Young Writers Committee & Tomorrow Club Newsletter

The Annual Meeting, June 2026

On 24 June, we held the first official Annual Meeting of the Young Writers Committee online, under the theme "Youth Solidarity: Thinking Globally, Acting Locally." Delegates joined from over 20 countries and PEN Centres across Asia, MENA, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. Alicia Quiñones (PEN International, Americas Region) moderated.

We opened with an Empty Chair for Wai Moe Naing, a Myanmar writer and youth activist sentenced to 74 years in prison following the 2021 coup, presented by Hanna Khosravi (PEN America). Ross Holder walked us through the PEN International Annual Case List with a specific focus on young people being prosecuted and marginalised. A panel moderated by San Mon Aung (Myanmar) brought together Priscilla Ramírez Muro (Mexico), Halima Abdulaziz (Nigeria), Haneen Khalil (Syria), and Ege Dündar (Turkey) to speak about what solidarity actually looks like in their contexts and communities.

The round of voices gave updates from people in the network, their centers and their endeavours. The common thread: funding scarcity, volunteer overstretch, and a hunger for more connection between countries and communities, especially within shared regions. We heard you. That theme is shaping everything we are doing in the second half of the year.

We are proud that 62 young members from as many countries have now joined their local PEN centre as representatives ready to work closely with the committee. We are working on generating the necessary capacity for us to act collectively and collaborate more efficiently, especially in solidarity.

Following our Day of the-Young- Imprisoned campaign we were elated to hear that young journalist Furkan Karabay was released, yet Algerian poet, Mohammed Tadjadit remains behind bars. PEN Nigeria colleagues writing solidarity poems for Furkan lead by Halima Abdulazeez was received by him and his family as “a powerful form of support and warmth” during a tumultuous detention. We hope to find more support to expand on similarly heartfelt and effective actions into the future.

World Expression Forum, Utøya Young Experts on Free Expression Lillehammer, June 2026

Seven YWC members gathered in Lillehammer, Norway, for the World Expression Forum, facilitated through our partnership with Norsk PEN.

We exchanged and networked with an impressive range of young peers from 60 countries who were invited this year to Utøya island, alongisde our colleagues as recommended by us to the program committee of the Young Experts On Free Expression Forum.

PEN International Board Member and Tomorrow Club’s Project Lead Ege Dündar held a workshop titled “The Future of Publishing: Making Space for Young Voices” at the forum attended by our YWC colleagues and in partnership with International Publishers Association and Frankfurter Buchmesse.

The feedback from fellow young experts on free expression in the room as well as older peers as mentors provided a fertile understanding of the needs and opportunities across the field with a youth focus. It helped deepen our understanding and direction as the natural leaders of a coalition between sister partners focused on free expression, literature, publishing and youth.

As a result of a year of networking over various events, the Young Voices Network is currently being developed by Ege Dündar and John Steinmark from Frankfurt Book Fair as well as other renown organisations like IPA, EIBF and Fondazione Feltrinelli to establish closer collaboration over shared aims and expand capacity as well as outreach for the youth.

We’re proud that our community and youth engagement work has been a core inspiration and example for others. Our events and visibility at other cultural hotspots have increased too such as the London Book Fair, Ubud Writers and Readers Festival in Indonesia and Oslo Freedom Forum.

In Norway, we spent time connecting with each other and with representatives and gatekeepers from across the literary, publishing and free expression field.  A continuation of our collaboration in over 10 young members within our PEN network attending each year.  All partners and other cultural organisations who are increasingly interested in what we are building. It mattered to be in the room while groundwork was being laid for closer collaboration between similar organisations, at a time when autocrats are collaborating closer. 

Tomorrow Club: In Numbers

Since its launch in April 2025, this is where Tomorrow Club stands as of mid-2026:

New readers reached since last launch
12,000+

Young writers published
77, across 138 countries

Regional spotlights published
Africa, Americas, Asia

Overall readers reached since creation 
28,168

Top visitor countries
China, Singapore, USA, Pakistan, UK, Germany

Spotlights in progress
MENA, Europe

Institutional partners engaged
Index on Censorship, PEN Opp magazine, International Publishers Association, Frankfurt Book Fair, UNESCO, Versapolis Network

The Asia Spotlight was curated by San Mon Aung and Ege Dündar, featuring over 30 writers from 20 countries, assisted by our previous Head of Asia Pacific Region Ross Holder and fellow board member and regional expert Salil Tripathi. Aside from bringing new young people into the PEN fold, it facilitated collaborations between Centres and the secretariat. The spotlight brought in readers from China, Singapore, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan in numbers none of us had predicted. The geographic spread tells you something: young writers around the world are looking for each other, and Tomorrow Club is becoming a place they find each other, get inspired and exchange stories.

Spotlight of young voices across the MENA Region is up next soon in early September. Please feel free to submit your writing and stories if interested. We are grateful for Ege Dündar running the project and platform on a voluntary basis for the past year. Interest by sister organisations and potential funders have been uplifting, including fundraising efforts with Danish PEN for a communication platform for us all under the name Tomorrow Hub and we hope to inform about that in due course.

➣We collaborated with Index on Censorship’s “Gen Z is Revolting: Why The World’s Youth Will Not Be Silenced” Special Issue, cross publishing some stories from inspiring young voices.

