Support PEN Canada on Giving Tuesday 2022
Together We Stand for Freedom of Expression This past August, the brutal attack on Sir Salman Rushdie was a chilling reminder that freedom of expression can never be taken for …
Author: PEN-Canada
DOIW 2022 – Take Action for Narges Mohammadi
Narges Mohammadi is an Iranian writer, journalist, human rights defender, and Honorary Member of the Danish, Belgian, Norwegian, and Swedish PEN centres. She is the former Vice-President and spokesperson of the Defenders of Human Rights Center (DHRC), co-winner of the 2013 Oxfam Novib / PEN Award, and winner of the 2011 Per Anger Prize and the 2009 Alexander Langer Award.
Farewell, Asmara
Aaron Berhane was a beloved leader of our centre’s Writers in Exile community and a valued member of PEN Canada’s Board of Directors before his untimely death, due to Covid-19, in May 2021. He fled Eritrea in 2002, following a draconian crackdown on the independent press. The following extract from his posthumously published memoir The Burden of Exile: A Banned Journalist’s Flight from Dictatorship, recounts his early days hiding from government agents in Asmara.
PEN PROTEST / DAY OF THE DEAD 2022
From 2 to 7 November, to mark PEN International’s PEN Protest/Day of the Dead Campaign and the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists.
Down the Road, and a World Away – Poetry Readings by Canada’s New Voices in Toronto and Montreal — October 27 and 29
Down the Road, and a World Away — Join PEN Canada and Another Story bookshop as we celebrate an evening of creative writing by some of Canada’s most original new voices.
Special Event Oct 23: Hot Docs & Ageless International Film Festival — Freedom of Expression Screenings
The event opens with a screening of the short film, Codename Sally, documenting the extraordinary efforts of a handful of PEN Canada members to bring Salman Rushdie in total secrecy and under heavy security, to the stage of the Winter Garden Theatre in Toronto for the PEN Benefit thirty years ago.
Luis Horacio Nájera wins 2022 Humber College Writers-in-Exile Scholarship
TORONTO, ON, October 12, 2022 – Award-winning journalist and crime analyst Luis Horacio Nájera is the recipient of the 2022 PEN Canada-Humber College Writers-in-Exile Scholarship, which provides peer mentorship to …
By burning their head scarves, Iranian women are restoring their voices
AVA HOMA CONTRIBUTED TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 26, 2022 Ava Homa is the Nautilus Book award-winning author of Daughters of Smoke and Fire. Among the innumerable viral …
The world must stand with Salman Rushdie and writers like him
JOHN RALSTON SAUL CONTRIBUTED TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 28, 2022 John Ralston Saul is president emeritus of PEN International. His 14 books include The Collapse of Globalism …
After the attack on Salman Rushdie, we must continue to speak out
GRACE WESTCOTT SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 26, 2022 Thirty years ago, PEN Canada, a non-partisan organization that supports freedom of expression in Canada and writers endangered …