PEN Sydney - News

Writing and publishing a book about a controversial public figure is like diving into shark-infested waters ABC investigative journalist Louise Milligan said at the recent Adelaide Writers’ Week. She wondered if she’d written her 2017 award-winning book Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of Cardinal Pell today, whether it would even be published. “There’s a lot more caution in the publishing world. It’s a defamation-happy climate.” Jane Sullivan reports.

Zangkar Jamyang was arrested by nearly three years ago after criticising the Chinese Government's suppression of the Tibetan language in schools in Tibet. He disappeared  without a trace on the night of June 4, 2020, when Chinese police hauled him away.

Writer Sarah Malik, whose acclaimed memoir Desi Girl: On feminism, race, faith and belonging was published last year, describes her journey to discover an independent creative voice in her address on International Women’s Day at the University of Technology, Sydney.

Politicians, lawyers, journalists, whistle blowers and human rights defenders united in Sydney to plea with Prime Minister Albanese to step up his efforts to free imprisoned Australian publisher and WikiLeaks co-founder, Julian Assange, reports Jodie Harrison.

Congratulations to the shortlisted translators in the biennial NSW Premier's Translation Prize

Garrido took part in peaceful protests in July 2021 and was imprisoned for her criticism of the Cuban Government. "State Securtity punishes me for every letter I write, but I cannot stop breathing". Read about her case and her moving prison poem The cemetery of the living. And take action

Today PEN Sydney, PEN International and more than 30 other Centers in the PEN literary and free expression network released a joint statement, celebrating the release of writers Arash Ganji and Reza Khandan Mahabadi, and calling on authorities to end their sustained campaign against the Iranian Writers’ Association (IWA), a leading voice in Iran against state censorship, and to release remaining IWA members from jail.

Access to social media channels, vital for survivors and rescuers in the earthquake zone to communicate, is restricted and journalists are being arrested for reporting on the devastation.

In a Christmas message from his prison cell in Turkey İlhan Sami Çomak ponders the nature of God and asks his supporters to recite these words upon his release from 30 years imprisonment in June next year. "It's done.  And so, I have come / May all the scurrilous winds be silent!" 

As we begin a new year, we thank you for your continued support of PEN Sydney and PEN International's work. In 2022 there was some good news worth celebrating.

If you love the SWF and have time, why not volunteer for SWF? A long term partner of PEN Sydney - providing us with support to deliver one of our k...

Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk joins more than 170 other prominent writers and scholars in condemning the detention of writers and poets by Iran's Islamic Republic.