The Irish PEN/PEn na hÉireann Freedom to Write event has become a popular fixture at the John Hewitt International Summer School (Armagh). This year was no exception. The 120-seat theatre was booked out, with a waiting list (tickets were free thanks to a generous grant from Dublin Unesco City of Literature). Caoilfhionn Gallagher spoke eloquently about the increasingly systematic suppression of press freedom around the world. Our Empty Chair featured journalist, editor and digital media CEO Mzia Amalglobeli from Georgia. Mzia has been held in detention since January 2025 on spurious charges. Her complaints of ill-treatment have yet to be investigated. Her story is so compelling that 84 members of the audience were moved to write postcards of support in a heart-warming gesture of international support and solidarity. FULL REPORT TO FOLLOW IN OUR NEXT NEWSLETTER.
With huge thanks to the Dublin Unesco City of Literature office for sponsoring this event, to the John Hewitt Society and the Marketplace Theatre, Armagh for hosting us.
The PEN Centres of England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland are deeply alarmed by the rise in violence against migrant and other marginalised communities on these islands, driven by mis- and dis-information. This is part of a wider rise of those who seek to undo our hard-won civic rights using methods which directly contravene the PEN Charter. In accordance with the charter we call on all members to “’do their utmost to dispel all hatreds”’ and to “’oppose such evils of a free press as mendacious publication, deliberate falsehood and distortion of facts for political and personal ends”’. We are in solidarity with those targeted and with all who are affected by such violence.
We are tired, yes — but above all filled with joy. Participation had already been outstanding in previous editions, with more than 250 poems over five years. Just imagine what it means to publish more than 80 poems in a single edition. From Anindilyakwa in northern Australia to Zulu, via Greenlandic Kalaallisut; from the sole remaining speaker of Selk’nam to the few but highly motivated speakers of Livonian, and learners helping keep languages like Hupa alive.
To those who have already sent their poem: thank you very much.
After all the work done, the final step is sharing the videos so they can reach as many people as possible. PEN promotes every video we publish, but experience shows that when poets, friends, colleagues and associations help spread the word, the number of views grows enormously. Some videos have hundreds of views, while others only a few. We encourage you to revisit the marathon, find your videos, and help us promote them (on FB, YouTube, X or BlueSky).
To those who haven’t yet sent a poem or are still hesitating: as you can see, the initiative is very simple. Just record one of your short poems in landscape format. It can be done in a couple of minutes and will allow your language to become part of this great family working to revitalize languages through artistic, literary or simply advocacy efforts.
We currently have poems scheduled for the entire week. If a few more arrive during these days, we will still be able to include them. After that, we will close the curtain after nearly 100 poems this year and more than 350 since this journey began.
Victoria Amelina was a Ukrainian writer and founder of the New York Literary Festival in the settlement of New York, eastern Ukraine. After Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, Amelina retrained as a war crimes researcher and started documenting the consequences of the Russian invasion as part of the Truth Hounds team. Amelina travelled around the world inspiring audiences from Colombia to Albania, Germany, France, Latvia, Norway, Poland, and the UK with her pursuit of justice.
Victoria Amelina’s documentation work informed not only her international advocacy but also her nonfiction book Looking at Women Looking at War: A War & Justice Diary (published in 2025 and awarded the George Orwell prize for Political Writing) and her collection of poetry Testimonies (Svidchennia, 2024). Both books were published posthumously. On 27 June 2023, Victoria Amelina sustained critical injuries in a Russian missile strike on a restaurant in Kramatorsk. She died on 1 July 2023.
To continue the labour of witnessing and the fight for justice that drove Victoria Amelina, the Fellowship named after her will also advance the internationalist aspect of her work by engaging nonfiction writers from Ukraine and abroad…. read more
While İlhan Sami Çomak and İpek Õzel were here for the Dublin Book Festival, they were interviewed by Enda Wyley and Peter Sirr for the Books for Breakfast podcast before their Meet the Poet session in the Café at IMMA.
What a great weekend that was! With thanks to everyone at the Dublin Book Festival, especially Julianne Mooney Siron (Director), to the staff at the National Library who hosted İlhan’s event and the staff in the Café at IMMA – and to Enda for sending the link.
