My fourth visit at PEN was an interview with Stacy in her office. I would say it was more of a discussion than an interview. We talked about the festival PEN was organizing, which was, ironically, the same day as our teach in. We also talked about a lot of imprisoned writers and about censorship in America. We compared it to censorship in other countries, and Stacy made a point about how even though the struggle was less known, it was still there. She explained how in a lot of places censorship is used and widely known for a reason. They want people to be afraid, they use the fear to their advantage. The difference is, in America, the censorship is concealed.

For our third visit, we arranged to visit the PEN center and help set up for a workshop they were organizing. I wasn’t really sure what to expect we were going to do when we arrived, but we had the chance to do way more than I expected. We set up for the workshop by setting out some notebooks, and then once everyone arrived, we started the workshop. It was basically a meeting with two writers in New York (one of them a famous playwright), two women that worked at PEN (Stacy and Lynn, both very friendly, nice, well-read people), a student a little bit older than I, who said she loved writing slam poetry, and, of course, Danica and I. We started the workshop by discussing the books we were reading at the moment. I felt sort of embarrassed saying I was reading a book called Happyface, when everybody else was reading books like Wuthering Heights, or translations of Chinese books of poetry. The playwright, John, talked a lot about his life as a writer. He mentioned working with actor Lyn Manuel for a few of his plays, whose name, surprisingly, I knew. He had a lot to say about his theory about writing, so for about half the time we listened to what he had to say, and then he had to leave and it was just us girls. We had a nice time.

For our second visit, we actually visited the Pen Building, on 588 Broadway. We helped Stacy set up her materials for the activity she would be doing with the Bank Street School (Put out pens and markers on each table, taped up pictures of the writers on the walls, brought out orange juice and cups, set out cards, etc.) The activity was basically them choosing one or two of the imprisoned writers on the lists, based on their stories and which one they felt most connected to, and writing them a letter. There were a few native french speakers who decided they would write their letters to the writer in Syria. Stacy told them some of the stories she knew about the writers before they started writing. One of the stories that I found really interesting was the one about the man who wrote a love poem. He wrote an eight-line poem, and it got published in some sort of magazine for a special Valentines Day edition or something, and then he was imprisoned. He was imprisoned because if you took the first letter of each word, it said something about his General being crazy with power. This was one of the writers that we couldn’t write to, because whenever they received a letter they were punished. After we helped with the activity, we (Danica, Nathaniel, Josh C and I) got to add to the “Democracy Banner” and write/draw about what freedom of expression meant to us. This visit was really fun, and I learned a lot and I can’t wait for tomorrow’s visit.

Our first visit was really a meeting more than a visit, but we learned a lot about the organization and what they do. Basically, Stacy, the director of readers and writers at the organization, told us about some examples of the imprisoned writers that they help, and why they were imprisoned and how they help. PEN is an important organization for many reasons. One would be that the cause they help is something that’s not widely covered through the world. They are probably one of the only organizations that helps imprisoned writers. She asked us why we were interested in this organization, if it was because we loved to read or write, or for any other reason.  She also told us about some of the workshops they do with schools or just students that are interested on the weekends.