PEN Ukraine published their 2025 annual report of activities

During the year 2025, PEN Ukraine held over 70 public events at PEN Ukraine Space, organized 12 literary and volunteering trips, channeled €100,000 into fellowships for 20 authors to write their books and 220,000 UAH into supporting authors and purchased books for Ukrainian libraries at a cost of 365,000 UAH.

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 139 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 waragainst Ukraine
• documenting the experiences that the people of Ukraine are living through today
• documenting Russia’s crimes against Ukrainian media andculture
• restoration of cultural life in Ukraine
• establishing international cultural cooperation
• replenishment of library collections

PEN Ukraine’s key achievements in 2025 are as follows:

• 12 new members joined the organization that included 186 authors by the end of the year
• PEN Ukraine was awarded the Chytomo Prize as the Ambassador of Ukrainian Book "for systematic efforts to establish connections between the Ukrainian literary community and opinion leaders abroad, for giving voice to Ukrainian authors, advocating Ukrainian culture and implementing effective work models for Ukrainian writers and journalists, both free and imprisoned by the Kremlin, to be heard far beyond Ukraine"
• PEN Ukraine and the Institute of Mass Information (IMI) received the Monismanien Prize that is awarded to organizations and individuals who have made great effortsto defend freedom of speech
• 73 public events – discussions, presentations, poetry readings, concerts, photo exhibitions, book clubs, workshops, music home parties, film screenings – took place at PEN Ukraine Space in Kyiv
• PEN Ukraine’s administrative team and authors made 12 trips to the Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Odesa, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Poltava, Sumy, and Mykolaiv regions, delivered over 8,500 books to libraries and covered over 20,000 kilometers of Ukrainian roads. 49 PEN Ukraine employees and authors, along with international writers and journalists, participated in the trips
• In partnership with the Norwegian Non-fiction Writers andTranslators Association, PEN Ukraine provided 20 fellowships for Ukrainian authors amounting to € 5,000 each
• PEN Ukraine also granted 6 fellowships to Ukrainian writers and journalists, generally amounting to UAH 220,000, within the PEN Ukraine Emergency Fund
• PEN Ukraine has purchased and delivered over 1,000Ukrainian books for a total amount of UAH 365,000 to Russia-damaged libraries and received its third donation of 15,554 English-language books from BookAidInternational to continue spreading them among Ukrainian libraries since 2023
• Over 160 Ukrainian and international partners were involved in projects implementation
• PEN Ukraine initiated publication of 2 books from the PEN Ukraine Library series – i. e. A Free Man in Captivity (The Old Lion Publishing House) and Free Voices of Crimea (Vivat Publishing House).

In 2025, PEN Ukraine’s activities were made possible by institutional and project support from the National Endowmentfor Democracy, International Renaissance Foundation, Hawthornden Foundation, Sushko Foundation, NorwegianHelsinki Committee, PEN America, PEN International (SIDA), the Adam Harber Foundation, UKRSIBBANK, Thames & Hudson.

To find the full 2025 public report and learn about PENUkraine’s plans for 2026, please follow the link.