We are please to announce a new residency for writers living in exile 🌎 PEN Canada, Victoria University, and the Jackman Humanities Institute (JHI) invite applications for its Exiled Writer-in-Residence position for the 2026-2027 academic year. 🗓️ Deadline: Monday July 20, 2026 buff.ly/m8kOWVc

Before our October event, learn more about the fund: pencanada.ca/advocacy-aid...

Save-the-date for an unforgettable evening of community and purpose. On Thursday Oct 1, together we will celebrate the life of beloved CBC reporter and humanitarian Joan Leishman while building a vital legacy of support for writers in exile living in Canada. This event is proudly supported by CBC.

"With poet Ahmed Douma’s appeal hearing due to take place imminently, the Court of Appeal has an opportunity to reverse a grave miscarriage of justice. No one should be in prison for their peaceful expression." www.pen-international.org/news/egypt-t...

PEN International and PEN Poland welcome Poland’s Anti-SLAPP Act, a win for press freedom and protection for writers and journalists against vexatious lawsuits. Polish authorities should seize the momentum by decriminalizing defamation: www.pen-international.org/news/poland-...

12 writers. 25 years. Proof of life now. 📣 This summer, PEN International, together with PEN Eritrea in Exile and other PEN Centres, will launch a global campaign demanding urgent proof of life, accountability, and justice world's long-detained writers.

Twelve Eritrean writers and journalists have been disappeared for 25 years. One is Dawit Isaak. He is a journalist, writer and playwright. He is the co-ownder of Setit, Eritrea’s largest-circulation independent newspaper. He is a father to three.

The Walrus and Peter Mansbridge are proud to launch the Mansbridge Essay, a new annual $5,000 program supporting emerging writers in Canada. The essay will be published in The Walrus’s January/February 2027 issue. Submissions due July 15. Submit your pitch. https://thewalrus.ca/new-essay-program/

For more than a century, Alberta’s public libraries have largely answered to the communities they serve. But now, Alberta’s recently passed Bill 28 could fundamentally alter how public libraries operate across the province: buff.ly/nzxGpBo

PEN Canada began at a kitchen table. It was a distinguished kitchen table — Margaret Atwood’s. Four decades ago, the first PEN chapter in Canada, founded in 1926 in Québec, had just split into francophone and anglophone centres: PEN Québec in Montreal and PEN Canada in Toronto.

What happens when libraries disappear? Five rural libraries in Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley are set to close this summer, which account for 45% of the region’s total libraries. The closure of these libraries will be a huge blow to the rural communities they serve: www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Next week at our sold-out Summer Social, Kim Echlin will be interviewed by Ali Sobati. Sobati is an Iranian poet, translator, and literary activist based in Toronto. With over 20 years in Iran’s suppressed literary and academic circles, he has taught across underground and alternative institutions.

This is the winner of last year's Marie-Ange Garrigue Prize 👇 Now, this year's prize is open for nominations — we encourage anyone interested in PEN to submit a nomination: pencanada.ca/advocacy-aid...

PEN members — RSVP to attend our Annual General Meeting. 🗓️ Thursday June 11 ⏰ 5:30 - 6:30 p.m. This year the AGM will be hybrid – with a Zoom link available to any member or supporter across the country, and limited seats in Toronto available to PEN members only. pencanada.ca/event/annual...

Kurdish-Canadian journalist Diary Marif spent five years advocating for the release of five imprisoned writers. For this work, he was awarded the Marie-Ange Garrigue Prize last year. We caught up with Diary, who tells us about his sense of responsibility and optimism: pencanada.ca/a-voice-for-...

PEN joins an international coalition of human rights organizations calling for the immediate, unconditional release of Vietnamese journalist and democracy advocate Phạm Đoan Trang. Today is her 48th birthday, and the sixth birthday she spends behind bars: www.pen-international.org/news/pen-int...

PEN members — RSVP to attend our Annual General Meeting. 🗓️ Thursday June 11 ⏰ 5:30 - 6:30 p.m. This year the AGM will be hybrid – with a Zoom link available to any member or supporter across the country, and limited seats in Toronto available to PEN members only. pencanada.ca/event/annual...

