Toni Morrison, Joan Didion among those in PEN online archive

FILE - In this May 29, 2012, file photo, author Toni Morrison receives her Medal of Freedom award during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington. PEN America, the literary and human rights organization, has assembled more than 1,500 hours of audio and visual material for a digital archive featuring Morrison and other leading writers and public thinkers of the past half-century. The literary and human rights organization told The Associated Press on Wednesday, July 26, 2017, that the archive has been in the works since 2011. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File) FILE - In this May 29, 2012, file photo, author Toni Morrison receives her Medal of Freedom award during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington. PEN America, the literary and human rights organization, has assembled more than 1,500 hours of audio and visual material for a digital archive featuring Morrison and other leading writers and public thinkers of the past half-century. The literary and human rights organization told The Associated Press on Wednesday, July 26, 2017, that the archive has been in the works since 2011. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)

By Associated Press July 26, 2017 1 min read

NEW YORK (AP) – Speeches by Toni Morrison, Joan Didion and Pablo Neruda are among the highlights of an online multimedia archive unveiled by PEN America.

The literary and human rights organization told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the archive has been in the works since 2011. The project’s completion was enabled by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The website covers PEN gatherings over the past half-century, beginning in 1966.

It includes more than 1,500 hours of audio and video recordings.