An annual street festival of booksellers, authors, and avid readers — come find the PEN Canada booth! The Word On The Street is a national celebration of reading, writing, and literacy. Each year, the ...

A dramatic rise in book challenges and book bans targeting what are often called “diverse books” in children’s literature is sweeping North America. While the bans are mostly seen as local issues in ...

Dear Prime Minister, Ministers, and Honourable Leaders of the Opposition, We, the undersigned organizations and individuals, are writing to call for the complete withdrawal of Bill C-2, An Act ...

Nancy Huggett has won the 2024 RBC PEN Canada New Voices Award. For her winning submission, Revelation, she will receive a $3,000 cash prize and mentorship from a Canadian author. A jury of Canadian ...

Ira Wells has been elected as president of PEN Canada. Wells is a critic, essayist, professor of literature, and author of three books, the latest of which, On Book Banning (Biblioasis, 2025), ...

Jimmy Lai, a journalist, writer, media publisher, and pro-democracy activist, has won PEN Canada’s One Humanity Award. Lai, who has been in solitary confinement since December 2020, is currently ...

“There’s a lot of emotion unsaid between my family and myself,” Christine Wu says over a call, reaching us from her maritime home in Kjipuktuk (Halifax). She is speaking of her immigrant parents and ...

I write this letter with a deep sense of pain and anguish — not only because you are the longest imprisoned journalist in the world — that would be pain enough — but because of the cruel, inhumane, ...

Anna Sokolova and Georgio Russell have won the 2025 RBC/PEN Canada New Voices Award. The jury also selected five finalists: Edie Reaney Chunn, Emily Gaudet, Gwen Aube, Helen Han Wei Luo, and Mona’a ...

I have read about your violent arrest, your trial in a military court on trumped-up charges, and the court’s sentencing you to fourteen years in one of the Russian Federation’s penal colonies. No one, ...

The Canadian photojournalist Amber Bracken has won PEN Canada’s 2022 Ken Filkow Prize for advancing freedom of expression in Canada. Bracken’s work combines an interest in photography, journalism and ...

The Graeme Gibson Talk is an annual conversation between writers with expert knowledge of an urgent political, social, cultural or economic issue. The event was established in 2021 to honour the ...