Around 30 PEN members attended the first Talking Tuesday of 2004, which saw American independent publisher André Schiffrin discussing the current state of the industry.

Schiffrin has been the director and editor-in-chief of The New Press since 1990. Before that, he was the managing director and editor-in-chief of Pantheon Books at Random House for 28 years, working with such authors as Eric Hobsbawm, Simone de Beauvoir, Noam Chomsky, F.R Leavis and Ivan Illich, to name but a few. 

André was for many years a member of the board of the New York Civil Liberties Union, the Freedom to Publish Committee of the American Association of Publishers, and its anti-censorship committee, the Freedom to Read Committee. He is currently an advisor to the American Center in Paris and a member of the visiting committee to the Graduate Faculty at the New School for Social Research.

Born in Paris but a long-term resident of New York, André’s transatlantic perspective and his opinions on the rapaciously corporate aspects of the publishing business stimulated much debate on the industry and its place in an age of increasing globalisation. We are very grateful to him for taking the time to talk to English PEN.

PEN and the Arvon Foundation’s work with exiled and refugee writers will be the focus of the Lawrence Sail Talking Tuesday on April 6th.

Report by Tanya Andrews

Originally posted with the url: www.englishpen.org/events/reportsonrecentevents/talkingtuesdayandreschiffrin/