Ira Wells has been elected as president of PEN Canada. Wells is a critic, essayist, professor of literature, and author of three books, the latest of which, On Book Banning (Biblioasis, 2025), illustrates the historical opposition and current-day challenges to the freedom to read.
Now, as he starts his three-year term as president, Ira talked to us about joining PEN Canada, the importance of defending expressive freedoms, and the power of a writer.
PEN: What inspired you to get involved in PEN?
Ira Wells: I am inspired by PEN’s history, by its past leadership, by the countless PEN volunteers who devote their time and talents to defending PEN’s ideals. Those ideals, set forth in the PEN Charter, affirm that literature “knows no frontiers,” art should be “left untouched…by political passion,” and we must stand up for the “unhampered transmission of thought.”
Unfortunately, over the last several years, those ideals have come under attack, even as literature itself–the lifeblood of PEN–has been radically devalued, both in education and in the broader culture. We’ve all seen the statistics about young people reading less and less, about the students who arrive at university having never read a whole book.
More worryingly, young people have not been taught to understand why literature should “know no frontiers,” why art should be untouched by “political passion,” or why we should defend the speech rights of people with whom we profoundly disagree. To me, this feels like a precarious moment, and PEN’s ideals have never been more essential.
What role does literature play in your life and work?
Well, I’m a scholar of literature, so my case may not be entirely representative. But I also don’t think that my experience of literature is especially unique. You know, there are so many demands on our time, and our options for entertainment and distraction are endless. It’s not hard to imagine a future in which book reading will be consigned to a small but devoted cult of readers.
But, speaking only for myself, I strongly feel that time spent engaging with literature is time well spent. Literature provides me with an experience of the numinous, of beauty and truth, of profound connection with other minds. Reading to my children has been among the deepest pleasures of my life. Of course, I spend much of my day answering emails and attending meetings and chauffeuring children around. I read the news; I take the click-bait; I scroll. I often regret squandering that time. But I never regret having spent an hour with a book.
How might your previous experiences, including as a professor, shape your work as president of PEN Canada?
I’m super fortunate to teach literature courses to spirited and enthusiastic undergraduates. Contrary to what you sometimes hear, today’s university students are excellent—as good or better than ever. My students are a source of inspiration. But many of them do not understand why authorities or “the government” shouldn’t simply silence people who hold the wrong views. This is rarely articulated openly–my classes are focused squarely on literature and the critical concepts we use for literary study.
But my experiences have left me with the feeling that, for a variety of complex reasons, our education systems have not been providing students with an understanding of the value of free expression. If anything, they may have inculcated the opposite. This is something we’re going to need to address. If we value literature, art, and democracy, we have to support free expression, which is the oxygen required for those things. But the notion that you should stand up for the speech rights of someone you despise doesn’t come naturally. You need to be taught why this matters, and right now, there aren’t many places for young people to learn those lessons.
When did the topic of free expression first come into your life? Is there a memory or a mentor or writer that introduced you to this value?
There wasn’t one particular moment, although I do remember, as a university student studying English literature, that most of the writers I admired had been banned at one point or another. That was an important realization: if you have something worth saying, someone will try and shut you up.
Of course, the writers who have been associated with PEN over the years are inspirational. Joseph Conrad and H. G. Wells were among the first members of PEN International in 1921; a year later, Willa Cather, Robert Frost, Eugene O’Neill and others joined PEN America; more recently, Jennifer Egan, Andrew Solomon, Ayad Akhtar have led that organization. Margaret Atwood was the first president of PEN Canada. I’m awestruck by the courage of PEN Canada’s Writers-in-Exile–writers like Luis Horacio Nájera, the journalist who was forced to flee Mexico over death threats from a drug cartel, or Tala Motazedi, a queer screenwriter who fled the Iranian regime. For them, the struggle isn’t theoretical. They have stuck their necks out in the real world. They are people of enormous courage and integrity.
What are the most pressing issues threatening free expression today, in Canada and around the world?
Well the first thing to point out is that free expression is an anomaly. For the billions of people living under authoritarian regimes, free expression isn’t under threat, because there is no free expression. We can, and will, continue to do everything we can for writers who are unjustly persecuted around the world. But this entails humility: we are not able to grant expressive freedom where none exists, or change entire legal structures, or convince authoritarian rulers to grant rights that would lead to their own demise. This is why we need to be more vocal, and less circumspect, about safeguarding our own expressive freedom. We need to be clearer about the threats to those freedoms, and clearer about why those freedoms are non-negotiable.
We must continue to engage on all fronts. We must speak up on behalf of writers who have been imprisoned (or worse). We must continue to support writers who have been forced to flee for their lives–writers who come to Canada to exercise the speech rights many of us take for granted. And we must call out the continued threats to those rights, which are all around us.
The destruction of books isn’t just something that took place in Nazi Germany. Censorship isn’t something that happens elsewhere. We’ve seen the destruction of thousands of books in school libraries in Ontario. The government of Alberta is sending strong signals that it intends to get into the book banning business. In our most recent election, at least one journalist saw her segment cancelled because CTV capitulated to an online “troll base.” The Federal government recently tabled Bill C-2, which could lead to increased data sharing with U.S. law enforcement agencies–agencies that are increasingly cracking down on the speech rights of students, immigrants, and others who dare to defy the new state orthodoxy. As Frederick Douglass, the former slave and abolitionist, said: the right to expressive freedom is the right which tyrants “first of all strike down.”
Where would you like to see PEN Canada in 3 years time? What do you think are the organization’s greatest assets, and how can we use them better?
PEN Canada is an extraordinarily creative and talented constellation of people. I hope we can build on our strengths by expanding our mentorship capacity. I’ve seen how meaningful, how deeply satisfying it can be for Canadian writers to share their talents and enthusiasm with their mentees. The benefits flow both ways. I’d like to see greater participation in youth-oriented culture, which means greater online engagement. We need to meet young people where they are, recognize the situation in which they find themselves, and encourage pathways into PEN. I hope we can forge new partnerships and programming, particularly with an eye to youth.
You’ve written about the erosion of intellectual freedom as a public value. We’re also seeing the rise of illiberal sentiments and actions in nations around the world, including our own. If these values are not upheld, what is at stake?
At stake, ultimately, is our freedom to write, and correspondingly our freedom to read. Deeper than that, even, is our freedom to develop our own minds in a way that is free from coercion–the freedom to become the people we want to become.
Some well-intentioned people continue to believe that we can improve society–make it safer, less harmful, morally pure, more equitable–by cracking down on the forms of expression that we don’t like. People have thought this way for millenia, and will continue to think this way; the desire to silence the disagreeable other is an ineradicable part of the human psyche. But the political embrace of this thinking will always dead-end. Not only will purging society of the speech you detest not prevent the spread of those ideas, but it will provide your enemies with a powerful tool to use against you in turn. The censorship snake always eats itself.
