March 5, 2015
As the new PEN president, Andrew Solomon takes over from journalist and award-winning non-fiction writer Peter Godwin, who led the Board during a three-year period of organizational expansion with budget growth of over 40% in the last two years alone. Enabled by its membership of 4,000 writers, journalists, and literary professionals, PEN has taken its place as a leader on issues like NSA surveillance, the worsening environment for free expression in China, and protections for digital freedom worldwide. The organization's expanded schedule of public programming in the last year, on topics ranging from Net Neutrality to feminist poetry, has cemented its position at the intersection of literature and human rights.