We are delighted to welcome Rachael Davis-Featherstone, Dina Nayeri, and Nicky Parker as new trustees.
Ruth Borthwick, Chair of Trustees, English PEN said: ‘We are delighted to welcome Dina, Nicky, and Rachael to join our Board. Their knowledge and expertise across both literature and human rights speak to the essence of English PEN and will be invaluable to our community and cause.’
Rachael Davis-Featherstone said: ‘I am honoured to be joining the Board of English PEN. In these turbulent times we are facing, PEN is more needed than ever, and I look forward to supporting PEN’s important work, fighting for the freedom to write and the freedom to read around the world.’
Dina Nayeri said: ‘The PEN organisation has been such an inspiration to me throughout my writing career, since my early days in New York when I joined on a PEN letter-writing campaign on behalf of writers imprisoned by authoritarian regimes. As an Iranian writer, I think about freedom of expression every day, because I know that so many artists in my home country are silenced and hurting. Joining the PEN board is my small way of lending my voice to their cause.’
Nicky Parker said: ‘I’m honoured to be joining the Board of English PEN, which champions the rights of writers and readers everywhere. Its work is of vital importance in protecting all of us from censorship and the repression of voice, thought and identity.’
Rachael Davis-Featherstone is a multi-award-nominated author of over 20 children’s books and co-founder of Creative Roots Studio which builds sustainable, long-term careers for children’s book creatives. She is also Vice-Chair of a large state primary school governing board and a mother with two young daughters. Rachael grew up in a low-income multi-ethnic single-parent family and studied Mathematics at Oxford University before doing a masters in English Literature at Surrey University. Prior to her career in publishing, Rachael worked in finance in multiple roles spanning Learning and Development, recruitment, research, strategy, and Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI). Rachael is published by over a dozen publishing houses and writes inclusive and empowering books for children of all ages, both fiction and non-fiction, and is passionate about showcasing STEM, mental wellness and diversity. Her debut picture book, I am NOT a Prince, illustrated by Beatrix Hatcher, was shortlisted for the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize.
Dina Nayeri is the author of two critically acclaimed nonfiction books Who Gets Believed (2023) and The Ungrateful Refugee (2019), and two novels. Who Gets Believed was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award. Her work is published in more than twenty countries and in The New York Times, New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The Guardian, Granta, Best American Short Stories, O Henry Prize Stories, and many other publications. She was the winner of Germany’s Geschwister Scholl Prize, a fellow at the Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination in Paris, winner of a National Endowment for the Arts literature grant and the UNESCO City of Literature Paul Engle Prize, among many other honours. Her essays and stories on displacement and home are taught in schools across Europe and the US. She is a Reader at the University of St Andrews.
Nicky Parker is a specialist in children’s literature and human rights. For many years she was head of publishing at Amnesty International UK and is currently working with Amnesty Poland as Lead Consultant on ‘Seen and Heard: Young People’s Voices and Freedom of Expression’, an EU-funded collaboration between the Universities of Malta, Wrocław, Humboldt-Berlin and Amnesty International Poland, exploring the role of literature in young people’s understanding of freedom of expression. On behalf of Amnesty, she is author of These Rights Are Your Rights: An empowering guide for children everywhere (2024) and lead writer of Know Your Rights and Claim Them (2021), with Angelina Jolie and Professor Geraldine Van Bueren QC. Previously Chair of Trustees at the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education, she is on the steering group of CLPE’s ‘Reflecting Realities’, an annual survey of ethnic representation in British children’s books.