PEN Canada envisions a world where
writers are free to write,
readers are free to read,
and freedom of expression prevails
Today, PEN International, Danish PEN, English PEN, German PEN, Norwegian PEN, PEN America, PEN Canada, Swedish PEN and PEN Turkey joined the International Press Institute (IPI) and 10 other international press freedom and freedom of expression groups in a joint public letter sent to the General Director of Turkey’s Public Advertising Agency (BIK), which is […]
Aaron Berhane, an award-winning journalist and publisher, is the recipient of the 2019 PEN Canada-Humber College Writers-in-Exile Scholarship and acting Chair of PEN Canada’s Writers in Exile Committee. He was co-founder and editor-in-chief of Setit, Eritrea’s first and largest independent newspaper, until September 2001 when it was shut down during a government crackdown. Berhane lived […]
London, May 18, 2020.- The assassination of Jorge Miguel Armenta Ávalos, director of El Tiempo newspaper; threats against the newspaper Reforma; the recent investigations of Notimex; and stigmatizing comments about media and journalists by the authorities demonstrate the insecurity in which journalists live in Mexico, said PEN International and PEN Centres in Guadalajara and San Miguel de Allende. On […]
Organizations which support human rights, press freedom and journalists are calling on United Nations mechanisms and member states to help save the lives of four Yemeni journalists who were sentenced to death in April 2020 in the capital Sana’a on charges of “spying” and “spreading false news.” Of the six other journalists in the same case whom […]
PEN International is highly concerned about the arrest and continued detention of reporter, lawyer and human rights defender Elchin Mammad. On 30 March 2020, a few days after Mammad published a critical report on the human rights situation in Azerbaijan, police arrested him at his home, claiming to have found stolen jewellery in his office. […]
PEN Malaysia is deeply concerned by the selective targeting of Malaysian journalist Tashny Sukumaran by the authorities for her report in the South China Morning Post on 1 May 2020 headlined Coronavirus: Hundreds arrested as Malaysia cracks down on migrants in COVID-19 red zones. On 2 May 2020, she received a telephone call from the Royal Malaysian […]
On World Press Freedom Day, PEN International published its 2019 Case List, documenting 212 cases of writers facing harassment, arrest, violence and even death. Read and download the Case List For nearly a century, PEN International has monitored and advocated for writers who have suffered repression of their right to write freely and to comment on […]
Fatih Demir, an exiled Turkish journalist, is PEN Canada’s current Writer-in-Residence at George Brown College. Demir was an economics reporter for Today’s Zaman, an English-language daily inTurkey and fled to Canada in 2016 while hundreds of journalists were being jailed in the wake of the failed 2015 coup. Demir was recently interviewed by PEN’s Communications […]
Humber School for Writers Creative Writing by Correspondence Program (Creative Writing-Fiction, Creative Non-Fiction, Poetry) The Humber School for Writers is seeking applications from PEN Canada’s Writers-in-Exile for its 28-week graduate certificate program commencing in September 2020. A full scholarship is available to writers who: are working on a book-length project – creative non-fiction, memoir, novel, book of short stories or […]
Re: Media Access to Federal Inmates and Prisons during the COVID-19 Crisis We are writing to express our concern regarding Correctional Service of Canada (CSC), and the restrictions it is placing on federal inmates’ access to news reporters. These restrictions are unduly limiting the media’s ability to provide the public with an accurate and timely […]
Finding the Words: Writers on Inspiration, Desire, War, Celebrity, Exile, and Breaking the Rules