International PEN
PEN International (International PEN to 2011), the worldwide association of writers, was founded in London in 1921 to promote friendship and intellectual co-operation among writers everywhere.
Other goals included: to emphasise the role of literature in the development of mutual understanding and world culture; to fight for freedom of expression; and to act as a powerful voice on behalf of writers harassed, imprisoned and sometimes killed for their views.
PEN originally stood for "Poets, Essayists and Novelists", but now includes writers of any form of literature, such as journalists and historians.
It is the world’s oldest human rights organization and the oldest international literary organization.
Read more about International PEN: Role of PEN, PEN Affiliated Awards, PEN Charter, Writers in Prison Committee, Memorials, Notable Members of International PEN, Presidents of PEN International and English PEN Centre
Famous quotes containing the word pen:
“I am of course confident that I will fulfil my tasks as a writer in all circumstances—from my grave even more successfully and more irrefutably than in my lifetime. No one can bar the road to truth, and to advance its cause I am prepared to accept even death. But may it be that repeated lessons will finally teach us not to stop the writer’s pen during his lifetime? At no time has this ennobled our history.”
—Alexander Solzhenitsyn (b. 1918)