And yet,
drowned
out.

These lines are from ‘Poem for the Commonwealth’ by Karlo Mila, a Rotorua-born poet of Tongan, Palagi and Samoan descent. They get at an intractable truth for Indigenous Pacific Islanders: that those at the frontline of the climate emergency – who are also those with long-sustainable relationships to the land (‘a wealth of knowledge, / intergenerational meditations / on what it means to be alive, / what it means to survive / in a certain set of conditions / specific parameters of earth and sea and sky’, Mila continues) – are also those whose voices are routinely excluded from the conversation and from policymaking.

Over the coming weeks, PEN Transmissions is publishing personal essays by writers from across the Pacific, including a piece by Mila at the end of the month. These essays explore climate and land, but also a wealth of intersecting ideas – language, family, identity, sovereignty, politics. They have been commissioned with a particular index of free expression in mind: a writer’s freedom to write on what they want, in their own words, irrespective of what audiences (or editors) might presuppose to be ‘important’ to writers from particular communities.

Nadine Ann Hura (Ngāti Hine, Ngāpuhi), whose piece opens this focus, challenges the very terms of a series like this:

I don’t have time to write an essay on the ‘broad thematic thread of climate and the environment from a Pacific perspective’, because I should be spending time with my 16-year-old son.

[…]

If there’s one thing I’ve learned since getting on the road to visit communities affected by climate change up-close, it’s that there’s never enough time. Sifting through priorities, and knowing where to focus your energy, is an exercise in both strategy and stamina. Everything is urgent; everything needs to be done now.

[…]

I keep asking myself: what is the point of the refrain ‘amplify Indigenous voices’ if the people who need to hear aren’t listening?

The pieces in this series are rich and urgent. They house copious ideas, experiences, imperatives and feelings; they say loudly what needs to be heard by those who need to hear. We hope you will read, and listen, and enjoy.

–Will Forrester & Nadia Saeed.

The post Pasifika Voices: Introduction appeared first on English PEN.

English PEN campaigns for the freedom to read and the freedom to write; for these truly to be freedoms, they must be equal freedoms for all. In order for the ideal of equity of expression to be advanced, individuals, platforms and organisations must use what faculty they have to combat inequity wherever it exists. I hope for PEN Transmissions to be a space of free and equitable expression, and a space for the frank exploration of urgent, charged, evolving conversations. I hope readers will enjoy these pieces, and join our continuing interrogation of the ideal of literary freedom and equity.

– Will Forrester, Editor.

The post Editorial: Black Voices appeared first on English PEN.

The PEN family, across the world, has always proceeded from the value of international fellowship – from the belief that the transmission of literature across borders is a sustaining force, and a right. In 1928, Galsworthy’s appeal centred the conveyance of literature to a space in need of it, from a space outside the causal crisis. In 2020, there are no such differentiations: whilst differing in our severity of experience, the international community is sharing in a crisis.

It is amidst this crisis that we today announce that PEN Transmissions will be increasing our output, publishing new work by international writers every week.

Coronavirus – a word that one senses will become short-hand for an era – grips all spaces. It drives us indoors, towards screens, away from convention; it deprives us of normality, of hard-won freedoms. Such deprivation, however, is in the service of good: this deprivation protects the most vulnerable, and those marginalised in myriad ways who are disproportionately affected by pandemic. One hopes the virtues it is forging – of community, compassion, intergenerational support, kindness to ecology – might even prevail when some version of normality returns. But in pursuit of good, a further level of necessary concerns emerges: of livelihood, particularly that of the self-employed, as many writers and literary professionals are; of loneliness, and how we might continue digitally to meet and converse; of joy, and by what means we might still be able to find it.

The need for ‘eloquence’, now, is manifold: as a palliative to isolation, when its self-imposition is vital; as an outlet for experience, and a way of sharing it; as an imaginative escape from confinement; as a liberty, when liberties must be curtailed. This is why, for the duration of quarantine, lock-down, self-isolation – all those metonyms for our moment – PEN Transmissions is doubling its efforts. Last week, we shared Dima Mikhayel Matta’s extraordinary ‘How to Quarantine a Revolution’, an essay on how pandemic, revolution, and queer identity relate in Lebanon. Tomorrow, we publish an interview with Jason Ng and Joshua Wong, authors of Unfree Speech and pioneers in the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement.