Launched in 2024, the PEN Heaney Prize recognises a single volume of poetry, published in the UK or Ireland, of outstanding literary merit that engages with the impact of cultural or political events on human conditions or relationships – celebrating work that resonates with Heaney’s own values and interests, work that remains “true to the impact of external reality and … sensitive to the inner laws of the poet’s being”, to quote from his Nobel Lecture.
The event will feature speeches and readings from the shortlisted collections, followed by the announcement of the winner and a drinks and canapés reception. Doors open at 6pm, and the ceremony starts at 7pm
The shortlisted poets are Don Mee Choi, Najwan Darwish (translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid), Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, Tom Paulin, Stav Poleg and Karen Solie.
The PEN Heaney Prize is delivered in partnership by English PEN, Irish PEN/PEN na hÉireann and the Estate of Seamus Heaney and is generously supported by the Hawthornden Foundation.
BOOKING IS ESSENTIAL. Tickets are available from the English PEN website here.
İlhan Sami Çomak is an award-winning and internationally regarded Kurdish poet who was imprisoned in Istanbul for 30 years, before finally being released in 2024. This year, to mark the Day of the Imprisoned Writer, Irish PEN/PEN na hÉireann is honoured to have Çomak joining us in person, along with his interpreter Ipek Ozel, for an afternoon in conversation with author and Co-Chair of Irish PEN/PEN na hEireann, Liz McManus.
İlhan Sami Çomak is a prize-winning poet, recipient of the Sennur Sezer poetry prize (1999), the Metin Altıok prize (2022) and the Norwegian Authors’ Union Freedom of Expression award (2022) member of the Writers’ Union of Turkey, prize-winning playwright and honorary member of the following PEN Centres: PEN Norway, Wales PEN Cymru, Irish PEN Na H’Eireann, PEN Sydney and PEN Austria. He has been in poetic conversation by letter with over 80 world-renowned poets and has a huge poetic family extending all over the globe.
Liz McManus is a novelist and short story writer. She was born in Montreal, Canada. She grew up in Ireland and has worked as an architect in Derry, Galway and Dublin. She was a columnist for seven years with The Sunday Tribune newspaper. Her literary awards include Listowel, Irish Pen (Short Story awards) and the Hennessy Award for New Irish Writing. Her first novel, Acts of Subversion (Poolbeg) was shortlisted for the Aer Lingus/Irish Times award. A Shadow in the Yard (Ward River Press) her second novel was published in 2013 and her latest novel When Things Come to Light (Arlen House) was published in 2013. She was a member of Wicklow Co Council and was elected to Dail Eireann in 1992 and Minister of State for Housing and Urban Renewal (1994-97). She chaired the Commission on the Needs of Travellers and has been a long-time campaigner for Women’s Rights. She has an MPhil with Distinction in Creative Writing (TCD 2012). Residencies include the Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig and the Hienrich Boll cottage on Achill Island. In July 2024 she was awarded outright a PhD in Philosophy (Creative Writing) at the University of Limerick. Currently she is Co Chair of Irish PEN/PEN na hEireann.
Ipek Ozel is an academic at the faculty of law, with a focus on human rights, law and prison studies. Lecturing for the last 27 years. Advocating for students in prisons for the last 15 years. Ipek has served as a McKenzie Friend to 8 students who were long term prisoners and has followed up on many trials of students charged with political crimes. She has been one of Ilhan Sami’s staunchest supporters and friends.
I speak to you today as a woman, a Ukrainian, a member of PEN’s WWC Advisory Board, and a witness to the transformative power of words in times of war and occupation. I come from a land whose coasts are celebrated this week at the PORT Literary Festival in Odesa, focused on “Uzberezhzhya svobody”—the Shores of Freedom. This inaugural PORT festival, taking place on the last days of August, is establishing itself as a new cultural platform in southern Ukraine, with literary and musical performances, poetry workshops, and presentations by renowned authors such as Shevchenko Prize laureates and leading voices from PEN Ukraine.
