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Editorials

Editorial

Zhina means a new life

September 16th 2024 marks the second anniversary of the death of Zhina Mahsa Amini, who was arrested and beaten by Iran's morality police for not wearing her hijab properly. Her death was the starting...

Parvin Ardalan September 19 2024
Editorial

Trauma as an Exit to New Language

Inga Gaile is the editor for this issue of PEN/Opp. She is a poet, author, and the president of PEN Latvia. The common theme in this issue is how trauma influences the arts and how trauma can be...

Text: Inga Gaile October 05 2023
Editorial

It’s urgent: be our voice!

On September 16, 2022, a picture of Kurdish Jina Mahsa Amini connected to a life support machine in a hospital bed was...

By Marall Nasiri, Swedish actor and director at the Royal Dramatic Theatre, Stockholm November 28 2022
Editorial

“May the World Listen…”

Oksana Zabuzhko, poet, fiction writer, and essayist, is one of contemporary Ukrainian literature’s foremost voices in...

Leader: Mikael Nydahl, guest editor April 20 2022
Editorial

It began with a call for help.

In the beginning of August 2021, when the Taliban still had not consolidated complete control over the country, Swedish...

Leader: Elisabeth Löfgren, Chair, Writers in Prison Committee, Swedish PEN March 04 2022
Editorial

The Myitkyina Library

The conflict in Myanmar concerns a struggle between democracy and dictatorship. After a decade characterized by a slow...

Editorial: Jesper Bengtsson October 01 2021
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
Editorial

A Tribute to the Land of the Cedar Trees

The economic crisis in Lebanon is so deep that it is described by the World Bank as one of the worst to hit any country...

Chief-in-editor: Kholod Saghir June 18 2021
Editorial

Exploded Hearts of the Arab Spring

“A poem is a thought that bores through the heart—exploding it” - Marie Lundquist Ten years have passed since we...

Text: Kholod Saghir, Acting chief-in-editor January 25 2021
Editorial

When Hatred Becomes the Air We Breathe

What is hate speech? Hate speech differs from any other use of language since it is used only to threaten, silence, and...

Text: Casia Bromberg September 17 2020

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