Danica – 2/5/10 – PEN Organization

This was my second visit at PEN and it was both fun and educational. This time my group and I went to the PEN American Center offices to be student helpers for a writing activity that PEN was hosting. This particular event pertained to imprisoned writers and how teens can help make a writer’s life less of a struggle. My group and I came half an hour early to help set up table and supplies for the small workshop. We did small jobs like putting pens on a table, standing up greeting cards so that the design would show and placing photos of imprisoned writers on the surrounding walls. Before the workshop started Stacy Leigh (I have mentioned her in a past post) told us a bit about the imprisoned writer and what the letters that would be written in the workshop would do for them. As I said before an imprisoned writer is one who is in jail, a guest to the state and one who is trapped by their own words. These imprisoned writers wrote something that evoked something, usually for the positive. These writers are people who make change through their words, big or small. Stacy told us of a foreign  writer who wrote a poem for Valentine’s Day and was published. The poem had a hidden message that said a general was sick with power. But this is just one example of writing that caused a stir. Then Stacy talked to us about what we could do to help these writers. As young adults we can’t just fly half way across the world to talk to these international prisoners about their writing. But as teens we can write letters in support of these writers. They don’t have to be extensive, they just have to say I know your alive, I am acknowledging how great you are and i want to know how you are. Just to hear someone say they care is all they want because after you have been told nobody remembers you or cares about you, this is salvation in writing. This PEN event was specifically for 5th through 8th graders. Kids from the Bank Street School came to the offices to write cards and discuss the same topics I have just discussed above. My group and I helped the students write cards and got to participate in inscribing ourselves in PEN’s democracy wall. Democracy walls were huge in the 60’s and 70’s. All you need is a passionate subject where whoever wants to can write something that relates to the topic at hand and depicts a piece of themselves. The topic we wrote about was what does freedom of expression mean to us. I wrote a short poem (5 lines at most) that showed what I thought freedom of expression is. (If I can find the photo I will publish it). It felt great to get my words out there and it felt great that I got to help a writer stay sane. Over all, this was a great visit.