Ron Chernow: Biographer to Lead PEN Center in the U.S.
At the annual meeting of the PEN American Center on Thursday night, the organization of writers and editors is expected to ratify Ron Chernow, the best-selling biographer of J. P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller and Alexander Hamilton, as its next president. Mr. Chernow will succeed the novelist Salman Rushdie, who has served as the group's leader for two years.
Mr. Rushdie, who is credited with having helped to reshape the PEN American Center's role in defending freedom of expression and open cultural exchange after Sept. 11, proposed Mr. Chernow as his successor.
"I felt that with the enormous increase in interest in nonfiction, it would be good to have a major nonfiction writer," Mr. Rushdie said in an interview at the organization's offices on lower Broadway in SoHo, "especially in view of the problems we've seen arise there recently. And his Alexander Hamilton biography constantly reminded me of a time when the best writers in America were also changing American history."
Mr. Chernow's wife, Valerie, died in January, and he declined to speak about the election while planning a memorial service for her, though he did comment by e-mail. On the prospect of taking over from the internationally famous Mr. Rushdie, he wrote, "As Thomas Jefferson once said of Benjamin Franklin in Paris, you don't replace Franklin, you only succeed him."
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Mr. Rushdie, who is credited with having helped to reshape the PEN American Center's role in defending freedom of expression and open cultural exchange after Sept. 11, proposed Mr. Chernow as his successor.
"I felt that with the enormous increase in interest in nonfiction, it would be good to have a major nonfiction writer," Mr. Rushdie said in an interview at the organization's offices on lower Broadway in SoHo, "especially in view of the problems we've seen arise there recently. And his Alexander Hamilton biography constantly reminded me of a time when the best writers in America were also changing American history."
Mr. Chernow's wife, Valerie, died in January, and he declined to speak about the election while planning a memorial service for her, though he did comment by e-mail. On the prospect of taking over from the internationally famous Mr. Rushdie, he wrote, "As Thomas Jefferson once said of Benjamin Franklin in Paris, you don't replace Franklin, you only succeed him."