- Moris Farhi
(Musa) Moris Farhi MBE (born 1935, Ankara, Turkey) has been vice-president of International PEN since 2001. "Education:" Robert Academy '54, Istanbul (BA), RADA. Mr Farhi is an author. He was chairman of the Writers in Prison Committee of PEN in Britain, 1994-97, and the corresponding committee of International PEN 1997-2000. He was appointed an MBE in 2001. He has written several novels, including Children of the Rainbow and Journey through the Wilderness. - Homero Aridjis
Homero Aridjis is a Mexican writer and diplomat. Aridjis was born in Contepec, Michoacán, Mexico, on April 6, 1940, to a Greek father and Mexican mother; he was the youngest of five brothers. As a child, Aridjis would walk every afternoon to a hillside near his home to watch the migrating butterflies. This he continued throughout his life until the trees were removed to be used as firewood. This and other events in his life caused him to co-found the Grupo de los Cien, … - Ben Okri
Ben Okri is the same generation as me but our lives couldn't be more different. I'm always intrigued to learn how lives turn out because of one's individual history, challenges and circumstance. Ben is a novelist, story writer and poet and was born in 1959 in Minna, northern Nigeria, to an Igbo mother and Urhobo father. He grew up in London before returning to Nigeria with his family in 1968. - Jiří Gruša
Jiří Gruša is a Czech poet, writer, translator, diplomat and politician. He graduated from the Philosophical Faculty of Charles University in Prague. He worked for periodicals "Tvář", "Sešity" and "Nové knihy". In 1968, he was banned from publishing and had to work in a construction cooperative. He took part in distribution of samizdat literature. Between 1982 and 1990, he lived in the BRD. - Nicholas Jose
Nicholas Jose (b. 1952) is an Australian novelist. Born in London, England, to Australian parents, Nicholas Jose grew up mostly in Adelaide, South Australia. He was educated at the Australian National University and Oxford University. He has traveled extensively, particularly in China, where he worked from 1986 to 1990. He was President of Sydney PEN from 2002 to 2005 and currently holds the Chair of Creative Writing at the University of Adelaide. - Roya Toloui
Roya Toloui (1966-), is a prominent Iranian Kurdish journalist, human rights activist and feminist, currently residing in US. She was born in Baneh in western Iran. She received high school diploma at Baneh and studied pathology at the University of Mashhad. She was the Editor-in-Chief of "Rasan" (Rising up), a Kurdish monthly magazine about womens' issues. - Nguyen Dan Que
Dr. Nguyen Dan Que is a Vietnamese endocrinologist and pro-democracy campaigner. He is one of the leading dissidents against the communist government in Vietnam. Que's political activism dates back to the 1970s. He was first arrested in 1978, for criticising the Government. Following a period in prison without trial, Que was released and set up the High Tide Humanists group, which, according to Human Rights Watch, … - Joan Smith
Joan Alison Smith (born August 27, 1953 in London) is an English novelist, journalist and human rights activist, who is a former chair of the Writers in Prison committee in the English section of International PEN. Smith read Latin at the University of Reading in the early 1970s. After a spell as a journalist in local radio in Manchester, she joined the staff of the "Sunday Times" in 1979 and stayed at the newspaper until 1984, … - Jonathan Heawood
Jonathan Heawood is director of the English Centre of International PEN. He is a former deputy literary editor of "The Observer" and editor of the "Fabian Review". He writes on cultural and political issues for a number of publications, including the "London Review of Books" and the "New Statesman". He is working on a book about the cultural history of the British landscape. He is married to writer Amy Jenkins and they have one child. - Zaradachet Hajo
Zaradachet Hajo, (or Zerdeşt Haco is a prominent Kurdish writer, linguist and researcher. He was born in Syria in 1950. He has studied linguistics, German and Iranian languages at the Free University of Berlin, and wrote his doctoral thesis on Indo-Iranian language studies. Since 1982, he has been teaching as the universities of Berlin, Bremen and Hamburg. He has been the president of the Kurdish chapter of the literary organization PEN since 1998. - Jan Parandowski
