Are author names considered PII?

[dsignr]

We run a large news publication who is interested in doing author-wise stats for their internal usage, in fact, this is a requirement from the authors themselves. Plausible documentation states full names are considered as PII, but we do not collect any names or PII info about visitors, we just want to send a custom property with author name, so we can track pageviews by authors. Any clarification in this regard would be helpful. Just need to know if it's ok to send or not. If not, what are our options? We don't operate from a GDPR region / EU / US.
Thank you!

Side note: Amazing project, we just made the switch from GA and it feels like a breath of fresh air. And as a current full on Elixir developer myself, loving this project!