Defend Expression

PEN Canada is seeking nominations from the public and civil society peers for two annual awards: the Ken Filkow Prize, for advancing freedom of expression in Canada, and the Marie-Ange Garrigue Prize, for assisting a writer in danger outside of Canada. The prizes are valued at $2,000 and $3,000, respectively.

We encourage anyone interested in PEN to make a nomination. Tell us who’s work is making an impact —nominees can be individuals or organizations, or a combination of both. For inspiration, learn more about the previous winners of the Marie-Ange Garrigue Prize or the previous winners of the Ken Filkow Prize.

The deadline for nominations is Wednesday August 19, 2026. 

This year’s nominees will be judged by a panel that includes Andrew DuBois, Andy Lamey and Shawn Micallef:

Andrew DuBois

Andrew DuBois is Associate Professor of English at the University of Toronto. He is the author or co-editor of seven books, including The Anthology of Rap, Ashbery’s Forms of Attention, Close Reading: The Reader, and The Crossroads of Music and Literature

Andy Lamey

Andy Lamey teaches philosophy at the University of California, San Diego. A former Toronto journalist, he is the author, most recently of The Canadian Mind: Essays on Writers and Thinkers (Sutherland House).

Shawn Micallef

Shawn Micallef is the author of Frontier City: Toronto on the Verge of Greatness, The Trouble With Brunch: Work Class and the Pursuit of Leisure and Full Frontal TO: Exploring Toronto’s Vernacular Architecture. The updated and expanded edition of his first book, Stroll: Psychogeographic Walking Tours of Toronto, was published in 2024. He’s a Toronto Star columnist, civics instructor at University of Toronto, and a Senior Fellow at Massey College where he was also a 2011-2012 Southam Journalism Fellow. Shawn is a co-founder of Spacing, a magazine about Canadian cities and urban issues. In 2002, while a resident at the Canadian Film Centre’s Media Lab, he co-founded [murmur], a location-based mobile phone documentary project established in over 20 cities globally.