Annual Reports
2026 Annual Report
PEN Canada began at a kitchen table four decades ago. It was a distinguished kitchen table—Margaret Atwood’s. The PEN Chapter in Québec, founded in 1926, had just split into francophone and anglophone centres to better serve both writing communities, forming our centre based in Toronto. 100 years later, we reflect on key cases and accomplishments from the decades of PEN.
Edited by Sarmishta Subramanian.
Contributors include José Teodoro, Charlie Foran, Adnan Khan, and Rui Umezawa, with reflections from previous presidents Margaret Atwood, Marian Botsford Fraser, Randy Boyagoda, Haroon Siddiqui, and Grace Westcott.
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Design: Soapbox
Illustration: Sandra Dionisi
Editor: Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch
Associate Editor: Eilish Waller
Amidst growing authoritarianism around the world, this year’s report aims to connect writers across borders, with hope and towards change, through the PEN tradition of letter writing.
“Letters have always been a means to create connection, to reach beyond ourselves, particularly before the internet and phones existed,” report editor Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch writes in their foreward. “Most of us have lost this waiting, this longing, as our technology has developed, but for some, like imprisoned writers, letter writing is still an important way of finding and maintaining connection with people on the outside.”
Contributors include Madeleine Thien, Mostafa Al-A’Sar and Maryam Shafipour.
Editor: Leila Marshy
Design: Soapbox
Photography: Jim Ryce
Canadians are good at helping people immigrate. We understand the struggle to get here, the awe of arrival, the making of a new life. But we are less aware of the cost of leaving. Whether planned over weeks and months, or suddenly in the middle of the night, leaving can be excruciating.
We have tried to capture a bit of this nuance and hardship in the theme of this year annual report. What are the fading memories, the discarded objects, the intangible monuments and milestones that we were forced to abandon? And what has this sense of abandoning done to us?
Featured writers included Saeed Teebi, Luis Horacio Nájera, and Ésery Mondésir.
Editor: Diana Kuprel
Design: Soapbox
Illustration: Richard Nalli-Petta
This year’s report focused on the growing threat of digital transnational repression by states like Iran, China, and Russia, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. In response to the violent attack on Salman Rushdie in New York, PEN co-hosted a solidarity event titled “The Freedom to Write and to Read.” PEN also advocated for the case of Iranian blogger Hoda Karimi Sadr for resettlement, which was accepted by the Canadian government.
Contributors include Arzu Yildiz, Sheng Xue, Maryam Shafipour, Siena Anstis and Noura Aljizawi.
Editor: Marcello Di Cintio
Design: Soapbox
Illustration: Fabricio Vanden Broeck
This year PEN advocated for Afghan women journalists after the fall of Kabul, urging the Canadian government to simplify refugee processes. PEN also held events spotlighting authoritarian repression and disinformation, including a panel on the Hong Kong democracy fighters and an online screening of Inside the Red Brick Wall. It also welcomed the release of Raif Badawi from prison in Saudi Arabia, who was part of PEN’s Writers in Peril program.
Contributors include Chris Tenove, Karen Walton, Mila Ghorayeb, and Greg Elmer.
Design: Soapbox
To mark PEN International’s 100th anniversary, Margaret Atwood and Omar El Akkad gave the inaugural Graeme Gibson Talk, which showcased the power of dystopian fiction. PEN Canada mourned the loss of Aaron Berhane, journalist and Chair of the Writers in Exile program, who died from COVID-19. PEN also won two major legal victories defending free expression including the Carbon Tax Sticker Ruling and the False Statement Provision.
Contributors include Jiang Weiping, Martha Kumsa, and Tanya Talaga.
Editor: Brendan de Caires
Design: Soapbox
Illustration: Sandra Dionisi
This year, PEN condemned state censorship and surveillance with the launch of No Friend But the Mountains, a prison narrative by Kurdish-Iranian journalist Behrouz Boochani. Additionally, PEN advocated for the release of Palestinian poet and honorary member Ashraf Fayadh, imprisoned in Saudi Arabia for “misguided and misguiding thoughts.” PEN also co-signed a national media statement condemning police repression at Wet’suwet’en.
