PEN Canada celebrates literature, defends freedom of expression and aids writers in peril.
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.
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 — Join PEN Canada and Another Story bookshop as we celebrate an evening of creative writing by some of Canada’s most original new voices.
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.
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
PEN Canada is thrilled to be partnering with Wordfest on the SuperFan Showcase series, in which notable Canadians engage in wide-ranging, generous conversation about writing and ideas with their favourite authors. When we approached Yann Martel, he loved the idea of an in-person show, but thought he would be the host, given how much he enjoys André Alexis’s work. Actually, it was André who asked for Yann – which demonstrates that this 75-minute event is going to be well-grounded in mutual admiration (although they will likely both recoil at the notion of super-fandom). Intelligent. Self-effacing. Unpredictable. Not to be missed.
Fareh Malik is a spoken word poet from Hamilton, Ontario and the winner of the 2022 RBC/PEN Canada New Voices Award. His new book Streams that Lead Somewhere is available from Mawenzi Press. In its citation the New Voices Award jury praised Malik’s “tenderness and throat-grabbing use of imagery” and his “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.”