Larry Siems directs the Freedom to Write and International Programs at PEN American Center, where he leads PEN’s ongoing efforts to defend writers facing persecution around the world and PEN’s Campaign for Core Freedoms, a comprehensive initiative to turn back new threats to freedom of expression in the United States.

As a poet and a nonfiction writer, he has written extensively on immigration and cross-cultural issues; his book Between the Lines: Letters between Undocumented Mexicans and Central Americans and their Families and Friends was a finalist for the PEN West award for nonfiction in 1993.  He researched and reported on human rights abuses along the U.S. – Mexico border for Human Rights Watch, and studied and wrote on immigrant politics in Orange County, California under a fellowship from the Open Society Institute. His poems have appeared in leading literary journals.