A conversation with Ira Wells, president of PEN Canada
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, …
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A conversation with Robina Aryubwal, recent Marie-Ange Garrigue Prize winner
Photo: women enjoy a field trip that Robina coordinated. “Your experiences are your strength. You don’t need to have everything figured out—just begin.” This is the advice Robina Aryubwal would …
News and books from previous New Voices Award winners
For more than a decade, the RBC/PEN Canada New Voices Award has recognized excellence in emerging, yet-to-be published Canadian writers. The 2025 prize is currently open for submissions — unpublished …
Canada: A second Ukraine? Reflections from the Writers for Peace Committee Meeting
The Writers for Peace Committee, founded in 1984, is a committee of PEN International. Each year, the committee meets in Bled, Slovenia, with this year’s meeting (April 7-10, 2025) focusing …
We Start from Scratch, but We Don’t Come from Nothing
Arzu Yildiz at work as a court reporter in Ankara, Turkiye. Photo taken inside the courthouse. Written by Arzu Yildiz Do Canadian media truly reflect the voices and colours of …
More than ever, Free Expression Matters | message from PEN Canada president
This letter first appeared in our March 2025 newsletter. You can subscribe to PEN Canada’s monthly newsletter to receive the latest free expression news and hear about our PEN community. …
Q&A with Nancy Huggett, 2024 New Voices Award winner
Nancy Huggett reads from her collection as she accepts her 2024 RBC/PEN Canada New Voices Award at a ceremony in October 2024. “To find the form that accommodates the mess, …
A PEN year-in-review
Thank you to all of our patrons, members, donors, supporters, volunteers, writers, readers, peers, and friends who have been a part of the PEN community in the past year. We …
After Assad: five Syrian and Arab writers on what’s next
The Syrian civil war, which began in 2011, has been a devastating and prolonged conflict led by the Syrian government under Bashar al-Assad. The conflict has caused immense humanitarian suffering, …
The life of a surveilled citizen: what is Digital Transnational Repression?
by Brendan de Caires (Executive Director, PEN Canada) Twenty years ago, Florian von Donnersmarck’s dark film “The Lives of Others” showed how easily a nation state – in the form …