Alongside more regular interviews and personal essays from international writers, PEN Transmissions will also feature digital discussions that English PEN had hoped to hold through our live events programme. We will also be publishing more work related to our advocacy for writers-at-risk, whose circumstances we particularly consider at this time. Alongside other new initiatives across our areas of work, we hope these dispatches do something to sustain you, and to sustain the importance of the transmission of words and ideas across borders.

Crises breed weighty literature – and often it’s more humane and benevolent than we might presume. From the literature of the Trojan war, we learnt not about conflict, but about the human condition – a discourse of compassion. Catherine Amy Dawson Scott, PEN’s pioneering founder, believed that ‘out of social intercourse comes understanding; and that if the great writers of the world met in friendship and exchanged ideas, a nascent kindliness would deepen’. Social, cultural, and literary intercourse are more difficult in this time, but there are ways, and they are vital. We hope PEN Transmissions can be one.

– Will Forrester, Editor.

The post Editorial: Transmissions in the Time of Coronavirus appeared first on English PEN.

From this month, PEN Transmissions will be publishing pieces every other week, starting on Tuesday 13 August with a powerful personal essay from Cherrie Kandie, who was shortlisted for the 2019 Caine Prize for a story about a queer relationship in Kenya. At a time when the urgency of transmitting art and ideas across borders is acute, we’re excited to bring you more regular work from both emerging and established international voices. PEN Transmissions will continue as a freely accessible platform; to receive new pieces, you can sign up to the English PEN mailing-list and select a special interest in translation.

In the coming months, we will also be holding a series of PEN Transmissions events with accompanying magazine pieces. Around International Translation Day on 30 September, a special PEN Transmissions x Granta magazine collaboration will bring you new writing on, and in, translation.

I take over from Theodora Danek’s excellent editorship at a moment when the PEN Charter’s avowal of ‘unhampered transmission of thought within each nation and between all nations’ is vital but threatened. PEN Transmissions will continue to foster it, unimpeded.

– Will Forrester, International and Translation Manager, English PEN.

The post Editorial: Transmitting the Future appeared first on English PEN.

The longer I have been working on Transmissions, the more I have thought about Kafka. From the start, the idea behind PEN Transmissions was to showcase writers as thinkers. Literature is a form of entertainment, sure, and yes, it can and perhaps should make us happy (even if Kafka wasn’t a fan). But it is also a tool for challenging our thinking, for waking us up. Good literature makes us think about more than just ourselves, and how we see ourselves reflected in the pages of a book; it gets us out of the relatability trap and holds a mirror up to society.

These are very PEN-ish thoughts. A large part of what English PEN, along with its sister organisations around the world, does, it to campaign for writers who are being persecuted for their art, and to highlight and celebrate an international community of writers. As a PEN project, PEN Transmissions reflects these values: of showcasing international writing, of giving a platform to writers from different countries, languages and backgrounds, and of foregrounding their thinking about and their engagement with the world at large. Looking back on the last fourteen months of Transmissions, what becomes apparent is that the idea that art could not be political is born out of immense privilege.

This is the last issue of Transmissions in its current form, and in it we return one last time to a theme that has haunted this zine since its inception: how the past shapes the present, and how we ourselves can shape the future. The four contributions in this issue range from concrete steps to achieve a utopia without sexual harassment and assault, to dystopian visions that are anchored in the more nightmarish aspects of our present, to reflections on how past ideologies have an impact – even when we believe them to be mostly forgotten.

Ho Sok Fong and Zehra Doğan both imagine futures that are dystopian – yet clearly recognisable from things we see happen today. They invite us to linger over their texts for a little, to reflect whether what they describe is really the future, or rather a heightened aspect of the present, or even an aspect of the present we refuse to see.

Jen Calleja discusses how utopian hope can inspire and inform tactics for real change. In this case, the utopia is a world without sexual harassment and assault. As Jen points out, making practical changes, however small, can have a big, lasting impact.

Finally, I spoke to Kapka Kassabova, author of the acclaimed Border, about how versions of the past linger on and affect the present, about how to avoid clichés and othering when writing about the Balkans, and about psychogeography.

