Congress
The annual PEN Congress offers an opportunity for the entire PEN community to gather and speak about our work. Officially, it is the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the international office of PEN, but its importance extends far beyond this function. The Congress helps us strengthen our networks and connections; reinforce and refine our core principles through discussion, debate and the passage of resolutions; exchange experiences and ideas; celebrate writing in all its forms; and simply catch up with old and new friends and colleagues.
Each Congress has its own theme, which is always set by the host PEN Centre that year and often reflects issues that are of utmost importance to the members of that particular Centre. Recent themes have included ‘The Environment and Literature – What Can Words Do?’ (Tokyo 2010, hosted by Japan PEN); ‘Words, Words, Nothing but … Words?’ (Linz 2009, hosted by Austrian PEN); and ‘The Role of the Word’ (Bogotá 2008, hosted by Colombian PEN).
View footage of the 2010 Tokyo Congress on Japan PEN Club’s YouTube channel and of the 2000 Moscow Congress.
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- O.H.Malik and Stephen Spender at the 47th PEN International Congress, Tokyo 1984
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- 49th PEN International Congress, Hamburg 1986
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- 51st PEN International Congress, Lugano 1987
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- Delegates at the 52nd PEN International Congress, Seoul 1988
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- 59th PEN International Congress, Dubrovnik 1992
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- 67th PEN International Congress, Sarajevo 2000
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- Andrew Nguyen, Ngyen Hoang Bao Viet and Jane Spender at the 68th PEN International Congress, Ohrid, Macedonia 2002
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- Kadija George, Alfred Msadala, Remi Raji and Jane Spender at the 69th PEN International Congress, Mexico City 2003
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- PEN International 74th Congress Bogotá 2008
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- 76th PEN International Congress, Tokyo 2010
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- 77th PEN International Congress, Belgrade 2011
