PEN Canada celebrates literature, defends freedom of expression and aids writers in peril.
PEN International is deeply shocked and appalled to learn that former PEN America President and renowned writer, Salman Rushdie, was attacked today just before giving a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution in New York. We utterly condemn the attack and wish him a prompt and full recovery.
Amber Bracken is a Canadian photojournalist who has reported extensively on the impacts of colonization, often affecting Indigenous peoples in North America. PEN Canada awarded her the 2022 Ken Filkow Prize for her courageous coverage of the 2021 coastal pipeline protests on Wetʼsuwetʼen First Nation territory in British Columbia. Bracken has also won the Contemporary Issues category of the 2017 World Press Photo awards and in 2022 won the overall World Press Photo of the Year.
PEN Centres around the world are appalled by Monday’s news that writer Kyaw Min Yu (also known as Ko Jimmy) is among four pro-democracy activists who have been executed by the military junta, following a show trial that denied their ability to establish their innocence according to international fair trial norms. According to sources, Kyaw Min Yu’s family have yet to be informed of the specific date that his execution took place.
The Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights (RWCHR), in partnership with an international coalition of leading NGOs, including Reporters Without Borders (RSF), the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI), Parliamentarians for Global Action (PGA), PEN International, Defend Defenders, and Mr. Isaak’s Swedish legal counsel, filed a complaint to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention calling for accountability for the Eritrean government’s gross human rights violations against Dawit Isaak and his colleagues, the longest detained journalists in the world today, and their immediate and unconditional release.
PEN International is alarmed by reports that writer and human rights defender, Teesta Setalvad, has been detained by the Indian authorities.
Myanmar’s military government recently confirmed a death sentence imposed on author and activist Kyaw Min Yu under the country’s Counter-Terrorism law.
June 24, 2022 — Fareh Malik, a poet from Hamilton, Ontario has won the 2022 RBC/PEN Canada New Voices award. The jury described his collection, Streams that Lead Somewhere as an intense “portrait of what it’s like to feel othered and alienated by daily doses of hate.” The citation noted the poems’ “tenderness and throat-grabbing use of imagery” and Malik’s “wide range of voices and tones to convey a nuanced spectrum of emotions and a laser sharp critique of Canada’s blatant and covert systemic racism”
PEN Canada’s inaugural Marie-Ange Garrigue prize has been awarded to Mariam Al Zier.
The Canadian photojournalist Amber Bracken has won PEN Canada’s 2022 Ken Filkow Prize for advancing freedom of expression in Canada.
Humber School for Writers Creative Writing (Correspondence) Program The Humber School for Writers is seeking applications from PEN Canada’s Writers-in-Exile group for its 28-week graduate certificate program commencing in September 2022. The PEN …