Well, our 100th member could only really be Carles Torner, Catalan poet, human rights activist, Director of PEN International and the Director of PEN International’s Centenary programme. Torner has had a tremendous impact on the organisation over the past twenty years, serving on PEN’s Translation and Linguistic Rights Committee and advocating for writers in prison … Continue reading #100PENMembers No.100: Carles Torner
Majid Khadduri was a member of the Baghdad PEN centre from the 1930s onwards, and became the Director of Iraqi PEN in 1951. Khadduri was to become a key global figure in the study of International Relations and the politics of the Middle East, with an academic career spanning seventy years. After studying at the … Continue reading #100PENMembers No. 99: Majid Khadduri
Salil Tripathi is an author, award-winning journalist, and a human rights campaigner who currently chairs PEN’s Writers in Prison Committee. Tripathi, who was born in Bombay/Mumbai and moved to London in 1999, has also been a board member of English PEN, and previously worked for Amnesty International where he took part in missions to Nigeria … Continue reading #100PENMembers No. 98: Salil Tripathi
Erich Maria Remarque was one of German PEN’s most significant literary exiles. His most important novel Im Westen Richts Neues, published in 1929, was famously translated into English by A. W. Wheen as All Quiet on the Western Front. He was an early member of Berlin PEN, which in the late 1920s was one of the largest … Continue reading #100PENMembers No. 97: Erich Maria Remarque
British poet and editor Stephen Spender was a PEN member from the 1930s onwards, and agreed to become English PEN President in 1976. He helped set up the free speech organisation, Index on Censorship in 1972. It was after the Second World War that Spender first played a key role in PEN, as he liaised between PEN … Continue reading #100PENMembers No. 96: Stephen Spender
Lady Antonia Fraser is another one of PEN’s incredible women, serving the organisation for decades as a member and as President of English PEN 1988-1990. Fraser began her literary life in publishing, working for George Weidenfeld at Weidenfeld and Nicolson, whilst pursuing her own writing career. Her first major work was Mary, Queen of Scots (1969) … Continue reading #100PENMembers No. 95: Antonia Fraser
Sarojini Naidu was a prominent Indian writer, feminist, activist and civil rights campaigner, a brilliant orator, and a leading figure of the freedom struggle against British rule. When the PEN India Center was founded in 1933, she served as one of its Vice Presidents of PEN, and replaced Rabindranath Tagore as president of the Indian … Continue reading #100PENMembers No. 94: Sarojini Naidu
J.B. Priestley was one of PEN’s earliest members. The Yorkshire novelist and playwright also served as one of the first Presidents of English PEN, from 1937-1938 but he was often very ambivalent about PEN and his role in the organisation. He spoke at the 1939 New York World’s Fair PEN event via the airwaves, making … Continue reading #100PENMembers No. 92: J.B. Priestley
Stella Nyanzi is a academic, activist and feminist working in Uganda. She has frequently faced imprisonment because of her outspoken criticism of the country’s President. Nyanzi is a medical anthropologist at Makerere University and has published widely on issues relating to culture, health, law, gender and sexuality. She is an outspoken activist for women’s rights … Continue reading #100PENMembers No. 91: Stella Nyanzi
American novelist Jennifer Egan, the campaigning President of PEN America who sued the President of the United States to defend press freedoms. Her novel Manhattan Beach won the the 2018 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in the Fiction and 2011’s A Visit From the Goon Squad won the Pulitzer Prize. When she was elected President in 2018 … Continue reading #100PENMembers No. 90: Jennifer Egan
Writers and Free Expression 