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 are truly grateful for your time, effort, care, and imagination—you make a difference.
In these last few days of 2024, let’s take a moment to reflect on five of the brightest moments of the past year at PEN:
1. An extraordinary anthology tours Ontario
From Newmarket to Mississauga, and all around Toronto, the PEN Canada Writers in Exile showcased their anthology, The Uncaged Voice, at book signings, author events, literary festivals, and talks.
The writers were spotted at the Arabic Canadian Book Fair, the Word on the Street Toronto, and inside the pages of the Literary Review of Canada.
You can find a copy of The Uncaged Voice at your local bookstore.
2. Critical conversations on topics that matter
This year, PEN Canada was invited by civil society and literary peers to speak on their panels in Ottawa and Montreal. There was a pattern this year: most often, these panels focused on book bans in Canada, and the growing threat of Digital Transnational Repression — something that the exiled community we serve experiences as they build new lives in Canada.
Our major public events this year focused on the climate crisis and the restrictions put on Black creative expression. PEN also co-sponsored over 10 online panels at the Centre for Free Expression, from AI in warfare, to campus protests, and book bans in Canadian schools, all of which can be viewed on their YouTube channel.
3. An awards night to remember
At the Urbanspace Gallery at 401 Richmond St West, PEN welcomed its 2024 annual award winners. Speeches were shared, members and patrons met, and monologues written by Fereshteh Molavi served as captivating performances in between the presentations.
4. Creating community for newcomers, with performances, potlucks, and workshops
PEN Canada helps novelists, journalists, poets, editors, translators, essayists, and playwrights from dozens of countries now living in Canada who have fled persecution because of their writing. They are the PEN Canada Writers in Exile.
We celebrated as they developed new works with Don Gillmor, and performed their stories to packed rooms in Toronto’s east end. They gathered for potluck dinners at Romero House to celebrate the holidays and welcome new members.
You can meet these writers at the Hirut Cafe at the next Voices of Freedom events on Sunday, March 30 and Sunday, June 1, 2025.
5. Uplifting new voices in poetry
This year marked the return of a two-city poetry event for the New Voices Award, this time featuring 2023 winner Christine Wu. At both the Atwater Library in Montreal and Another Story Bookshop in Toronto, she read from her forthcoming poetry book — Familial Hungers (Brick Books, 2025) — alongside poets Darby Minott Bradford, Emily Tristan Jones, and Britta Badour.
This year’s RBC / PEN Canada New Voices Award was won by Nancy Huggett, a poet and short story writer living in Ottawa. She joined us at our awards ceremony in October, alongside her mentor, Susan Olding, with whom Huggett is now halfway through her yearlong mentorship. You can get to know her better by listening back to the conversation she had with CBC Radio Ottawa.