Jan Parandowski was a Polish writer, essayist, and translator. Best known for his works relating to classical antiquity, he was also the president of the Polish PEN Club between 1933 and 1978, with a break during World War II. - Chen Maiping
Chen Maiping is a Chinese writer, known by the pen name Wan Zhi (万之). He has written mostly short stories, and has also translated literature from English and Swedish to Chinese. During the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, Chen was an avid contributor to the non-sanctioned, underground literature magazine Jintian ("Today"). For this, he became watched by the Chinese authorities, and since 1986 he is living in exile in Sweden. - Michael Holroyd
Sir Michael De Courcy Fraser Holroyd, CBE (born August 27, 1935) is a biographer, born in London and educated at Eton College. From 1985 to 1988 he was the president of the English branch of PEN. He is married to the author Margaret Drabble. Awards include the 2001 Heywood Hill Literary Prize and the 2005 David Cohen British Literature Prize. Holroyd was knighted in the 2007 New Years' Honours List. - Juliusz Żuławski
Juliusz Żuławski was a Polish poet, prose writer, literary critic and translator. He was an editor of "Nowa Kultura" (1950–1951), chairman of Polish PEN Club (during the years of 1978–1983 and 1988–1991), member of Stowarzyszenie Pisarzy Polskich. He fought during Polish September Campaign (1939). - Deborah Moggach
Deborah Moggach is a British writer, born Deborah Hough on 28 June 1948. She has written fifteen novels to date, including "The Ex-Wives", "Tulip Fever", and, most recently, "These Foolish Things". She has adapted many of her novels as TV dramas and has also written several film scripts, including the BAFTA-nominated screenplay for "Pride & Prejudice." She has also written two collections of short stories and a stage play. - Carlos Sherman
Carlos Sherman ; born October 25, 1934, died March 4, 2005) was a Uruguay-born Belarusian-Spanish translator, writer, human rights activist and honorary vice-president of the Belarusan PEN Center (a worldwide association of writers, aimed to promote intellectual cooperation and understanding among writers). He translated from Spanish into Belarusian and Russian. - İsmail Beşikçi
İsmail Beşikçi is a Turkish scholar. He is a PEN Honorary Member. He has served 17 years in prison on propaganda charges stemming from his writings about the Kurdish population in Turkey. He was charged for over 100 years but released from jail in 1999. - William Auld
William Auld (6 November, 1924 - 11 September, 2006) was a Scottish author and the deputy director of a grammar school. He began to study Esperanto in 1937, but only became active in the propagation of the language in 1947, and from then on wrote many works in Esperanto. Auld edited various magazines and reviews, including "Esperanto en Skotlando" (1949-1955), "Esperanto" (1955-1958, 1961-1962), of "Monda Kulturo" (1962-1963), … - Storm Jameson
Margaret Storm Jameson (8 January 1891 - 30 September 1986) was an English writer, known for her 45 novels, and criticism. She was born in Whitby, Yorkshire, and studied at the University of Leeds. She moved to London, where she taught, and then became a full-time writer. She married the writer Guy Chapman, but continued to publish as Storm Jameson. She was a prominent president of the British branch of the International PEN association, from 1939, … - Irina Ratushinskaya
Irina Ratushinskaya (born March 4, 1954) is a prominent Russian dissident, poet and writer. Irina was educated at Odessa University, the city of her birth, and was graduated with a Master's Degree in physics in 1976. Before her graduation she taught at a primary school in Odessa from 1975-78. Irina's greatest ordeal of life began in the early 1980s, … - Amatoritsero Ede
Amatoritsero Ede (born March 6, 1963) is a Nigerian poet. In 1998 he won the "All-Africa Christopher Okigbo Prize for Literature." He had written under the name "Godwin Ede", a name he stopped bearing as a way to protest racism he experienced in Germany and to an extent to protest Western colonialism in general. Ede has lived in Canada since 2005, sponsored as a writer-in-exile by PEN Canada,and he edits an international online poetry journal, Sentinel Poetry Online. - Alfred Kerr
