PEN Canada envisions a world where
writers are free to write,
readers are free to read,
and freedom of expression prevails
As the trial for the killing of Avijit Roy reaches a verdict, a friend recalls the atmosphere at the Ekushey Book Fair a year after the iconic secularist was murdered.
Maria Saba is the 2020 PEN Canada-Humber College Writers-in-Exile Scholar. An Iran-born writer, storyteller and arts educator, Saba has published three books and over a hundred articles, interviews, and stories.
Liu Xiaobo who is suddenly ‘free’ isn’t free at all; but let us celebrate this great man’s greater, more lasting freedom, so terribly earned: to be back in the arms of his beloved.
A group of Kingston writers will sponsor the resettlement of a prominent Syrian writer who is under threat and has been forced to flee.
PEN Canada affords writers the opportunity to act together to safeguard the freedoms necessary for thought and expression. It is an excellent forum through which to work in concert towards a common goal, and I recommend that all writers join in this very important and significant work.
The greatest threat to freedom of expression in many parts of the world is just the same as it always was: authoritarian and repressive governments who know that the cold light of the truth, expressed with force and wit, is dangerous to their power.
I believe the mission of PEN Canada is defined by bringing awareness of the dignity of thinking and writing, regardless of who you are, where you live and what you believe in.
‘I can only be a writer if I can write freely, so in defending the right of writers to free expression, I am defending my own future … If you start hemming in free speech, you start hemming in free thinking. And that spells not only the end of democracy, but the end of the […]
Finding the Words: Writers on Inspiration, Desire, War, Celebrity, Exile, and Breaking the Rules