Role of PEN
PEN is a non-governmental organization in formal consultative relations with UNESCO and Special Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations.
The first PEN Club was founded in London in 1921 by Catherine Amy Dawson Scott, with John Galsworthy as its first President. Its first members included Joseph Conrad, Elizabeth Craig, George Bernard Shaw, and H.G. Wells.
The club established the following aims:
- To promote intellectual co-operation and understanding among writers;
- To create a world community of writers that would emphasize the central role of literature in the development of world culture; and,
- To defend literature against the many threats to its survival which the modern world poses.
Past Presidents of International PEN have included Malcolm Afford, Alberto Moravia, Heinrich Böll, Arthur Miller, Mario Vargas Llosa, Homero Aridjis and Jiří Gruša. The current President is John Ralston Saul.
International PEN is headquartered in London and composed of 145 autonomous PEN Centres in 104 countries around the world, each of which are open to qualified writers, journalists, translators, historians and others actively engaged in any branch of literature, regardless of nationality, race, colour or religion.
Read more about this topic: International PEN
Famous quotes containing the words role of, role and/or pen:
“The role of the stepmother is the most difficult of all, because you can’t ever just be. You’re constantly being tested—by the children, the neighbors, your husband, the relatives, old friends who knew the children’s parents in their first marriage, and by yourself.”
—Anonymous Stepparent. Making It as a Stepparent, by Claire Berman, introduction (1980, repr. 1986)
“Of course, some men are very effective caregivers [of elderly parents]. But this situation occurs far less frequently for males than females, because it is a role reversal. For women, caregiving is an expected duty; for men, it is an unexpected expression of love or devotion.”
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“His meter was bitter, and ironic and spectacular and inviting: so was life. There wasn’t much other life during those times than to what his pen paid the tribute of poetic tragic glamour and offered the reconciliation of the familiarities of tragedy.”
—Zelda Fitzgerald (1900–1948)