Peace: Max Porter’s 2026 PEN Lecture
English PEN’s annual PEN Lecture delivered by Max Porter on 29 April 2026.
language
language – PEN Transmissions
Dissolving Sugar in Water: A Long Conversation with Solvej Balle
Solvej Balle on time, morality, and searching.
There Is Never One English
Deepa Rajagopalan on creating space at the centre.
Missing Persons and Missed Connections
Em Dial on archives and invitations of silence.
Shadow Histories: Writing What You Don’t Know
Christine Wu on reimagining family history.
Kurdishness: A Matter of Existence and Non-Existence
Nurcan Baysal on Kurdish language, culture and identity. Translated by Nazım Dikbas.
Hip-Hop & the Apocalypse
Jordan Aitcheson-Labarr on viewing a turbulent world through Hip Hop
To Which Homeland Should I Send My Letter?
Kamran Sajid on Panjabi folk music
Ancient Magic vs. Modern Magic: Raphael Cormack in Conversation with Rana Haddad
Rana Haddad and Raphael Cormack on holy men, charlatans, and how 'East' and 'West' saw each other.
The Mud of Old Damascus Became My Mud: A Conversation with Issam Kourbaj
Issam Kourbaj on found art, the imagery of boats, and urgent archives.
The Girls Are Playing with Fire: An Interview with Johanne Lykke Holm
Johanne Lykke Holm on gender, witches, and doppelgängers.
Find Your Mind
Tallulah Howarth on embracing your poetic mind.
I Need to Build a Different Library
Finlay Worrallo on writerly intentions and the translation of ideas.
Shouldering the Boat
Sema Kaygusuz on language, water and renewal. Translated by Nicholas Glastonbury.
To Fill the Void: A Conversation with Chloe Gong
Chloe Gong on how YA fiction and Shakespeare shaped her writing voice.
Languages Learnt, Languages Lost
Sophie Lau on the complex relationship with her mother tongue.
This Intangible Thing Called Storytelling
Mariam Jallow on the folklore, fear, and storytelling.
Our Tongues Were Forked Along Lines of Migration
Janika Oza on language and migration.
Lubunca Is the Language of Activism: A Conversation with Lilith Bardakçı
Lilith Bardakçı on the history and evolution of Lubunca, the language spoken by the LGBTQ+ community in Turkey.
Bookpocalypse: AI and the Risks to Literature and Free Expression
Monica Ali's PEN H.G. Wells Lecture
Dice
By Gazan writer Nayrouz Qarmout, translated by Sawad Hussain and Perween Richards.
I’m Not Trying to Write Japanese Literature Per Se: Aoko Matsuda in Conversation with Polly Barton
Aoko Matsuda and Polly Barton on prizes, patriarchy and politics.
To Translate with an Accent
Deepa Bhasthi's call for translations with accents.
A Cake Full of Knives: An Interview with Elisa Victoria
Elisa Victoria on child narrators, comics, and post-Franco Spain. Translated by Charlotte Whittle.
Telling Their Story As Truthfully As Possible: A Conversation with Ann-Helén Laestadius
Ann-Helén Laestadius on her latest novel Stolen, and the Sámi community.
About My Mother (and Other Things in Parentheses)
Norman Erikson Pasaribu on a mother’s choice and how writing saved them
The Third One Might Not Take as Long: An Interview with Shehan Karunatilaka
Shehan Karunatilaka on language, living history, labour and luck.
Ghana and the Literary Industry
Elizabeth Johnson on the literary scene in Ghana, who's building it, and the value of publishing on the continent.
An Irresistible Contradiction: An Interview with Idza Luhumyo
Idza Luhumyo, winner of the 2022 AKO Caine Prize, discusses short stories, agency, and power.
Books, Books, Books
Julian Barnes on collecting books, reading books, and annotating books.
I Am a Writer Because My Will to Understand People Is Greater Than My Need to Judge Them: Pajtim Statovci in Conversation with Octavia Bright
Pajtim Statovci talks to Octavia Bright about tricky protagonists, Albanian mythology and multilingualism
All My Languages
Ariel Saramandi on Mauritius, identity, and the languages in which she writes, thinks and dreams.
The Global Desi Story: A Conversation with Kritika Pandey
Kritika Pandey, winner of the 2020 Commonwealth Short Story Prize, talks about transgressing cultural norms, protesting, and Hinglish.
Liberating Languages: A Conversation with Victoria Adukwei Bulley, Damian Le Bas and Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún
Three writers discuss language and power.
With this Novel, I Return: An Interview with Rafik Schami
Syrian-German novelist Rafik Schami discusses liberty, storytelling, language and exile.
Someone else’s words in your mouth
Daisy Johnson investigates how our nature is shaped by language.
Finding a shared language
Poet and performer Simon Mole reflects on his experience of welcoming young people to the UK through the act of writing as part of English PEN’s multilingual outreach project Brave New Voices.
The Weight of Language
Elena Ferrante writes for PEN Atlas about the impact of reading Madame Bovary
The hidden languages of Burma
Following recent political reforms, Lucas Stewart investigates the impact on writers in the country, and whether there is real change in the air for ethnic literature and languages
Writing in the Language of ‘the Other’
In another fascinating piece for PEN Atlas, Gazmend Kapllani recounts his journey through languages, the difficulties and opportunities of being a multi-lingual author and how the language of the Other goes back to Homer and the birth of storytelling
How international is poetry?
In this week's PEN Atlas piece, Michele Hutchison reports from the 43rd Poetry International festival in Rotterdam, investigating why it is certain poems are more likely to be translated