➣Likewise, we collaborated with PEN/Opp Magazine to make more space for young voices and get their works translated to Swedish alongside an honorarium.

➣We partnered with Swedish PEN for their inspiring schools project Hotade Ord Threatened Words and the Right to Read

Threatened words and the right to read is Svenska PEN new initiative for high schools, universities and libraries that want to work with freedom of speech, artistic freedom, and democratic rights to read, write and speak up.

Stories fro Tomorrow Club writers alongside a video with advice to young students such as reading suggestions will now be course material along with questions and quizzes where the class gets to reflect, listen and test their own thoughts. The material also includes texts from writers and journalists behind bars for teachers to run courses with pupils on works banned elsewhere. Ensuring that when one is silenced, a classroom of students learn about and reflect on them.

We’re grateful to Hanna Nordell and Swedish PEN for making this great project possible.We hope more schools and universities in other countries will engage with these compelling stories and the struggle for free expression across history until today. The many writers speaking truth to power and building communities around it can inspire students to speak up, act as good role models against toxic ones, PEN can provide the course material and supportive networks.

By registering on Swedish PEN’s platform hotadeord.se, staff at schools and libraries can freely download all the teaching material - both within Threatened Word and within Banned Books Week Sweden, which they organise with the Dawit Isaak Library in Malmö. There are already many teacher tutorials on different topics available on the platform.

Read more about Threatened Words and the Right To Read Program here: https://www.hotadeord.se/

PEN International Supports A Young Writer’s Debut in Cox’s Bazar

On August 14, 2026, PEN International and the Young Writers Committee supported the debut book launch of young Rohingya poet Ro Hefzu’s debut book, Still I Breathe, with his community in the world’s largest refugee camp in Bangladesh.

Ro first made contact with Tomorrow Club, where his poetry and an interview with him were featured. His commitment to choosing literature and storytelling over the genocidal violence he was subjected to, and his determination to educate his peers and uplift his community despite some of the harshest conditions and cultural erasure imposed upon him, inspired all of us.

Co-organiser of the event and board member Ege Dündar, attended the ceremony on camera and gave a speech to celebrate storytelling as an essential tool for community, global solidarity, and resistance against cultural erasure.

👉 Read the full report and Ege Dündar’s speech on PEN International

What’s Upcoming?

The MENA Spotlight

The next Tomorrow Club issue is focused on the Middle East and North Africa, and it is close, currently being prepared by regional editor and VP of PEN Lebanon Dr. Mohammed Nasreddine, PEN International’s head of region Mina Thabet and Ege Dündar. Funded by PEN International, over 12 young storytellers across the region and in the diaspora already submitted their works and are being translated. Watch this space.

The PEN Congress

This year’s PEN International will focus on the theme “Writers at Risk in the Age of AI and Global Disorder” held online on the 29th of September. We will be there as a committee, presenting our annual activity report and holding regional meetings. Please follow PEN International’s website for public programming you can attend.

Young Writers Committee Meeting: 23 September 2026

Organising Youth Engagement Events

If you have an idea or suggestion to organise a youth engagement event with your local community, kindly contact us [email protected] with your idea for consideration and we will forward your request to the relevant local center and its young representatives.

Reach Out

If you, a colleague or friend is working and organising around similar themes as Tomorrow Club and Young Writers Committee, please write to us and submit your stories. Tell us what it is, when it happens, and how people can get involved. We can assess and circulate to amplify it.

Upcoming Events: We’re preparing to host various events, public discussions and solidarity/networking sessions at upcoming cultural hotspots such as Frankfurt Book Fair, UN Youth Town Hall and Ubud Writers and Readers Festival in Indonesia.

We will also be hosting a small creative residency in Berlin’s Dom Wilka in October with friends from 5 continents gathering, a first attempt to open up more spaces to bring our network closer together. We see these partnerships as humble but strong foundations building with mutual trust and are working hard to turn interest and opportunities into generating capacity to mobilise with many more peers and partners in times ahead.

Next Online Event: What the Machine Won't Tell You

Our colleague Preeshita Shah (PEN Melbourne) is hosting an online event with the Emerging Writers’ Festival in Melbourne, presented in partnership with PEN Melbourne and the Young Writers’ Committee. Last year, their event focused on young voices in collaboration with Mekong Review. This time, she will be in conversation with Jeff Sparrow, writer, editor, broadcaster and Walkley Award-winning journalist, for an hour on what AI is changing about writing, and about us.

When: Sunday, 13 September, 7:45 to 8:45 pm AEST

Format: Online via Zoom. Free. Registration required.

Register: https://emergingwritersfestival.org.au/event/pen-melbourne-event/

Stay Connected

Follow us on Instagram at @pen_youth for news and oppurtunities as well as on Bluesky at @youngwriterspen.bsky.social, and on TikTok at @youngwriterspen. Share your events, your publications, your milestones. Tag us. We will amplify best we can.

Many more relevant opportunities and events can be found at our many PEN Center’s social media channels!

Our project still runs on a small budget, voluntary basis, but there are various fundraising efforts on the way! In the meantime, if there is something the committee or Tomorrow Club can support in other ways; something you want to raise, seek guidance on, or simply something you want us to know about, you know where to find us. Let’s continue building together.

In solidarity,

Ege Dündar - Board Member, PEN International and Project Lead, Tomorrow Club

&

Ayi Renaud Dossavi - Chair, Young Writers Committee, PEN International