and Brandon Taylor to discuss the book’s “moving dispatches from across the sexual spectrum of interest and desires.”
Tuesday, February 16 at 8pm ET/5pm PT
PEN OUT Loud: Brandon Hobson with Rebecca Makkai
National Book Award finalist Brandon Hobson joins PEN Out Loud to celebrate his latest novel, The Removed. Weaving together multiple first-person narrators and Cherokee folklore, the novel tells the story of a Cherokee family 15 years after an unjust police shooting of one of the family’s three children. Hobson will be joined in conversation with Pulitzer Prize finalist Rebecca Makkai to discuss the novel and its “meditation on family, grief, home, and the power of stories on both a personal and ancestral level.”
Thursday, March 4 at 6pm ET/3pm PT
PEN Out Loud x Asian American Writers' Workshop: Kazuo Ishiguro with Jia Tolentino
Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro joins PEN Out Loud and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop to commemorate Klara and the Sun, his first novel since being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. A gripping, genre-bending story featuring Ishiguro’s characteristic restraint, the novel examines Klara, “an artificial friend with outstanding observational qualities” who yearns to be the perfect companion for her future owner. Ishiguro will be joined in conversation with essayist and The New Yorker staff writer Jia Tolentino to discuss the narrative’s themes of service, sacrifice, and what it means to love.
Monday, March 8 at 8pm ET/5pm PT
PEN Out Loud: Isabel Allende with Concepción de León
Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Isabel Allende joins PEN Out Loud to celebrate her book, The Soul of a Woman. Examining “power, feminism, and what it means to be a woman,” Allende’s forthcoming book weaves together her vast experiences, from coming up in the second wave of feminism to embracing her sexuality. Allende will be joined in conversation with The New York Times reporter Concepción de León to discuss feminism of the past and hopes to inspire the next generation, and to consider the question: “What feeds the soul of feminists—and all women—today?”