1 Year With PEN Sydney.
If you stand against censorship, cherish freedom of expression, and champion justice, and tolerance, you can do no better than PEN.
“Literature knows no frontiers and must remain common currency among people in spite of political or international upheavals…” - PEN Charter.
In 1921 PEN was formed. In 2024, I joined them…
And I love it.
PEN, an acronym for “Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists, Novels” (formerly “Poets, Essayists, Novelists”), is an international association dedicated to the advancement of literature, free expression, and the solidarity of writers who “champion the ideal of one humanity living in peace and equality”. PEN members adhere to the PEN Charter, and they fulfill its concomitant duties by: lobbying political institutions (like the United Nations and national governments) to free imprisoned writers, launching social media campaigns to raise awareness of writers at risk, offering financial support for struggling writers, and promoting global literature (among many other things).
Now, you might think an ‘organisation of writers’ is a contradiction in terms. How could writers, who are creatures of solitude, manage to come together and arrange themselves into an organised collective? And, more curiously, how do people who spend days chained to their desks accomplish anything substantial?
Well, the answer to the first question is clinical and something I am ill-equipped to answer. I am no more qualified to explain how scribblers assemble to fight for a common cause than I can comprehend the psychology of ant colonies. All I can say is that they manage. As for the second question, I can’t provide an answer not because I am stumped, but because I am short of time. The fact that writers, intellectuals, artists, and journalists affect the world is self-evident, and more easily acknowledged than explained. That said, it is not a given that two scribblers put together advocate better than one alone. The pair could just as easily cancel each other out. But, thankfully, they do not. PEN could not have endured and flourished over these past 100 years if its underlying logic was rotten.
Since its formation in 1921 as a single entity, in 2025 PEN has over 100 autonomous branches dotting the globe. In Australia, where I reside, there are currently three: PEN Perth, PEN Melbourne, and PEN Sydney. I am a member of the latter, PEN Sydney, and have been since March 2024.
I first became aware of PEN, without knowing it, sometime in 2010. I was in high school, and instead of studying for an exam or writing up some assignment (I’m sure) I watched Christopher Hitchens deliver the Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture alongside Salman Rushdie. At the time, however, I was focussed on The Hitch and not the organiser—PEN America. And yet, over the years, on and off, I continued to come across PEN International’s website as if it were pulling me in. To be sure, I always wanted to join, but whenever I looked at the careers page they never seemed to be hiring. Dejected, I would listlessly wander through the rest of my day running whatever errands needed running blah blah blah. Stupidly, the thought of proactively reaching out to an Australian PEN centre to volunteer did not occur to me at the time.
So, fast-forwarding a few years to early 2024, I had been writing articles on various topics and even had a few of them published. Still, although I refused then, as I refuse now, the title of ‘writer’ (excepting self-promotion), I found myself moving closer to the concept and entered into its orbit.
My newfound proximity to writing once again drew me PEN and I looked up their Australian PEN centres. Still no PEN Brisbane. But this time, volunteering was on my brain, and after COVID-19 virtually every workplace and organisation catered for WFH—the rise of Zoom/Microsoft Teams. Resolved, I pitched myself in an email to PEN Sydney and received a very friendly response from one of its Presidents. After a bit of back and forth, I was in.
Since then,
I was part of the editorial team for PEN Sydney’s 2024 May magazine.
I attended the Brisbane Writer’s Festival as a representative of PEN Sydney. I helped facilitate a panel discussion with the Burmese surgeon, writer, and former political prisoner, Ma Thida, an activist who found herself in Insein Prison for “endangering public peace” and “distributing unlawful literature”.
I joined the campaign for Filipino poet Amanda Echanis, another wrongfully imprisoned writer and activist, as part of PEN’s annual Day of the Imprisoned Writer and collected messages of hope from her supporters. And later, coincidentally, Echanis became the face of PEN International’s 2025 Women’s Day campaign!
I contributed an article to the November issue of PEN Sydney’s magazine. It explored widespread criticism of PEN America after it decided to eject a pro-Palestine protestor from one of its Los Angeles events.
And now, I work as their social media producer across Instagram, Bluesky, and Facebook. Although I am steadily improving, I readily admit anything described as “social” does not come easy to me.
In short, this past year with PEN Sydney has been fantastic. It has been fun, stressful (ah yes, the editing process), educational, and supremely energising. Whenever some new cause célèbre arises, supported by PEN Sydney of course, I imagine my hero Voltaire—himself several times jailed, often persecuted, and perpetually maligned—brandishing his pen to protect minorities, challenge authority, and free those wrongly imprisoned: écrasez l'infâme.
If you stand against censorship, cherish freedom of expression and creativity, and champion justice, and tolerance, you can do no better than PEN. PEN Sydney is a positive force in Australia and for the world. I’m hoping those of you who have read this far go on to join or support your local PEN centre. If there isn’t a centre close by to you, contact the nearest, as I did!
Oh, and if you could, donate to PEN Sydney!