PEN Center USA's mission is to stimulate and maintain interest in the written word, to foster a vital literary culture, and to defend freedom of expression domestically and internationally.

[4] Freedom to Write Advocacy Network is a worldwide, collaborative effort to support free speech and to defend writers whose civil and human rights have been violated.

[5] PEN Center USA's Freedom to Write Committee, made up of more than 200 volunteer writers, investigates regional and country-specific problems.

Written work collected during the residency is published by PEN Center USA in PITC anthologies, which are windows into participant's lives—their struggles, hopes, and experiences.

[7] Emerging Voices is a literary fellowship that aims to provide new writers, who lack access, with the tools they will need to launch a professional writing career.

Authors who have been mentors in the past include Ron Carlson, Harryette Mullen, Chris Abani, Ramona Ausubel, Meghan Daum, and Sherman Alexie.

Authors who have participated in the past have included Jonathan Lethem, Percival Everett, Maggie Nelson, Cynthia Bond, Aimee Bender, Jerry Stahl, and Bruce Bauman, senior editor of the literary magazine Black Clock.

Fellows have read in various venues and events including the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, Silver Lake Jubilee, Skylight Bookstore, The Standard, Downtown LA, and Hotel Café.

For the past five years, the fellowship has culminated in a Final Reading held in Hammer Museum's Billy Wilder Theater, showcasing the progress each fellow has made in his or her work.

Participants need not be published, but the fellowship is directed toward poets and writers of fiction and creative nonfiction with clear ideas of what they hope to accomplish through their writing.

Winners are announced the following fall, and each receives a $1,000 cash prize, a free year of membership with PEN Center USA, and an invitation to the Annual Literary Awards Festival in Los Angeles.

Both awards honor men and women who have produced exceptional work in the face of extreme adversity, who have been punished for exercising their freedom of expression, or who have fought against censorship and defended the right to publish freely.

The annual dues of membership, which vary by type, provide significant financial support that allows members to carry out the work of PEN Center USA.