This is my final issue as commissioning editor of PEN Transmissions. I hope you dig through the archive to read pieces you might have missed, and I hope you subscribe to get updates on future pieces and news. It’s been a total pleasure to work with the 51 writers and translators who have contributed their words and thoughts during my time here. Here’s to them for keeping it real (and political, always). Here’s to the axe shattering the frozen sea.

– Theodora Danek, Commissioning Editor, PEN Transmissions

The post Editorial: past futures appeared first on English PEN.

In the UK, a 2017 Bookseller survey found that over half of the respondents had experienced harassment. A code of conduct for the book industry, as promised by trade bodies, was slow to materialise and finally published in December 2018.

Over the past few years, I’ve had many, many conversations with women who experienced harassment in the workplace: there was the translator who sent harassing emails, or the other translator who wouldn’t stop calling your office number; the men who kiss you against your will at work dinners, the men who ‘take advantage’. And so I am left with questions. Will a code of conduct be enough to support freelancers, who are not protected by HR departments or even a network of office colleagues, and are at the same time dependent on others for employment opportunities? Will a code of conduct published by and for the trade bodies for publishers, agents, booksellers and authors be taken on by other organisations working in the literary sphere, such as charities or events spaces? Is a code of conduct enough? Who enforces it?

I don’t have any answers, but I do have regrets. There is always more to be done, there are always missed opportunities. At last year’s conference of the American Literary Translator’s Association, Corine Tachtiris and Susan Bernofsky organised and moderated a panel entitled Us Too: Sexism and Sexual Harassment in the Translation Profession. There is enormous value in building solidarity and community in a public space, especially for freelancers.

As I was working on this issue, I realised that what all the pieces had in common was not only #metoo: all the writers featured are part of a community that aims to amplify the voices of those not heard by wider society. They call out power structures, whether they be sexist, racist, imperialist or – all of those things. Nina Leger, Yandani Mlilo and Gabriela Jauregui discuss how writers, filmmakers and other artists have responded to #metoo in France, Zimbabwe and Mexico: by building community, giving voice to victims, and challenging traditional gender roles.

In this month’s interview, Meena Kandasamy, feminist activist and author of When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife, points out how translation can be a means of challenging Western notions of feminism, assumptions that ‘all of us [Indian women] are in need of rescuing’. Her recent work on Desires Become Demons, a chapbook showcasing poetry and essays by four Tamil writers, showcases voices – and feminisms – that are ‘not amplified or picked up easily within the Anglophone discourse’.

I hope you find this issue of PEN Transmissions thought-provoking.

– Theodora Danek, editor

The post Editorial: women together are legion appeared first on English PEN.

Of course you do. That’s why this issue of Transmissions investigates belief systems that deserve to come under scrutiny: white feminism, for example, and charismatic religion, or our supposed eternal victories over fascism.

Whenever I think of blind faith I think of two things: early Christianity and late-stage fascism. Both combined an absence of reliable information with an absolute belief in a system (a system that usually revolved around a single man), and the refusal to accept other sources of truth. It is tempting to see us return to that space, a space ruled by overpowering belief systems. It can hard not to be overwhelmed, not to retreat into apathy. But then I think of how, in late antiquity, some would-be-saints chose to retreat from the world in order to cultivate their intellectual and spiritual purity. I think of Paulinus of Nola, a 4th century poet-politician-bishop, who, having retreated from the world, wrote to a friend, ‘your wilderness is not a desert, but a place set apart, untouched by the world’s darkness and avoided by the waiting demons.’ And I think of how tempting that is, how privileged, and how wrong. Turns out that you can only avoid the world’s darkness if you’re a rich man with a massive Roman estate.

In the absence of that, we’ll keep our eyes open. As Olja Savičević writes in her brilliant piece on Croatia, ‘The world is self-satisfied, turns its head, sees with one eye closed and the other half-open. But when we close that half-open eye, too, it will be the end, the beginning of darkness.’

Elsewhere, Isha Karki reflects on how difficult it is not to sink into apathy when confronted with the ongoing catastrophe of UK politics – from milkshake discourse to May’s tears.

