The VII Regional Meeting of PEN Centers took place in Kyiv

On October 22-25, the VII Regional Meeting of PEN Centers, organized by PEN Ukraine with support from PEN International and the New Democracy Fund, took place in Kyiv.

Launched in 2014 as an annual meeting of PEN Centers from the Central and Eastern Europe, this event constitutes a safe venue for mutual support and a platform to discuss challenges for the freedom of speech and human rights in the region. Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, the Meeting is subjected to expressing the international PEN community’s solidarity with Ukraine.

The pool of participants of the VII Regional meeting included Peter Mickwitz (PEN Finland), Per Christian Øhrgaard (PEN Denmark), Ann-Magrit Austenå (PEN Norway), Faruk Sehic (PEN Bosnia and Herzegovina), Henrik Sjöberg (PEN Sweden), Sophie Sumburane (PEN Berlin), and Stefan Todorovic (PEN Montenegro).

International writers, journalists and publishers visited the localities of Kyiv and Chernihiv regions where they saw firsthand the consequences of the Russian army’s aggression during the occupation in 2022.

During their visit to Ukraine, the participants also met the representatives of human rights and cultural organizations such as Truth Hounds, Crimean Platform, Ukrainian Institute, Vivat Publishing House, Ukrainian Book Institute, Laboratoria Publishing House, and Lviv Book Forum.

The program of the VII Regional Meeting of PEN Centers also included two discussions dedicated to the topic of Europe and the war. During both, the questions of the political regimes’ influence on collective and individual historic memory and of art as an instrument of reflection were raised. The conversations were moderated by Volodymyr Yermolenko and Iryna Slavinska.

Besides, public interviews were also organized during the Regional Meeting. Alim Aliev, human rights activist and deputy director general of the Ukrainian Institute, talked about the situation with the freedom of speech and human rights in the Russian-occupied Crimea. Mykhailo Palinchak, who was among the first photographers to enter Bucha after its liberation and whose shocking footage of the consequences of Russians’ aggression went all around the world, spoke on the ethics of documenting the war.


Photographs: Valentyna Naumenko, Roman Zakrevskyi