Dear PEN Members, Dear Friends, You have often heard me talk about PEN as a grassroots organisation – a virtual nation of the word – driven by 30,000 writers around the world. This last month has been, for me, a...
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Dear PEN members, Dear friends, There are moments when civilizations throw away the ethical value of that word, civilization. They lose the credibility needed to be taken seriously. The question is, can they get it back? History is surprisingly indulgent....
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Dear PEN members, dear Friends, For many people outside the world of writers, publishers, translators – whether we are writing for books or newspapers, blogs or the screen – it must seem that we lead contradictory lives. We do no...
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May 13, 2015 Dear PEN members, dear friends, This spring we undertook an ambitious three country intervention in Latin America. Sixteen PEN centres took part. We called it the PEN Summit of the Americas and it unfolded as we moved...
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Dear PEN Members, Dear Friends, Last week in Paris I went to the site of the Charlie Hebdo murders with Emmanuel Pierrat of French PEN, Jarkko Tontti, Carles Torner and Sarah Clarke from our Secretariat. We placed flowers and a...
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