PEN Canada envisions a world where
writers are free to write,
readers are free to read,
and freedom of expression prevails
Kurdish Iranian author Ava Homa, a PEN Canada Writer-in-Exile, has been chosen as the next writer-in-residence at Vancouver’s Historic Joy Kogawa House.
In a letter to City Hall, PEN Canada voices concern regarding proposed revisions to the City of Toronto’s anti-discrimination policy and funding conditions for grant applications.
PEN Canada partners with the Literary Review of Canada and Diaspora Dialogues to launch Spur, a new national festival of politics, art and ideas in Toronto and Winnipeg this spring.
PEN Canada is excited to announce the first annual PEN International New Voices Award. The award aims to encourage new writing and to provide space where for young and unpublished writers can submit their work.
Three years after Mexico accepted United Nations (UN) recommendations for combating violence against journalists and eradicating impunity for human rights violations, “the rate at which journalists are being attacked and killed in the country continues to spiral,” PEN International warned on March 7, 2013 during a submission to the UN’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process.
Bare It For Books, launching today, will work to raise awareness of both free speech and Canadian literature.
We’re inviting all of our members and supporters to take a quick survey about PEN Canada. If you can spare 10 minutes to tell us which of our programs matter most–and what we should be doing more, or less, of–please take our outreach survey here.
This charge is a misuse of a law which, in the context of international freedom of expression standards, itself should not exist. – John Ralston Saul
On November 19, 2012 PEN Canada voiced concerns that the “vague language of the Income Tax Act gives government officials discretionary powers that are overbroad and easily abused” with respect to determining the political activities in which charitable organizations can engage. PEN urged the federal government to reconsider the issue of “so-called ‘partisan’ activity by […]
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.
Finding the Words: Writers on Inspiration, Desire, War, Celebrity, Exile, and Breaking the Rules