Yes, another literary festival in times of war. Ukraine continues to host such events despite unrelenting attacks and growing threats to safety: organizing a festival now demands rigorous risk assessments, searching for venues with operational bomb shelters, and implementing strict security measures including “face control” at entrances. Odesa’s literary gathering is part of a wider wave of resilience—just weeks earlier, Ukraine’s leading Book Arsenal Festival in Kyiv welcomed over 35,000 visitors even as the city endured missile strikes and the destruction of cultural sites, reminding us all what is at stake.
Here we are, writing and gathering in the midst of destruction, refusing to surrender the Shores of Freedom—on both the page and the map.
Let me put it simply: for Ukrainians, our shores are not just places on a map, or symbols of our culture and how we start again. They are also places where outsiders have tried to take over, to silence us, and to wipe out everything Ukrainian—year after year. Nevertheless, there is something inside us that always pulls us back toward freedom and a true sense of who we are. No matter how hard others have tried to put out our light, the sparks of Ukrainian culture keep shining, bright and unstoppable.
This year, I will not show you any photographs. I will only say that Vika—our Vika Amelina, whom many of you may remember from the congress in India and later—was awarded the Orwell Prize for her book “Looking at Women Looking at War”. Great documentary writing and documentation of the war. Posthumously. Her husband, who is dedicating the prize funds to support the New York Literary Festival, launched by Viktoria herself, accepted the award. Her book collects witness accounts from Ukrainian women documenting Russian war crimes. It is not just a record of female voices; it is a deeply layered document of our ongoing reality, skillfully connecting today’s genocide with the historical terrors of the past. As her work evolved, it wove together diaries, interviews, field reports, excerpts from books and media—each fragment a testimony that makes us present for those who can no longer speak for themselves.
William Collins published the book in 2025, with a foreword written by Margaret Atwood. It is an unfinished collection of reports about Ukrainian women who document Russian war crimes. This collection contains the stories of witnesses who have endured the most terrible horrors of Russian aggression and occupation. At the same time, the book offers a convincing explanation of why Russia’s war against Ukraine actually began long before 2014, and why it’s so important for the world to remember the Russian terror against Ukrainians in the 1930s and 1960s.
This year at Oscar, the new film of Mstyslav Chernov “2000 Meters from Andriivka” represents us—most of the heroes in this film truly are heroes. Posthumously.
In the eleventh year of the war, there are now so many of our dead—if not in every family, then just one handshake away. Mars field in Lviv is filled with bodies and memories – there my university friends, ex colleagues, close friends, guys I was in love ones.
Speaking here, I catch myself censoring my own pain—a reflex many Ukrainians have mastered, especially when abroad, surrounded by others carrying invisible burdens. As of 2025, more than 3.8 million Ukrainians remain internally displaced, while some 9.4 million—nearly one in five citizens—have been uprooted by war, many without a permanent home for over three years. I empathize deeply with them. Time continues; perhaps only with distance will true understanding become possible. One person may have lost their home, while another’s family remains in a city under occupation—these stories are all around me. I work closely with women and girls living under Russia’s occupation, and their daily reality renders my own private anxieties almost unspeakable, so vast is the gulf. While someone grieves for relatives left behind yet still alive, others are waiting for word of loved ones in captivity; still others only know that their sons or daughters are missing, with hope flickering painfully between absence and return.
As my friend, Olesya Khromeychuk wrote: we think of a grave as a luxury, when so many have vanished without a trace. For every trauma, this war reveals a deeper wound. For every ache, there is a pain more profound still.
For every cry, there is silence. Ukrainians have been forced for years to remain silent about the dead—as if erasing names could erase loss. Today, nearly 50,000 people remain missing as a direct result of Russia’s invasion, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross, their fate unknown to both families and official records. Now, we must unlearn this enforced silence and find the courage to speak about our dead as if they were still present—because their memory is a form of resistance, and their stories belong to us all. Now we must learn to speak about our dead as if they are still alive. That is uncomfortable talk, isn’t it? However, silence should be considered wrong. Now it is our duty to speak and tell their stories.
