Maksym Sytnikov appointed executive director of PEN Ukraine

Tetyana Teren has ended her almost 7-year role as the executive director of PEN Ukraine and entered the organization’s Executive Board

Journalist and cultural manager, Tetyana Teren had led PEN Ukraine since 2018. During these years, the PEN community has almost doubled – from 68 to 183 authors. A range of cultural and human rights projects and initiatives was also implemented – among them the George Gongadze Prize, Drahomán Prize, Yuri Shevelyov Prize, Vasyl Stus Prize, Lacework: Literary Readings in the Towns of Ukraine, Approaching. Meetings with Ukrainian Writers, focus topics of PEN Ukraine, From Skovoroda Till Nowadays: 100 Significant Books in Ukrainian Language, Essays Days festival, Propysy workshop festival for emerging authors, book series PEN Ukraine Library, Dialogues on War, Regional Meeting of PEN Centers, People of Culture Taken Away by the War, REQUIEM: Platform for the memory of journalists who died as a result of Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine, PEN Ukraine’s literary volunteering trips, Unbreakable Libraries, In Solidarity With Ukraine and many others.

"This role was a great life and professional blessing for me. It gave me an opportunity to grow as a manager, curator, author and to learn from the people who are someone’s professors and favorite writers, while for me they are colleagues and friends. Sometimes, during the meetings of our Executive Board or our awards juries, that as a professional, I’m so lucky to listen to these people and work with them. Another professional blessing is PEN Ukraine’s administrative team and all the people who had worked in it and brought their professional skills, their determination and their faith into our organization, giving me an opportunity to learn from them too," said Tetyana Teren.

Since January 30, Tetyana Teren has entered the Executive Board of PEN Ukraine. She will also continue her work as a head of the George Gongadze Prize Supervisory Board.

"In the name of the community of PEN Ukraine I want to thank Tetyana for all the shared paths, for all the projects she initiated, for all the people of common roadmap and readiness to implement important initiatives for Ukraine she united. It’s a great honor and responsibility for me to continue my work at PEN Ukraine as the executive director, but I’m also sure that together with the whole community of authors, administrative team, partners, friends and colleagues, we will go on with developing PEN as a sustainable cultural institution," said Maksym Sytnikov.

Since February 2025, Maksym Sytnikov became PEN Ukraine’s executive director. He studied political sciences at Warsaw University, was a fellow of the Erasmus and Eastern Partnership Civil Society Facility programs. In 2018-2021, he worked as an analyst and coordinator of international advocacy campaigns at the Open Dialogue Foundation (Belgium/Poland). In 2018-2019, he organized monitoring missions of the Italian Federation of Human Rights (Italy). In 2027-2022, he was a translator, text author, producer, and coordinator of volunteers at Ukraїner.

In 2021, Maksym joined the administrative team of PEN Ukraine and become in charge of the organization’s human rights projects. After the beginning of the full-scale invasion, he organized foreign delegations’ visits to Ukraine and literary volunteering trips to de-occupied and frontline regions. In 2023, he became PEN Ukraine’s deputy executive director.

Since February 2025, Hanna Ustynova, communications and partnerships leader of the organization, accepted the position of PEN Ukraine’s deputy executive director.