Words matter. Words empower. Words are what were celebrated on a night that brought a new meaning to gala season in New York City during the PEN America Gala.
Radical transformation is in the wind and it is growing to soaring new heights as was demonstrated on May 14. With mounting censorship, rising jailing of writers and anxiety over artificial intelligence’s impact on creativity, PEN America gathered 600 writers, publishers, journalists and arts and entertainment luminaries to show strength in numbers for a mission to bring harmony to the planet.
The annual Literary Gala honored outstanding contributions in literature and the defense of free expression at the Natural History Museum. Trailblazers and advocates gathered for the good cause with host B.J. Novak kicking off the night to push back against fears that technology could ever eclipse human creativity.
“Real life is making a comeback,” said Novak. “Real ideas are making a comeback. And books are at the forefront of that.”
For it’s 16th year honorees of the profound night included: bestselling and prize-winning author and Nashville bookseller Ann Patchett (Bel Canto, The Dutch House); Oscar-nominated film producer Jason Blum (Get Out, Black Phone 2, BlackKkKlansman); the Rutherford County Library Alliance of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, which mobilized against book bans and defended a fired local library director, and Iranian writers Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee and Ali Asadollahi prosecuted and jailed for their work. Iraee remains in prison, reflecting the deepening repression of writers in Iran as PEN America’s latest Freedom to Write Index , released this week, reported a sharp rise in arrests of Iranian writers.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – MAY 14: (L-R) Summer Lopez, Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf, Keri Lambert, and Tatiana Silvas attend the 2026 PEN America Spring Literary Gala at American Museum of Natural History on May 14, 2026 in New York City. (Photo by Craig Barritt/Getty Images for PEN America)
PEN America’s Co-CEOs Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf and Summer Lopez took the stage to embrace the moment and applaud the luminaries in the room.
“Writers are vital to this moment, to this movement, and to everything we do at PEN America,” said Lopez. “They help us make sense of what’s happening. They remind us of storytelling’s power to imagine a better world. That’s why they are so often the first to come under attack. And the first to fight back.”
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – MAY 14: (L-R) Jason Blum and Seth Meyers attend the 2026 PEN America Spring Literary Gala at American Museum of Natural History on May 14, 2026 in New York City. (Photo by Craig Barritt/Getty Images for PEN America)
Among the honorees, audience members and award presenters were authors whose books have been banned in the crisis of education censorship in U.S. public schools that PEN America has documented since 2021.
One of the tributes included the Business Visionary which was presented to Jason Blum by Maya Hawke.
“The truths embedded in fiction are harder for powerful institutions to dispute. … The leadership of this country and many other countries have used their power to make us all feel like we’re living in different realities,” he stated. “The very notion of a “fact” has become totally politicized. And so fiction, and the popular mainstream genre fiction, can be a powerful tool for delivering values that are complicated and nuanced.”
Another highlight of the night was when the PEN/Benenson Courage Award to the Rutherford County, TN Library Alliance, MSNOW journalist and author Ali Velshi (Small Acts of Courage: A Legacy of Endurance and the Fight for Democracy)— who since 2022 has interviewed 165 authors whose books were banned on his weekly “Velshi Banned Book Club”— said: “Book banning is not a fringe movement. It is a coordinated political project. One with funders, with lawyers, with model legislation. But that coordinated project will fail. The censors thought the country was with them. The country is NOT with them. The constitution is not with them. And the reason the book banning project will fail is sitting in this room tonight.”
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – MAY 14: (L-R) Fariba Rad, Amir Ahmadi Arian, and Dinaw Mengestu speak onstage during the 2026 PEN America Spring Literary Gala at American Museum of Natural History on May 14, 2026 in New York City. (Photo by Craig Barritt/Getty Images for PEN America)
PEN America President Dinaw Mengestu, the acclaimed novelist, introduced the PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Award honoring Iranian writers Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee, who is imprisoned in Tehran, and Ali Asadollahi, who was arrested in January but granted bail after detention. The award annually recognizes a writer imprisoned for their work.
Mengestu said of the two writers: “They staked their lives on writing even in the face of extraordinary risks. Between the two, they have spent years in and out of prisons and despite that, they know that their voices will shape the future. Their imprisonment, he said, “leads us to imagine: ‘What if we protected everyone’s free expression rights to the same degree as we protect our own.”
Iraee has faced more than a decade of repeated harassment and detention for her writing and activism on human rights. She has been imprisoned in Tehran since September 2022. After being violently arrested in January, Asadollahi was physically abused in detention and released on bail in March following mounting international pressure.
In a statement, Asadollahi wrote: “This is how censorship works: it rewards the familiar and the safe. It demands forms that don’t cause trouble. That is why in oppressive systems anyone who experiments—anyone who insists on new forms—becomes a problem. In a world of forced repetition, creating a new form, a new way of imagining, is in itself an act of defiance.”
The powerful words of the night continued with moving speeches that inspired the leaders of today and the advocates of tomorrow.
PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect free expression in the United States and worldwide. We champion the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world. Our mission is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible. Learn more at pen.org.
