Pen Station

The PEN festival is really exciting and my friend, the writer Leora Skolkin-Smith is going to be blogging about it. What Leora says is true, (and I'm going to paraphrase her here) that it's a time when writers can be "serious" without guilt and fear of being called "Elite-is", to try to cover what is meaningful instead of just what is popular. What's truly central to this discussion is that Europeans and other countries consider the art of story-telling an art, not commerce. One actually sees writing lending itself to themes and issues--evidenced by the simply categories PEN sets up to even introduce these writers. So check out Leora's blog next week!