Contributors include Polina Sadovskaya, Cecília Olliveira, andLucina Kathmann.
Editor: Brendan de Caires
Design: Soapbox
Illustration: Sandra Dionisi
This year, PEN celebrated its first female president Jennifer Clement, who adopted the International Women’s Manifesto that centered on women writers under threat and the systemic forces that silence them. Outside the Russian consulate in Toronto, members held a literary protest demanding the release of imprisoned Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov. At the Atwood-Gibson Gala, Rick Mercer joined Margaret Atwood to celebrate PEN’s legacy and the power of dissent.
Editor: Brendan de Caires
Design: Parcel
Photography: Chris Thomaidis
This year, PEN Canada expanded its global reach with a security training workshop for Indigenous women journalists in Guatemala and support for refugee seekers navigating the asylum process. Event highlights included a packed gala in conversation with Martin Amis, PEN International’s Congress in Lviv, Ukraine, and wide participation in Montreal’s Blue Metropolis Festival. The year reflected PEN’s commitment to protecting expression under threat, whether it be across borders or in Canadian courts.
Contributors include Nasrin Sotoudeh, Dieu Cay, and Eskinder Nega.
Editor: Emily M. Keeler
Design: Parcel
Taking inspiration from E.M. Forster, PEN focused on creating connections between Canadian readers and global writers in peril. PEN’s advocacy helped release Muhammad Bekjanov from prison and helped launched a report on freedom of expression in Guatemala. New initiatives like the ICORN City of Refuge in Surrey and meetings with Canadian ministries continued PEN’s support network for exiled writers.
Editor: Brendan de Caires
Design: Parcel
Photography: Chris Thomaidis
This year challenged the idea of who is “entitled” to speak and be heard, as PEN fought against government overreach and censorship. PEN’s advocacy helped secure safety for at-risk writers from Ethiopia and Honduras and pushed back on Bill C-51 and Quebec’s Bill 59. The inaugural Escribir Sin Miedo prize was awarded to Fred Alvarado, and new tools like “Know Your Rights” showcased PEN’s public impact.
Editor: Jennifer Lanthier
Design: Parcel
Illustration: Tara Jenkins
With a national board and new student PEN centres, PEN focused on Canada’s political climate, challenging CRA audits of charities and launching a Censorship Tracker. The inaugural Ken Filkow Award was established to honour exceptional contributions to freedom of expression. In Honduras, PEN helped found a new PEN centre in Tegucigalpa and initiated a journalism prize to address rising journalist murders.
Editor: Camilla Gibb
Design: Jim Ryce
Illustrations: Troy Pynn
Impingements on freedoms in democracies often take on more insidious forms; they creep largely imperceptibly unless we are vigilant and aware. When Canadian scientists are silenced for results that challenge current environmental policies, both the specifics and broader implications of the issue need to be addressed.
Contributors include Haroon Siddiqui, Karen Connelly, and Dina Meza.
Editor: Diana Kuprel
Design: Jim Ryce
Illustrations: Ben Weeks
Photography: Chris Thomaidis
This year, PEN found itself most ardently engaged with freedom of expression issues right here in Canada. The year saw us hold Non-Speak Week, a week’s worth of activities focused on the threats to freedom of expression in Canada.
PEN Canada is vigilant that the new normal in Canada must be one that remains committed to upholding not only freedom of expression, but also “the humanity of Canada.”
Contributors include Ilamaran Nagarasa, Bruce Livesey, Elise Moser, and Stephen Reid.
Editor: Jared Bland
Design: Soapbox
Photography: Chris Thomaidis
This year’s annual report takes inspiration from PEN Canada’s recent focus on Mexico. As detailed in the essays that follow, this campaign was launched with an groundbreaking investigation into the war on Mexico’s journalists and then a historic delegation led by PEN International president John Ralston Saul.
Throughout this report, you’ll find “Protestas,” short pieces originally read by their authors in Mexico as part of the PEN delegation.
Contributions by Elena Poniatowska, Luis Miguel Aguilar, Jennifer Clement, and Russell Banks, Becky Toyne, and Rita Leistner.
