New Delhi, May 15 -- On a night otherwise dedicated to the endangered state of free expression, honoree Ann Patchett asked those gathered for PEN America's annual gala to take a breath and consider the revelations held within the event's setting - the American Museum of Natural History.

"The history of nature is made up of both extreme beauty and violence, volcanoes and butterflies, shifting tectonic plates and marsupials, the bones of the stegosaurus and the light of Milky Way," the author and bookseller said Thursday night as she stood before hundreds at the Manhattan-based cultural institution museum and accepted the PEN/Audible Literary Service Award.

"To spend a day in this museum is to understand that the world had plenty of actio...