These 11 titles are the most banned books in Alberta. Each of them are graphic novels, and sit among the total 170 books removed from the school libraries this year: theijf.org/article/albe...

PEN International has joined 8 human rights organizations in a joint letter to Guatemala's incoming attorney general. They call for an end to criminal proceedings against journalists, dropping of politically motivated cases, and safe conditions for the return of exiled reporters: buff.ly/9S2KOmN

Very much looking forward to a day of reading. The author proceeds for Tell Others will be donated to @peninternational.bsky.social and @pencanada.bsky.social.

⚡️ Slavko Ćuruvija was murdered in Belgrade in 1999. For 27 years, his family and the Slavko Ćuruvija Foundation have fought for justice. Now the Foundation has been ordered to pay damages to those acquitted in the case. ECPMF stands with the Foundation. www.ecpmf.eu/serbia-solid...

According to information shared with PEN International, Dong was hospitalized in April at a prison-affiliated hospital in Tianjin after experiencing heart palpitations and discomfort. He has since been placed under 24-hour cardiac monitoring. www.pen-international.org/news/pen-int...

PEN members — we'll see you in four weeks at our Annual General Meeting, where you'll exercise your vote, hear from committee chairs, and connect with the board. 🗓️ Thursday June 11, 2026 📍 Online and In-person (Victoria College, Toronto) ⏰ 5:30 - 6:30 p.m. RSVP is required: buff.ly/Kqni4fq

"Writers, poets, and journalists who have fled Afghanistan have already paid a heavy price for their expression. Forcing them back now would place them in immediate danger." More on moves by the European Union, Uk, and US to deport or transfer Afghan nationals: ifex.org/pen-internat...

#Belarus: Writer and journalist Andrzej Poczobut spent over five years imprisoned for speaking truth to power. We welcome his release and urge authorities to free all unjustly jailed. Read our full statement with @penbelarus.bsky.social and Polish PEN ⬇️ www.pen-international.org/news/belarus...

Freedom of expression across the Middle East and North Africa deteriorated further in 2025, amid escalating conflict and violence. Find out more via our MENA region 2026 overview: www.pen-international.org/case-list-ov...

Nicaragua’s crackdown on free expression continues. Books by #GiocondaBelli & #SergioRamírez have been banned, while both writers have been stripped of nationality & forced into exile. Our statement. @giocondabelli.bsky.social @penamericas.bsky.social www.pen-international.org/news/nicarag...

If you're in #Vancouver, poet and previous New Voices Award finalist Edie Reaney Chunn is launching their chapbook at a free event in at Upstart & Crow on Tuesday May 19: www.eventbrite.ca/e/the-letter...

As we near the deadline for the 2026 New Voices Award submissions (Thursday May 7 at midnight), take a look back on the poetry and stories from last year's finalists: pencanada.ca/read-the-poe...

PEN International has published its Annual Case List, the world's longest-running record of attacks on writers 🌎 This year's report documents a troubling global pattern: spaces for expression, culture and dissent are shrinking as governments intensify efforts to silence critical expression.

These are 26 Ukrainian journalists held in Russian captivity. Behind every name is someone imprisoned for telling the truth. Pressure begins with people who refuse to forget. Share these names and demand justice, find out more ⬇️ www.pen-international.org/our-campaign...

In Belarus, prison authorities systematically confiscate and destroy the manuscripts, letters and diary entries of those imprisoned. For PEN/Opp, Maksim Znak, a lawyer, author and freed prisoner, shares his story of writing behind prison walls and the unbreakable will to create: buff.ly/16sY3Af

#Venezuela: Venezuela's Amnesty Law has been revoked, and journalist Rory Branker, denied relief even while it stood, still faces criminal charges after nearly a year in arbitrary detention. Read our statement ⬇️ www.pen-international.org/news/venezue...

For more than a decade, the RBC/PEN Canada New Voices Award has recognized excellence in emerging, yet-to-be published Canadian writers. This spring, several alumni of the award are celebrating new books, recognition from their peers, or their growing careers: pencanada.ca/news-and-boo...