Alfred Kerr, born Alfred Kempner, was an influential German-Jewish theatre critic and essayist, nicknamed the "Kulturpapst" ("Culture Pope"). Kerr was born into a prosperous family in Breslau, Silesia, taking the surname Kerr in 1887, and making the change officially in 1909. He studied literature in Berlin with Erich Schmidt. He subsequently was a reviewer for numerous newspapers and magazines. - Walter Jens
Walter Jens (born May 8, 1923) is a German philologist, literature historian, critic, university professor, and writer. In the beginning 1940s, Jens joined the NSDAP. He denies having applied for membership actively and claims having been forced to join the party. He claims having become a member automatically, because he was a member of the Hitler Youth and never having received a membership card. - Gregory Norminton
Gregory Norminton is a novelist and environmental activist born at Ascot, Berkshire, in 1976. He read English at Regent's Park College, Oxford and studied acting at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. His novels include "The Ship of Fools" (London: Sceptre, 2001, 2002) (he also collaborated on the French translation), "Arts and Wonders" (London: Sceptre, 2004), and "Ghost Portrait" (London: Sceptre, 2005, 2006). - Seyhan Kurt
Seyhan Kurt is a French-Turkish poet, writer and artist(France, 1977). Born in Grenoble, South France, he started his primary education at La Verpillere, Ecole Les Marronnier(Grenoble) and completed it at Ecole Jean Jaures in Lyon. He gratuated from Dumlupinar High School in Mersin and continued his education in Selcuk University in Konya and studied French Language and Literature and Sociology. - Cirilo Bautista
Cirilo F. Bautista (1941-) is a multi-awarded Filipino poet, fictionist, critic and writer of nonfiction. He received his basic education from Legarda Elementary School (1st Honorable Mention, 1954) and Mapa High School (Valedictorian, 1959). He received his degrees in AB Literature from the University of Santo Tomas ("magna cum laude", 1963), MA Literature from St. Louis University, Baguio City ("magna cum laude", 1968), … - Benjamin Sehene
Benjamin Sehene (b. 1959) is a Rwandan-Canadian author whose work primarily focuses on questions of identity and the events surrounding the Rwandan genocide. Sehene was born in Kigali to a Tutsi family. His family fled Rwanda in 1963 for Uganda, and he studied in Paris at the Sorbonne in the early 1980s, before emigrating to Canada in 1984. He currently lives in Paris. He is a member of International PEN. In the aftermath of the 1994 genocide, Sehene returned to Rwanda, … - Alfred Schmidt
Alfred Schmidt (born May 19 1931 in Berlin) is a German philosopher and sociologist. Schmidt studied at first history and English and classical philology at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University of Frankfurt and later philosophy and sociology. He was a student of Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer and promoted with a work about the concept of nature in Karl Marx's writings. - Samir El-Youssef
Samir El-Youssef (Samir El Youssef, Samir el youssef) is a Palestinian writer and critic, who was born in 1965 in Rashidia, a Palestinian refugee camp in south of Lebanon. Since 1990 he has been living in London where he studied philosophy and gained a Master of Arts degree from the University of London. As a novelist El-youssef has published four works of fiction, of which Gaza Blues, Different Stories (co-authored with the Israeli Etgar Keret) is the most recent. - Paul William Roberts
Paul William Roberts is a Canadian writer who lives in Toronto, Ontario. Born in Wales and educated at Exeter College, Oxford, where he gained a second in English Language and Literature, Roberts moved permanently to Canada in 1980. He lived for several years prior to this in India, where he taught at Bangalore University and studied Sanskrit at the Banaras Hindu University in Varanasi. While working on his first novel, "The Palace of Fears", … - Michele Leggott
