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Theme: Against the Grain: Writing Resistance

Editorial

Against the Grain: Writing Resistance

As a part of Banned Books Week, PEN/Opp publish an issue edited by the artist Shubigi Rao. The publication is made during a time when book banning is increasing globally in the wake of autocratisation...

Text: Shubigi Rao October 08 2025
Poetry

My Father’s Skin Looks Like the Surface of the Moon

Years ago, I was adamant I’d never write about the war that took place in Bosnia in my infancy. I found the topic passé and though it had nothing to do with me. Poetry laughed at my hubris. Who among...

Text: Selma Asotić October 08 2025
Article

The Philippines and Freedom of Expression

In The Philippines and Freedom of Expression Conchitina Cruz describes the attempted neoliberal takeover and militarization of universities, issues that are of particular global relevance in this...

Text: Conchitina “Chingbee” Cruz October 08 2025
Article

Letter to Tatay

This is a letter penned in jail by Amanda Echanis to her father, peace consultant Randall “Ka Randy” Echanis. Amanda, a writer and organizer of the Amihan National Federation of Peasant Women, was...

Text: Amanda Socorro Lacaba Echanis October 08 2025
Poetry

Ina's song

Reina Mae “Ina” Nasino, a student activist who became a community organizer, was pregnant when she was arrested on fabricated charges on November 5, 2019 with two other activists at their organization...

Text: Mara Peralta October 08 2025
Article

Myles

Myles Albasin had just graduated from University of the Philippines-Cebu when she and five other young activists were arrested in Mabinay, Negros Oriental on March 3, 2018. Like many detained...

Text: Mary Rose Ampoon October 08 2025
Interview

On Shadow Libraries: An Interview with Tomislav Medak

Shubigi Rao in conversation with Tomislav Medak, one of the initiators of Public Library, a book-sharing online project with the tagline ‘when everyone is a librarian, the library is everywhere’. This...

Text: Shubigi Rao October 08 2025
Article

Empty Fields

Gina Alexandra Srmabekian is a writer whose work grapples with transgenerational trauma, memory and identity. She writes about grief because it is the most powerful articulation of love.

Text: Gina Alexandra Srmabekian October 08 2025
Fiction

The Spoils of War Museum

In the wake of the 2020 war over Artsakh and the ethnic cleansing of the Republic that followed in 2023 by Azerbaijan, memory has become a battlefield as fraught as the land itself. “The Spoils of War...

Text: Gina Alexandra Srmabekian October 08 2025
Poetry

Two Poems

Nyree Abrahamian is a Canadian-Armenian writer and creative director based in Yerevan. She produces Country of Dust, an award-winning narrative podcast, and co-founded the Tumanyan International...

Text: Nyree Abrahamian October 08 2025
Poetry

Snowdrops and Other Poems

Ruzanna Grigoryan lives and writes poetry in Yerevan, Armenia.

Text: Ruzanna Grigoryan October 08 2025

Theme: Writers in exile

Editorial

Writers in exile

It is now ten years since Swedish PEN started its international online publication PEN/Opp, which up until 2019 was...

Editorial: Marit Kapla September 10 2021
Article

My Testament

Five years after the stolen election, Belarusian poet Uladzimir Liankievič offers a personal reflection on the legacy of the Belarusian uprising. Impressions from schoolbooks from his childhood and...

Text: Uladz Ljankevitj [Uladzimir Liankievič] August 21 2025
Article

When War Rages: Writing as a Vehicle of Resilience

”Writing of war, amidst its turmoil, reopens old wounds, striving to mend them with memory’s searing balm, even as new wounds bleed. I wrote to confront the past, but it was also a writing to reject a...

Text: Stella Gaitano Translation from Arabic: Najlaa Eltom June 23 2025
Article

Riskbergska

On 4 February 2025, the deadliest mass shooting in Sweden's history took place on the Risbergska campus in Örebro. Ten people were killed in the attack. Artist and writer Fikret Atay is based in...

Fikret Atay March 20 2025
Article

The Orphans of Europe

Anka Upala is a well-known contemporary Belarusian writer. Her pseudonym is a reference to Janka Kupala, a classic writer of Belarusian literature. Upala had to leave Belarus because of the...

Anka Upala January 02 2025
Article

Story-7: Nights and Walls

Aslı Ceren Aslan was born in Istanbul in 1990 and graduated from Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University, Department of Mathematics in 2014. Between 2014 and 2021, Aslan worked in various positions as a...

Aslı Ceren Aslan March 07 2024
Poetry

Icarus' dream

Wesam Almadani is a Palestinian writer, and human rights activist, who came to Norway as an ICORN writer. Almadani published two books – the novel The Body’s Schizophrenia (2020) and the poetry...

Text: Wesam Almadani  February 28 2024
Article

Russian Culture in Light of Refugees from Mariupol

In this nuanced literary essay, Putin opponent Dmitry Kuzmin tries to answer the question of whether all Russian culture is evil. He is a Ukrainian-to-Russian translator and editor-in-chief of the...

Text: Dmitry Kuzmin January 17 2023
Poetry

Selected Poems by Mizar Kemal

Mizar Kemal is an Iraqi poet and journalist. He is a guest writer in the Swedish city of Stockholm. These poems were translated in a workshop in the city of Umeå, north of Sweden, during the...

Poems: Mizar Kemal May 29 2022
Interview

Not my Egypt

Ahmed Naji is trying to understand the zeitgeist. In the 36 years of his life he has witnessed dictatorship, revolution, counter-revolution, military coup, jail and exile. Ahmed Naji’s story is unique...

Interview by Edgar Mannheimer February 19 2022
Fiction

Scabs on the soul

PenOpp publishes a chapter from the Turkish author Barbaros Altuğ's novel Spiritual Wounds, which was published in Turkish last year. The novel's main character Derin, a Turkish journalist who grew up...

Text: Barbaros Altuğ January 21 2022
Article

Return to the Nightmare

Dara Abdallah is a Syrian poet and writer, born in the city of Qamishli in 1990. He lives in Berlin since 2013, and studies at the Faculty of Philosophy and Cultural Studies at Humboldt University. He...

Text: Dara Abdallah December 17 2021
Poetry

Poem by Hoda Khamosh

Hoda Khamosh is poet, media activist, and women’s rights activist from Afghanistan. She attended the Merci Poetry Festival in Gotenburg the 4 th of September through a recorded video. She read this...

Poem: Hoda Khamosh September 24 2021
Article

Crisis and Unrepresentability

PEN/Opp publishes “Crisis and unrepresentability” – a new written lecture by the Syrian author, thinker and the Tucholsky Prize winner Yassin Al-Haj Saleh. The lecture was previously presented in...

Text: Yassin Al-Haj Saleh September 10 2021

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