Report published about PEN Ukraine’s activities in 2024

In a year, PEN Ukraine organized over 270 events in Ukraine and abroad, hosted over 80 events at PEN Ukraine Space, and purchased books for Ukrainian libraries for a total amount of €13,500.

PEN Ukraine is a cultural and human rights organization that unites Ukrainian journalists, writers, scholars, publishers, translators, and human rights activists. PEN Ukraine is one of 146 national centers of PEN International.

The activity of PEN Ukraine in wartime is aimed at:

• supporting the Ukrainian literary community
• informing international audiences about Russia’s war against Ukraine
• documenting experiences that the people of Ukraine are facing nowadays
• documenting Russia’s crimes against Ukrainian media and culture
• restoration of cultural life in Ukraine
• establishing international cultural cooperation
• replenishment of library collections

PEN Ukraine’s key achievements in 2024:

• 16 new members joined the community of PEN Ukraine. By the end of the year, the organization included 177 authors
• PEN Ukraine, Lviv Media Forum, and Rubryka media received the Democracy Courage Tribute in Johannesburg, South Africa
• 80 public events – discussions, presentations, poetry readings, concerts, photo exhibitions, book clubs, theater play readings, workshops, music home parties, film screenings – took place at PEN Ukraine Space. Over UAH 300,000 to meet the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and volunteering organizations were raised within these charity events.
• The PEN bus made 11 trips to the frontline and liberated territories of the Kyiv, Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Odesa, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, Sumy, Kherson and Mykolaiv regions, involving 54 authors, PEN Ukraine team members, foreign writers and journalists, and covered over 30,000 kilometers of Ukrainian roads
• 10 fellowships amounting to €5000 each were granted to Ukrainian non-fiction authors within the fellowship program from the Norwegian Non-fiction Writers and Translators Association and PEN Ukraine
• PEN Ukraine granted 7 fellowships to Ukrainian writers and journalists, generally amounting to UAH 220,000 within PEN Ukraine Emergency Fund
• PEN Ukraine purchased books for Ukrainian libraries for a total amount of €13,500 and received 27,000 books in English language as the second donation from the Book Aid International to be distributed among the Ukrainian libraries
• Over 130 Ukrainian and international partners were involved in PEN Ukraine projects implementation
• PEN Ukraine initiated the publication of 5 books within the PEN Ukraine Library series. Among them: Catching the Intangible. A Guide Through the World of Essays (Dukh-i-Litera publishing house), Stories of Resilience, Die Zukunft, die wir uns wünschen (ibidem Verlag), Almanac with the texts of the emerging authors who took part in the II Propysy Festival, Dialogues on War (Vivat Publishing House), Words and Bullets (Vivat Publishing House)

The activities of PEN Ukraine in 2024 were made possible by the institutional support of the National Endowment For Democracy, International Renaissance Foundation, PEN International, The Royal Literary Fund, Smart Foundation, Prague Civil Society Centre, Open Society Foundations, Embassy of the United States of America, The Norwegian Non-Fiction Writers and Translators Association, Thames & Hudson, Book Aid International, Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida).

For the complete 2024 public report and more information about the plans for 2025, please follow the link.