PEN Canada press release

Belarus: Nobel Peace laureate sentenced to prison

On March 3, 2023, a court in Minsk sentenced writer, Nobel Peace Prize winner and PEN Belarus member Ales Bialiatski to 10 years in prison on trumped up charges of smuggling, and organizing and financing actions that grossly violate public order. Bialiatski was tried alongside two colleagues from the Viasna Human Rights Centre (Viasna)

CFE online event — Putin’s War Against Journalists

One year after Russian president Vladimir Putin launched his invasion and muzzled Russian media, what have we learned from the war against Ukraine and against journalists?  Join three Russian journalists who spoke at a CFE panel one year ago to see how they have refused to be silenced. How are Russia’s independent media fighting to expose the truth about the war? What are the challenges  as the war heads into its second year?

Arzu Yildiz—featured writer for FTRW 2023

Arzu Yildiz—featured writer for Freedom to Read Week 2023 The following extract is from The Street, an unpublished novel by Arzu Yildiz which is currently being translated from the original Turkish …

Take action for Nobel laureate Ales Bialiatski

Take Action for Nobel Laureate Ales Bialiatski on International Mother Language Day International Mother Language Day, held every year on February 21, is observed to promote linguistic and cultural diversity, and multilingualism. …

What I Have Learned from Exiled Journalists

Anneli Andre-Barrett is a senior volunteer for the PEN Canada Writers in Exile (WiE) community, a Refugee Integration Mentor, and Skills Development Team member of Ontario’s Private Refugee Sponsor Network …

Toward a Practice of Collectivity

Toward a Practice of Collectivity By El Jones The following essay appears in Abolitionist Intimacies, and is reprinted with the permission of Fernwood Publishing. It is the summer of 2020, …

You’re invited to the launch of Em Dial’s Virtual Poetry Exhibition THE BALL

In “The Ball,” poet Em Dial explores how the mythos of the overtly sexual and desperately self-loathing “quad***n” has been crafted by some of the most atrocious sides of science and history. Throughout this exhibition are poems, self-portraits, and artifacts through which an artist attempts to separate themself, their queerness, and their complex familial history from the disturbing resonance of the American imagination.