English Pen

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Staff & Officers

President: Lisa Appignanesi
Lisa Appignanesi is a novelist, writer, and broadcaster. Mad, Bad and Sad, her cultural history of women and the mind doctors came out from Virago/Little Brown in February 2008. Her fictions include the prize-winning The Memory Man (Arcadia ), the bestselling psychological thrillers Sanctuary and The Dead of Winter (Bantam); her non-fiction, the acclaimed family memoir, Losing the Dead (Chatto), as well as The Cabaret (Yale). She is the co-author of Freud's Women (Penguin) and co-editor of The Rushdie File. She also edited Free Expression is No Offence (Penguin,2006) a collection which served in PEN's campaign against the incitement to religious hatred legislation.  A former university lecturer and Deputy Director of London's Institute of Contemporary Arts, she has also made several programmes for television and radio, presenting BBC 3's Night Waves. She is General Editor of Profile Books Big Ideas series. As a translator from the French, she won the Scott Moncrieff prize for literary translation, with John Berger, for The Year is 42.  She is a Chevalier de l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres and Chair of the Freud Museum.


 


 


 


 

 

 

Director: Jonathan Heawood

Jonathan joined English PEN as Director in November 2005 from the Fabian Society, where he was responsible for publishing a wide variety of political books and pamphlets, and editing the Fabian Review. He was previously Deputy Literary Editor of the Observer, and he continues to write on culture and politics for a range of publications, including the Independent on Sunday, Prospect, the New Statesman, the London Review of Books and Country Life. He wrote the introduction to Orwell: The Observer Years (Atlantic, 2003), and is now writing a book about the cultural history of the British landscape. He would love to hear from anyone interested in English PEN's work.


 


 


 

 

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Assistant Director: Sarah Hesketh 

Sarah gained a BA in English Literature in 2004 from Merton College, Oxford. She joined PEN  in August 2007 after completing her MA in Creative Writing (Poetry) at the University of East Anglia. Her first collection of poetry Napoleon's Travelling Bookshelf was published in 2009.

 

Office and Membership Manager: Amy Oliver

Amy left Dartington College of Arts with a Writing degree in 2008. She began working for PEN as an intern after returning from the Post-NeoAbsurdist Anti-Festival in New Jersey. She joined PEN full time in early 2009.



Campaigns Manager: Robert Sharp

 

 

Campaigns Assistant: Cat Lucas

Cat graduated from University College London in 2007 with a BA in French and Spanish. She worked as an intern on the Writers in Prison Programme from August 2007, before beginning full time as Campaigns Assistant in October 2008.

 

Readers and Writers Programme Manager: Philip Cowell


 


 


 


 


 

 


 


 


 


 


 


 

Writers in Translation Programme Manager (Acting): Sophie Hoult

Sophie graduated from the University of Bristol in 2005 with a BA in English Literature. She previously worked for David Godwin Associates literary agency before joining English PEN in January 2010.



   

 


 


 


 


 

 

 

 

 


 


 


 

 

 

 



 


 


 

 


 


 


 


 


 

 

 

Vice-Presidents of English PEN:
Sybille Bedford, OBE; Lady Rachel Billington; William Boyd; Dame A.S. Byatt CBE; Margaret Drabble CBE; Lady Antonia Fraser CBE; Victoria Glendinning CBE; Ronald Harwood CBE; Michael Holroyd CBE; Francis King CBE; Ben Okri CBE; Harold Pinter CBE, CH; Josephine Pullein-Thompson MBE; Sir Tom Stoppard CBE; Claire Tomalin; Raleigh Trevelyan.

 

Board of Trustees of English PEN

Raficq Abdullah; Nadeem Aslam; Lisa Appignanesi (President); Ania Corless (Chair Books to Prisoners Committee); Jan Dalley; Julian Evans (Chair, Writers in Translation); Lennie Goodings; Jonathan Heawood (Director); Amanda Hopkinson; Derek Johns; Barry Kernon (Hon. Treasurer); Hari Kunzru (Deputy President); Lindsay Mackie (Chair, Readers & Writers); Fiona McMorrough; Caroline Michel; Deborah Moggach (Chair Events Committee); Bernard Redhouse (Accountant); Ros Schwartz (Vice-chair, Writers in Translation); Anne Sebba; Carole Seymour-Jones (Chair WiPC); Gillian Slovo; Tom Stacey.

 




   

 

Writers in Prison

Protecting threatened writers around the world
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Writers in Translation

Promoting the best international writing
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Readers & Writers

Taking literature into every corner of society
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Writers in Public

Hosting the best writers and the key debates
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Free Expression

Campaigning for creative freedom
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