Formation | 1931 |
---|---|
Type | Literary society |
Legal status | Association |
Purpose | Publication, advocacy, literary awards |
Headquarters | London, UK |
Location |
|
Region served | Sydney |
Official language | English |
President | Zoë Rodriguez and Claudia Taranto |
Key people | Committee |
Parent organisation | International PEN |
Affiliations | Australian PEN |
Website | pen |
Remarks | Sydney PEN is an affiliate of International Pen and one of three Australian PENs' |
Sydney PEN, also referred as International PEN Sydney Centre, is an association of Australian writers and readers, publishers, and human rights activists based in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Founded in 1931, it is one of the three Australian PEN Centres, which are affiliates of PEN International. PEN, founded in 1921, stands for "Poets, Essayists, and Novelists".
Sydney PEN was founded in 1931 by Ethel Turner, Mary Gilmore, and Dorothea Mackellar. Since inception, it has conducted campaigns and events supporting literature, fostering international understanding and defending freedom of expression. [1]
It was incorporated as an association on 27 January 2006 under the Associations Incorporations Act 1984 (NSW) as International Pen Sydney Centre, to be referred to as Sydney PEN. [2]
PEN, founded in 1921, stands for "Poets, Essayists, and Novelists". Sydney PEN is an association of Australian writers and readers, publishers and human rights activists. Its aim is to promote literature and freedom of expression, as well as fostering local culture and understanding. [1]
PEN Sydney is based at the Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences at University of Technology Sydney (UTS). [1]
As of April 2024 [update] , Zoë Rodriguez and Claudia Taranto are joint presidents of Sydney PEN, and there are six other members of the management committee. [3]
Sydney PEN is one of three PEN centres in Australia, the others being PEN Melbourne [4] and PEN Perth. [5]
In 2008, Sydney PEN, together with International Pen, helped to release 94 writers from prison.[ citation needed ]
Its Writers in Prison program selects urgent regional cases that feature public advocacy campaigns. It has carried out campaigns for Father Nguyen Van Ly, Tashi Rabten, Liu Xia, Gheyret Niyaz, Liu Xianbin, Tan Zuoren, Liu Xiaobo, Nurnuhemmet Yasin, Ragip Zarakolu and Busra Ersanh. [6] [7]
In November 2004, Sydney PEN, as part of the Australian PEN network, won the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Community Award for its work with asylum seeker writers held in Australian detention centres.[ citation needed ]
Established in 2006, Sydney PEN Award hosts annual awards that serve to recognise the members who has worked hard to promote the PEN Centre's value. [8]
Sydney PEN, along with other two Australian PEN Centres, established a new biennial award "PEN Keneally Award" in 2004, for recognising an achievement in promoting freedom of expression, international understanding and access to literature.[ citation needed ]
The award is named in the honour of Thomas Keneally AO for ‘his lifetime’s commitment to the values of PEN’.[ citation needed ]
Sydney PEN Magazine is a bi-annual publication, which contains articles, news on PEN's work, interviews, literary publications, and translations. It is published in May, to accompany the PEN lecture at the Sydney Writers' Festival, and in November for the International Day of the Imprisoned Writer. It is co-sponsored by UTS and Copyright Agency Limited. [11] [12]
Sydney PEN has several honorary members, including: [13]
A number of Australian writers are life members, including Thomas Keneally, Geraldine Brooks, JM Coetzee, David Malouf, and Ruby Langford Ginibi. [13]
The University of Technology Sydney (UTS) is a public research university located in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. The university was founded in its current form in 1988, though its origins as a technical institution can be traced back to the 1870s. UTS is a founding member of the Australian Technology Network (ATN), and is a member of Universities Australia (UA) and the Worldwide Universities Network (WUN).
PEN International is a worldwide association of writers, founded in London in 1921 to promote friendship and intellectual co-operation among writers everywhere. The association has autonomous International PEN centres in more than 100 countries.
Timothy John Winton is an Australian writer. He has written novels, children's books, non-fiction books, and short stories. In 1997, he was named a Living Treasure by the National Trust of Australia, and has won the Miles Franklin Award four times.
Anna Funder is an Australian author. She is the author of Stasiland, All That I Am, Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life and the novella The Girl With the Dogs.
Shi Tao is a Chinese journalist, writer and poet, who in 2005 was sentenced to 10 years in prison for releasing a document of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to an overseas Chinese democracy site. Yahoo! China was later discovered to have facilitated his arrest by providing his personal details to the Chinese government. Yahoo! was subsequently rebuked by a panel of the U.S. Congress, settled a lawsuit by Shi's family out of court, and pledged to reform its practices.
