Danica: PEN Organization 2/2/10

I had my first group visit with the PEN Organization. The PEN organization is a large community coming together to protect free speech and imprisoned writers.  Actually, PEN kind of came to us. We had a meeting with Stacy Leigh who is the director of the Readers and Writers.It was an introductory visit to get us started on our journey with PEN. Josh, Catherine, Nathaniel and I had an hour long conversation with Ms. Leigh discussing topics from imprisoned writers to what PEN does. I think the main topic through our conversation was what PEN does and what we could do as students to help our community. The organization is a community of writers founded in 1921 in London after a large dinner party between German and English writers that found a commonality, they wanted to save their literary voice. Two enemies during the World War I had the ability to act civilly toward one another. After our small history lesson, we learned about what is happening today within the PEN organization. Now, the New York City PEN Center is the largest center in the world and one of the most active. Ms. Leigh spoke to us about the “Power of the Pen”. This statement basically says that writing has significant power in the world. Whether you are writing or reading literature, the “pen” evokes something. It evokes change, freedom of expression and freedom of speech. We also discussed the imprisoned writer. An imprisoned writer is someone who is in jail, a guest to the state, chosen to be in isolation because of an outside threat, or a person who is surrounded by police or military because of what they wrote. But I think the strongest form of imprisonment is restraining or keeping their words confined. The writing was probably controversial or evoked someone or something. Being imprisoned must be torture, especially if you are just exercising your rights, but imprisonment makes controversy which involves publicity. And publicity informs the public of the wrongs within the writing world.  This visit was extremely educational and made all of us more socially aware. I can’t wait for our next visit!