In the words of our President, Burhan Sonmez, when journalists are silenced, truth is pushed into darkness. For a whole month, we're mobilising our global network to bring all detained Ukrainian journalists home. #WPFD2026 #FreeUkrainianJournalists www.pen-international.org/our-campaign...

"Free exploration of library shelves – the unruliness and personal nature of that exploration – is the essence of childhood reading...To read is to experience imaginative freedom, beyond the prescriptions of your parents and with it a soupçon of risk and shock." More from Sam Leith: buff.ly/yfGyjtU

Final week to submit for our RBC/PEN Canada New Voices Award 📣 The award is open to any genre of writing, including creative nonfiction, journalism, novel and memoir excerpts, plays, short stories, and poetry collections. 📅 Deadline: Thursday May 7, 2026 at 11:59 p.m. EST. buff.ly/k8WAQzp

"If the Alberta government had deliberately set out to discourage reading, it would be hard to design a better strategy than banning Kaur." A report found 170 books were banned across 41 school divisions, including two by Rupi Kaur. Ira Wells says more in The Star: www.thestar.com/opinion/cont...

"I learned numbers before I learned the way home, or how to spell my own name. At seven, I counted images in newspapers of those executed in the weeks after Iran’s 1979 revolution. At ten, I heard the whispered statistics of more than 7,500 executed for opposing the regime in the 1980s; buried...

PEN International joins the International Press Institute and partners in strongly condemning the intensifying use of Article 217/A of the Turkish Penal Code – widely known as the ‘disinformation law’ – to arrest, detain, and prosecute journalists: www.pen-international.org/news/turkiye...

Jailed newspaper publisher Jimmy Lai has been awarded Deutsche Welle’s freedom of speech award for his contribution to Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement. In February he was sentenced to 20 years in prison, in a ruling condemned as politically motivated by rights groups: buff.ly/09CoykC

📣 UPDATE: An Algerian court has set June 4th as the next hearing for poet & human rights defender Mohamed Tadjadit, who faces trumped-up charges, potentially carrying the death penalty, for his expression. Read more about his case: www.pen-international.org/cases/mohame...

For more than twenty years, George Brown College has championed a PEN Writer-in-Residency, inviting an exiled writer to the College to discuss freedom of expression, human rights and the importance of democracy. Last fall, Onder Deligoz, a journalist from Turkey, was chosen as the 2025 resident.

A new report from @citizenlab.ca exposes Chinese actors using impersonation to perpetuate Digital Transnational Repression. The report identifies two actors aligned with the PRC, and illustrates a Military-Civil Fusion system of attacks carried out by private contractors: buff.ly/wM7Xsfp

In case you missed it, last year's winners of the RBC / PEN Canada New Voices Award stopped by CBC Radio to speak on the power of poetry, how they got into it and their hopes for freedom of expression in the future. Listen to their conversation: buff.ly/f90jwus

Dozens of Alberta school divisions have pulled more than 170 books from library shelves to comply with a provincial order. In preparing to justify these bans, government officials used “snippets of these books that are ripped out of context” to shock the public: theijf.org/article/41-a...

#Georgia: Imprisoned poet Zviad Ratiani is to endure harsher treatment in prison ostensibly as a punitive measure for his dissenting views. We join PEN Georgia in urging his release: civil.ge/archives/732...

Congratulations to Dilan Qadir, a member of our community, who this morning was shortlisted for the RBC Bronwen Wallace Awards in the short fiction category. This Writers' Trust of Canada award is judged by writers Jamaluddin Aram, Jen Neale and Nathan Whitlock: www.cbc.ca/books/9-emer...

Happening tomorrow — launch event for the PEN International Case List, the world’s longest-running record of attacks on free expression faced by #writers around the globe. 📅 Thursday April 23 🕐 9 a.m. atlantic / 8 a.m. eastern / 5 a.m. pacific 📍 Zoom 🎟️ Free: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/voices-fre...

#HongKong is attempting to seize more than $16 million from Jimmy Lai. Lai, a ⁠pro-democracy advocate and the citys most vocal China critic, was sentenced to 20 years in jail ​on counts of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces and publishing seditious materials. www.reuters.com/business/fin...