PEN Canada celebrates literature, defends freedom of expression and aids writers in peril.
An account of the 1995 trial of the author Yasar Kemal – for publishing an article that condemned Turkey’s mistreatment of its Kurdish minority and indicated his support for the Kurdish Worker’s Party (PKK).
In 1996, Karen Connelly decided to host a reading event in Calgary to fundraise for PEN Canada. The following is her description of the experience from the time she conceived the idea to the event’s post-mortem at a saloon.
Tonight, a guard, not following the rules, leaves the peephole ajar. I wait a while to see what will happen but it remains open. Standing on tiptoe, I peer out. There’s a narrow corridor, and across from my cell I can see at least two other doors. Indeed, I have a full view of two doors. What a sensation of freedom!
In October 1991, Alberto Manguel joined a PEN Canada/PEN USA West delegation to investigate alleged human rights abuses committed against Mexican journalists.
In September 1998, months after her release, Anyanwu visited Toronto to speak at the annual meeting of the Canadian Committee to Protect Journalists.
The following are extracts from PEN Canada’s May 1993 newsletter. Six months earlier, Salman Rushdie’s appearance onstage with then-Ontario premier Bob Rae marked the first occasion on which a head of government had greeted the author in a public.
Margaret Atwood on the founding of PEN Canada The first PEN centre in Canada was founded in 1926 in Montreal. In 1983, the English-language centre, PEN Canada, moved to Toronto, …
That’s to say, anybody’s a witch if you point at them and say they are. And that, of course, was the purpose and the nature of the witch hunt.