Carrie Tiffany is an English-born Australian novelist and former park ranger.
Rosie Scott was a novelist, poet, playwright, short-story writer, non-fiction writer, editor and lecturer, with dual Australian and New Zealand citizenship.
The Hermann Kesten Prize, formally the Hermann Kesten Medal, is a German literary award presented annually for outstanding efforts in support of persecuted writers, on behalf of PEN Centre Germany according to the principles of the Charter of International PEN. In 1985, the PEN Center of the Federal Republic of Germany awarded the first Hermann Kesten Medal. It is named in honor of the German novelist and dramatist Hermann Kesten (1900–1996).
PEN Canada is one of the 148 centres of PEN International. Founded in 1926, it has a membership of over 1,000 writers and supporters who campaign on behalf of writers around the world who are persecuted, imprisoned and exiled for exercising their right to freedom of expression.
Liu Xiaobo was a Chinese literary critic, human rights activist, philosopher and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who called for political reforms and was involved in campaigns to end Chinese Communist Party one-party rule in China. He was arrested numerous times, and was described as China's most prominent dissident and the country's most famous political prisoner. On 26 June 2017, he was granted medical parole after being diagnosed with liver cancer; he died a few weeks later on 13 July 2017.
Alexis Wright is a Waanyi writer best known for winning the Miles Franklin Award for her 2006 novel Carpentaria and for being the first writer to win the Stella Prize twice, in 2018 for her "collective memoir" of Leigh Bruce "Tracker" Tilmouth and in 2024 for Praiseworthy.Praiseworthy also won her the Miles Franklin Award in 2024, making her the first person to win the Stella Prize and Miles Franklin Award in the same year.
Anita Marianne Heiss is an Aboriginal Australian author, poet, cultural activist and social commentator. She is an advocate for Indigenous Australian literature and literacy, through her writing for adults and children and her membership of boards and committees.
Charter 08 is a manifesto initially signed by 303 Chinese dissident intellectuals and human rights activists. It was published on 10 December 2008, the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopting its name and style from the anti-Soviet Charter 77 issued by dissidents in Czechoslovakia. Since its release, more than 10,000 people inside and outside China have signed the charter. After unsuccessful reform efforts in 1989 and 1998 by the Chinese democracy movement, Charter 08 was the first challenge to one-party rule that declared the end of one-party rule to be its goal; it has been described as the first one with a unified strategy.
Founded in 1921, English PEN is one of the world's first non-governmental organisations and among the first international bodies advocating for human rights. English PEN was the founding centre of PEN International, a worldwide writers' association with 145 centres in more than 100 countries. The President of English PEN is Margaret Busby, succeeding Philippe Sands in April 2023. The Director is Daniel Gorman. The Chair is Ruth Borthwick.
Liu Xia is a Chinese painter, poet, and photographer. Liu Xia was under effective house arrest in China as her husband, Liu Xiaobo, had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010. She remained under house arrest until 10 July 2018, when she was allowed to travel to Germany for medical treatment.
The 2010 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to imprisoned Chinese human rights activist Liu Xiaobo (1955–2017) "for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China". The laureate, once an eminent scholar, was reportedly little-known inside the People's Republic of China (PRC) at the time of the award due to official censorship; he partook in the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 and was a co-author of the Charter 08 manifesto, for which he was sentenced to 11 years in prison on 25 December 2009. Liu, who was backed by former Czech president Václav Havel and anti-apartheid activist and cleric Desmond Tutu, also a Nobel Peace Prize winner, received the award among a record field of more than 200 nominees.
Adele Marilyn Horin was an Australian journalist. She retired in 2012 as a columnist and journalist for The Sydney Morning Herald. A prolific and polarising writer on social issues, she was described as "the paper's resident feminist".
This article presents a list of the historical events and publications of Australian literature during 2011.
Now & Then is the fifth studio album by Australian Idol 2006 winner Damien Leith. It was released by Sony Music Australia in Australia on 20 April 2012. It was the last album of Leith's released by Sony until the release of Songs From Ireland (2015). The album spawned two singles and a tour.
Joanne Leedom-Ackerman is an American novelist, short story writer and journalist whose fiction and literary non-fiction includes The Far Side of the Desert, Burning Distance, regional bestseller The Dark Path to the River, the short story collection No Marble Angels, and PEN Journeys: Memoir of Literature on the Line. She’s also the senior editor of The Journey of Liu Xiaobo: From Dark Horse to Nobel Laureate. She is a Vice President of PEN International and has served as the International Secretary of PEN International and Chair of PEN International's Writers in Prison Committee.