This is why PEN Ukraine remains relentless in its mission. Just two months ago, our Kyiv warehouse, where more than 11,000 books were stored, was damaged by a Russian missile strike. Despite this, our “Unbreakable Libraries” initiative continues undeterred, delivering thousands of English and bilingual books to frontline and war-affected libraries. Since 2022, in partnership with PEN International, English PEN, Book Aid International, and major British publishers, we have distributed over 45,000 books to libraries across 17 Ukrainian regions, including those in liberated and high-risk areas.
Through the “People of Culture Claimed by War” project, we honour the almost 200 artists, writers, and cultural figures lost since February 2022, creating a living digital archive of Ukrainian talent whose lives were cut short by invasion.
Our “Lysty do Vilnoho Krymu” (“Letters to Free Crimea”) campaign connects the global community with Ukrainian political prisoners held in Russian-occupied Crimea, while programs like “Prospisi” workshops, “Merezhivo” public readings, and regional PEN meetings nurture new literary voices and strengthen international solidarity among writers and activists.
Much of our work is dedicated to supporting journalists in Russian captivity—amplifying their stories, offering moral mentorship, and keeping public attention alive. In these conditions, mentorship is no mere symbol: it is a living bridge, connecting those silenced and isolated by war to a world that refuses to forget them.
What is the special role of women in all of it?
Women are at the heart of everything I have just described. Ukrainian women are not just witnesses; they are warriors—my friend Eva is great port but also a soldier; they are documentarians, truth-tellers, advocates, and the tireless voice behind so many efforts. From frontline librarians risking their safety to deliver books, to the writers facing immense loss and recording testimonies, to volunteers collecting letters for prisoners—these are women who refuse to let our stories disappear. They are the ones listening compassionately to the pain of others, translating silence into words, and shaping how the world remembers this war.
In truth, the very act of documenting, advocating, and caring—the core work of PEN, the work of writers—is powered by women’s empathy and determination. Ukrainian women are keeping the current of our culture alive. Their voices are irreplaceable. In the spirit of this Congress, and of our shared commitment to “Words of the Free,” let us listen to them, and let us not allow their work or their experience to slip into silence.
Let us honour, protect, and amplify the voices of women writers, journalists, and cultural workers, in Ukraine and everywhere war tries to erase memory. Let us help turn their pain and stories into words that move the world to action, solidarity, and hope.
Storytelling resurrects; it makes the absent present. It blurs the boundary between the living, the dead, and the unborn—provided the listener is attentive and the storyteller is a true master, but most of all, when the story is retold with love. Our pain is censored by comparison, ranked and calibrated. But here is the place for literature. As one of our Ukrainian writers Anton Sanchenko said: culture is humanity’s backup. Literature is irreplaceable now. Every act of speaking out, collecting stories, and refusing silence repairs the breach.
Today, I ask one thing of you. I ask you to apply your writers’ magic: to turn silence into words.
Speak for us and about us. Translate the silence into words, as only writers can. This is our fight against the “syndrome of banality”, against becoming indifferent to each other’ suffering.
Raise your voices for our imprisoned journalists and cultural figures—your attention, your mentor letters, and your advocacy save lives and preserve hope.
Support our libraries and festivals. Nominate and amplify Ukrainian voices. Remember those lost, and challenge the world to reckon with the crimes against Ukrainian culture.
Don’t allow those stories to be erased. Insist on precise, truthful fact-finding. Teach empathy, reject cynicism, and let your words strike with the current of a strong story.
The theme of PEN Ukraine for 2025 is “Being in the World.” To be in the world is to fight for our place, our voices, and the right to be heard and to be told about.
Thank you for your attention, your solidarity, and for making words powerful enough to keep us present—both for ourselves, and for those who can no longer speak.
Here is a link to Margaret Atwood’s own statement on this shocking development, where she says (on her Substack):
“Everyone and their pet canary wants me to comment. But I can’t comment when I don’t know why it’s been banned. For describing what an American theological dictatorship could look like? Because it portrays evil? Is it evil to portray evil? If so, bye-bye Bible and Shakespeare. Because, as part of a power play, it perverts Christianity and rewrites the Bible , unlike anyone else, ever? Because lots of other places have banned this book and Alberta didn’t want to be left out? Because it has sex in it, even though it’s not sexy sex and anyone in Gilead of sane mind would run a mile before having any actual enjoyable sex? Because it has head coverings? Why?”
