The Emergency Fund for Endangered Writers assists writers in prison and those who are persecuted by providing funds for legal and medical assistance to their families. In the past year, the Emergency Fund has delivered $8,400 in direct financial assistance to writers facing persecution in Afghanistan, Eritrea, The Gambia, Russia, Senegal, and Uzbekistan.

The Whatcom Librarian and her board fought the subpoena which called for the names and identifying information of all those who had borrowed the book since November 15, 2001. The librarian responded by saying, “Libraries are a haven where people should be able to seek what information they want to pursue without any threat of government intervention.” The FBI finally backed down, and PEN conferred...

Support writers in need by contributing to PEN’s Writers’ Fund. Recent grant recipients include: a prize-winning poet who escaped domestic violence and was struggling to support herself, her 19-month-old son, and her mother; an elderly writer of six books, hundreds of articles, and short fiction who, through a Medicare bureaucratic error, was unable to pay for the treatment she needed; and a mid-career novelist and...