Editor: Diana Kuprel
Design: Soapbox
Illustrations: Doug Ross
The dramatic advances in communications technology have forever changed not only how we access and disseminate information, but also how we connect with one another.
This year’s annual report pays tribute to writers who have gone online only to be taken offline.
Contributions by Kerry Pither, Charles Foran, and Ayub Nuri.
Editor: Alison Gordon
Design: Soapbox
Illustrations: Darren Booth, Micheal Cho, Brian Cronin, Tara Hardy, and Jacqui Oakley
The Writers in Prison Committee is at the heart of PEN’s raison d’être. 2010 marks the 50th anniversary of the creation of the committee that formalized the tradition of helping fellow writers in peril.
This annual report looks back on emblematic cases in the decades of this committee’s work.
Editor: Alison Gordon
Design: Soapbox
Illustrations: Jen Hsieh, Aaron Leighton, Nimit Malavia, Stéphane Monnet, Kyle Reed, and Ben Weeks
Over its 25 years of advocacy, PEN Canada has been many things to many people, some of whom share their stories in this annual report. Each has a different view on what “My PEN” means, but the common thread is that lives were changed: both those whom PEN Canada helped, and those who were the helpers.
Contributions by Gerald Ohlsen, Ken Wiwa, Alan Cumyn, Christopher Waddell, Jiang Weiping, Juliet O’Neill, Deborah Ellis, Martha Kumsa, and Jalal Barzanji.
Editor: Alison Gordon
Design: Soapbox
Illustrations: Jason Schneider
Today computers and the internet have become the weapons of choice for those of us who fight for freedom of expression: writing letters of encouragement to imprisoned colleagues and attempting to persuade those responsible for their incarceration. Unfortunately, the internet has also become a tool for those who would curtail that freedom.
In this year’s annual report, we examine some of the implications of the ways in which technology has changed our ongoing struggle.
Editor: Alison Gordon
Design: Soapbox
Illustrations: Ilana Kohn, Lino, Andy Potts, Gary Sawyer, Michelle Thompson, Mario Wagner, and Phil Wheeler
In this annual report you will find postcards featuring some of our honorary members, showing, when possible, illustrations of their faces.
Each time one of these cards goes through the postal system and government bureaucracies of the country involved in the case, countless people see the image, read our concerns, and know what has been done, and to whom. We ask that you detach them and mail them to the governments concerned.
Editor: Alison Gordon
Research and writing: David Cozac
Design: Soapbox
Illustrations: Ben Weeks
Words are tools for writers to communicate ideas. Yet words are, often arbitrarily, declared to be “bad words.” They are forbidden, taboo, and using them can inflict a terrible penalty on those so audacious to use them. Some of the examples are baffling, others almost comical, but each illustrates the cruel reality of the writer’s life when freedom is denied. In this report we shout some of the words for which writers were thrown in jail.
Featuring stories about Win Tin, Ali Mohaqiq Nasab, Zouhair Yahyaoui, Sobirjon Yakubov, and the ideas that are censored in Afghanistan, Burma, China, Eritrea and Turkey.
Editor: Alison Gordon
Research and writing: David Cozac
Design: Soapbox
Illustration: Ben Weeks
Photography: Gary Mulcahey
This year the Writers in Exile Network is a new frontier for PEN Canada, established to support exiled writers by helping them adjust to life in Canada and by creating guidelines that inspire PEN centres around the world. This annual report introduces you to some of the brave men and women who have made Canada their new home.
Featuring stories about Ameera Javeria, Mir Hussain Mahdavi, Hassan Chèrif Kala, Sara Habtemichael, Rajah, Sheng Xue, Thomas Madondoro, and Fereshteh Molavi.
Editor: Haroon Siddiqui
Design: Soapbox
Knowing the facts about imprisoned writers’ cases is one thing. Hearing from them is quite another. The letters that PEN Canada receives from writers in prisons or countries of exile make tangible the connection between our efforts and the lives of those we support.
This report features letters from Koigi wa Wamwere, Faraj Sarkoohi, Lee Tae-Bok, Vincent Rwabukwisi, Mauricio Rosenkof, Doan Quoc Sy, Chris Anyanwu, Yehude Simon Munaro, and Ken Saro-Wiwa.
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