Michele Leggott, poet and literary scholar, was born in Stratford, New Zealand, in 1956. She received her secondary education at New Plymouth Girls High School, before attending the University of Canterbury where she completed an MA in English in 1979. She then moved to Canada to do a PhD at the University of British Columbia. Her dissertation was on the American poet Louis Zukofsky and was published in America as "Reading Zukovsky’s “80 Flowers”" (1989). - Frank Brady
Frank Brady (b. March 15, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York) is Chairman of the Department of Mass Communications, Journalism, Television and Film at St. John's University, New York. He is Professor of Communication Arts and Journalism at that university. He has also been an Adjunct Professor of Journalism for the past 25 years at Barnard College of Columbia University. He has a B.S., SUNY; MFA, Columbia University; M.A., Ph.D., New York University. - Tobias Hill
Tobias Hill (born London, England, 30 March 1970) is an award-winning British poet and novelist. He was educated at Westminster School and Sussex University. His four collections of poetry are:"Year of the Dog" (1995), "Midnight in the City of Clocks" (1996), influenced by his experience of life in Japan, "Zoo" (1998) and "Nocturne in Chrome & Sunset Yellow" (2006). - Tsujii Takashi
Tsujii Takashi is a Japanese author and poet, and the pen name of Tsutsumi Seiji, a major business leader. Takashi is the son of Tsutsumi Yasujiro, founder of the Seibu Railway company and a long-serving member, and eventually speaker, of Japan's House of Representatives. He was born in Tokyo and, after receiving his degree in economics from the University of Tokyo in 1951, began work as a secretary to his father. He took on a series of executive roles, … - Jan Zaprudnik
Jan Zaprudnik (Belarusian: "Янка Запруднік", real name Siarhiej Vilčycki, born 1926, Mir) is an American historian and publicist of Belarusian descent. He is also one of the leaders of the Belarusian community in the United States and an honoured member of the Belarusian PEN-centre. - Salcia Landmann
Salcia Landmann was a Jewish writer. She was born in Zhovkva, Galicia, but died in St. Gallen, Switzerland. She worked on preserving the Yiddish language, and she wrote the important work "Der Jüdische Witz" ("Jewish Humor"). She was one of the founders of the International PEN in Lichtenstein. - George Butterfield
George D.B. Butterfield (born 1939) is a Canadian businessman and philanthropist. Born in Saint John, New Brunswick and raised in Bermuda, he received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Trinity College in 1961 and a Bachelor of Law from Osgoode Hall Law School in 1965. A Bermuda citizen as well, he was elected a Rhodes Scholar in Bermuda in 1963 but resigned. He is the co-founder with his wife, Martha, and her brother Sidney Robinson of Butterfield & Robinson, … - Lech Majewski
Lech J. Majewski (born 30 August 1953) is a Polish film- and theatre-director, writer, poet, and painter. Majewski studied at the Kunst-Akademie in Warsaw. In 1973 he was at the National Film School in Łódź where he learned directing. Having closed his studies there from 1977 to 1981, he emigrated to England and shot his films there, and since 1982 also in the United States. Later Italy pulled him in, where he has lived (in Venice) until today, … - Janine Pommy Vega
Janine Pommy Vega (born February 5, 1942) is an American poet associated with the Beats. Vega grew up in Union City, New Jersey. At the age of fifteen, inspired by Jack Kerouac's "On the Road", she travelled to Manhattan to become involved in the Beat scene there. In 1962, Vega moved to Europe with her husband, painter Fernando Vega. After his sudden death, she returned to New York, and then moved to California. - Yurdanur Salman
Yurdanur Salman She finished the (State) High School in the same city. Then she graduated from the English Literature and Language Department, Faculty of Letters, Istanbul University, getting a second diploma from the Higher Teachers Traning School (on a State scholarship). She worked as an assistant and lecturer at various universities, namely Atatürk University (Erzurum), Yıldız Polytechnic (Istanbul), The School of Foreign Languages (Istanbul Uniersity), …
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