Salman Rushdie is not only a prominent PEN Member of several decade’s standing, and a fierce free speech advocate, his 1988 novel, The Satanic Verses was also the subject of one of the organisation’s most high profile and most divisive free expression battles. Rushdie took on the Presidency of PEN America from 2004-2006, and created the PEN … Continue reading #100PENMembers No.14: Salman Rushdie
In our latest free expression podcast, Professor Anshuman Mondal of the University of East Anglia talks to Professor Rachel Potter about Salman Rushdie, thirty years after the Satanic Verses affair. Mondal, who has written extensively on Rushdie and particularly on free expression and Islam, explores the implications of the West-versus-East narrative at the centre of the … Continue reading ‘It’s not enough to rely on the principle, we have to think harder’: PEN, Rushdie and free expression thirty years on…
One of the most famous cases in PEN’s history of campaigning for free expression was the case of Salman Rushdie. The case raised a number of serious issues around free expression and religious freedom, issues which would become increasingly important in the decades to come. It concerned the publication of Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses … Continue reading PEN Case Study: Salman Rushdie
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
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
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
György(George) Konrád was a Hungarian novelist and essayist who led PEN International from 1990-1993. A Hungarian Jew, Konrád and his sister had escaped their hometown of Berettyóújfalu after his parents were taken to Austria to a concentration camp. The children spent World War Two in a Swiss sponsored safehouse in Budapest and the family were re-united … Continue reading #100PENMembers No. 80: György Konrád
Roxane Gay is a novelist, academic, editor and feminist, and longstanding member of PEN America. She won PEN America’s Freedom to Write award in 2015 and in 2016 delivered its Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture. ‘The freedom to write,’ Gay told Literary Hub, ‘has been one of my life’s greatest blessings and it is … Continue reading #100PENMembers No.65: Roxane Gay
Zadie Smith is an award-winning novelist and committed member of PEN America. Her first novel, White Teeth won the Guardian First Book Award, the Whitbread First Novel Award, the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Orange Prize for Fiction and she has since enjoyed huge success with novels such as The Autograph Man (2002), On Beauty (2005), NW (2012) and Swing … Continue reading #100PENMembers No.57: Zadie Smith
This means we have featured 50 writers from PEN’s 100 year history! We have roamed around the world, highlighting the activities of writers from China to Nigeria to Argentina to India to Japan to the US to Zimbabwe to the UK to Hungary and more. We have travelled across history, looking at PEN’s founding members, … Continue reading #100PENMembers: We’ve reached 50!
Writers and Free Expression 