Claudia Durastanti elegantly dispatches with the idea of the ‘ghost of fascism’ that supposedly haunts Italy, and suggest that we call them zombies instead, zombies that have overtaken our lives: ‘a zombie is not dead, but it’s not exactly alive either. Unless we feed it morsels of our skin and conscience.’

And finally, we spoke to Argentinian author Selva Almada about religion, charisma, and power, all topics at the heart of her novel The Wind that Lays Waste. 

This issue of Transmissions reports to you live from Italy, the UK, Argentina and Croatia. We hope you enjoy it as much as we do. 

– Theodora Danek, editor, PEN Transmissions

The post Editorial: blind faith appeared first on English PEN.

In this issue of PEN Transmissions, we’re featuring a pair of conversations with writers whose work acts as a response to the current political crisis: Austrian writer Robert Menasse and Turkish writer Ece Temelkuran. They complement and contradict each other: one optimistic, one pessimistic about the political future.

Robert Menasse’s The Capital (translated by Jamie Bulloch) is sometimes referred to as ‘the first EU’ novel; in his essays, he engages with politics and, especially, the transnational project of the European Union. In our conversation he reflected on the state of politics and political writing, especially the depoliticisation of writers and the future of the nation state.

Ece Temelkuran (who won a PEN Translates award for her novel Women Who Blow on Knots) has recently written a work of political non-fiction that acts as a call to arms for the EU and the US, a warning about what can happen if people and countries stop being vigilant. In our conversation, she stressed the insidious nature of fascism: ‘[Evil] is different now, it comes across as something that we consider not that dangerous: Oh, it’s another idea in the free market of ideas, oh, it’s just another opinion, another faith. But all these small political choices add up to create their own form of identity.’

Jan Carson provides a different perspective on political upheaval and its consequences. As a Northern Irish writer, Brexit has led her to question her own identity and that of the state she grew up in: ‘Recently, when it comes to British identity, I’ve felt like the kid who’s initially delighted to be invited to a classmate’s part only to discover the birthday girl’s mother has forced her to invite everybody in the class, even the children they don’t like.’

Finally, Theodora Sarah Abigail (Ebi) writes about another kind of personal revolution: becoming a mother at the age of 18, and learning to live with this new identity while holding on to previous identities. While Jan’s questioning of identity revolves around a new passport, Ebi’s centres on a small human.

I hope you enjoy this issue of Transmissions. It’s a good time to think of Mitterand: ‘Le nationalisme, c’est la guerre!’ See you next month. Hopefully.

– Theodora Danek, editor, PEN Transmissions

The post Editorial: revolution appeared first on English PEN.

In this issue of PEN Transmissions, we explore different types of family, different ways of building community.

We spoke to Samanta Schweblin about the danger posed by the concept of normality, technology, and how she dissects relationships in her writing.

Saskia Vogel writes about the ‘logical family‘ she found in the fetish scene in LA – which is also the topic of her debut novel.

Sarah Shaffi explores the found family as a beloved trope – and nowhere is it more beloved than in superhero (or, as Sarah points out, supervillain) fiction. Having superpowers is lonely, and who better to team up with than others who deal with the same issue?

Finally, Ege Dündar explores what family means to him, having been forced to live separated from those closest to him.

We hope you enjoy this issue of Transmissions. Until next time!

– Theodora Danek, editor

The post Editorial: (found) families appeared first on English PEN.

Guy Gunaratne thinks about the connection between terrorism, incels and the performance of violent masculinity

Livia Franchini reflects on the impact being bilingual and going ‘back and forth between two distinct, self-sufficient identities of home’ has had on her private and public selves.

We were thrilled to speak to not one, but two great authors for this issue – and even better, to a translator, too!

The great Lebanese writer Elias Khoury is back with a new novel, My Name Is Adam, the story of a man who decides to investigate what happened in 1948 in Palestine in the city of Lydda where he was born. We spoke to him about the fascinating genesis of the book.

And finally, we spoke to Ahmed Saadawi and Jonathan Wright about Frankenstein in Baghdad: the novel’s success, its religious elements and truth in storytelling.

From private selves to male subcultures, from undead monsters to collective trauma, we hope you enjoy this issue of PEN Transmissions.

The post Editorial: hidden things appeared first on English PEN.