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Theme: Writers in exile

Editorial

Writers in exile

It is now ten years since Swedish PEN started its international online publication PEN/Opp, which up until 2019 was...

Editorial: Marit Kapla September 10 2021
Article

My Testament

Five years after the stolen election, Belarusian poet Uladzimir Liankievič offers a personal reflection on the legacy of the Belarusian uprising. Impressions from schoolbooks from his childhood and...

Text: Uladz Ljankevitj [Uladzimir Liankievič] August 21 2025
Article

When War Rages: Writing as a Vehicle of Resilience

”Writing of war, amidst its turmoil, reopens old wounds, striving to mend them with memory’s searing balm, even as new wounds bleed. I wrote to confront the past, but it was also a writing to reject a...

Text: Stella Gaitano Translation from Arabic: Najlaa Eltom June 23 2025
Article

Riskbergska

On 4 February 2025, the deadliest mass shooting in Sweden's history took place on the Risbergska campus in Örebro. Ten people were killed in the attack. Artist and writer Fikret Atay is based in...

Fikret Atay March 20 2025
Article

The Orphans of Europe

Anka Upala is a well-known contemporary Belarusian writer. Her pseudonym is a reference to Janka Kupala, a classic writer of Belarusian literature. Upala had to leave Belarus because of the...

Anka Upala January 02 2025
Article

Story-7: Nights and Walls

Aslı Ceren Aslan was born in Istanbul in 1990 and graduated from Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University, Department of Mathematics in 2014. Between 2014 and 2021, Aslan worked in various positions as a...

Aslı Ceren Aslan March 07 2024
Poetry

Icarus' dream

Wesam Almadani is a Palestinian writer, and human rights activist, who came to Norway as an ICORN writer. Almadani published two books – the novel The Body’s Schizophrenia (2020) and the poetry...

Text: Wesam Almadani  February 28 2024
Article

Russian Culture in Light of Refugees from Mariupol

In this nuanced literary essay, Putin opponent Dmitry Kuzmin tries to answer the question of whether all Russian culture is evil. He is a Ukrainian-to-Russian translator and editor-in-chief of the...

Text: Dmitry Kuzmin January 17 2023
Poetry

Selected Poems by Mizar Kemal

Mizar Kemal is an Iraqi poet and journalist. He is a guest writer in the Swedish city of Stockholm. These poems were translated in a workshop in the city of Umeå, north of Sweden, during the...

Poems: Mizar Kemal May 29 2022
Interview

Not my Egypt

Ahmed Naji is trying to understand the zeitgeist. In the 36 years of his life he has witnessed dictatorship, revolution, counter-revolution, military coup, jail and exile. Ahmed Naji’s story is unique...

Interview by Edgar Mannheimer February 19 2022
Fiction

Scabs on the soul

PenOpp publishes a chapter from the Turkish author Barbaros Altuğ's novel Spiritual Wounds, which was published in Turkish last year. The novel's main character Derin, a Turkish journalist who grew up...

Text: Barbaros Altuğ January 21 2022
Article

Return to the Nightmare

Dara Abdallah is a Syrian poet and writer, born in the city of Qamishli in 1990. He lives in Berlin since 2013, and studies at the Faculty of Philosophy and Cultural Studies at Humboldt University. He...

Text: Dara Abdallah December 17 2021
Poetry

Poem by Hoda Khamosh

Hoda Khamosh is poet, media activist, and women’s rights activist from Afghanistan. She attended the Merci Poetry Festival in Gotenburg the 4 th of September through a recorded video. She read this...

Poem: Hoda Khamosh September 24 2021
Article

Crisis and Unrepresentability

PEN/Opp publishes “Crisis and unrepresentability” – a new written lecture by the Syrian author, thinker and the Tucholsky Prize winner Yassin Al-Haj Saleh. The lecture was previously presented in...

Text: Yassin Al-Haj Saleh September 10 2021

Theme: Woman Life Freedom - Voices from an upprising

Editorial

Zhina means a new life

September 16th 2024 marks the second anniversary of the death of Zhina Mahsa Amini, who was arrested and beaten by Iran's morality police for not wearing her hijab properly. Her death was the starting...

Parvin Ardalan September 19 2024
Editorial

It’s urgent: be our voice!

On September 16, 2022, a picture of Kurdish Jina Mahsa Amini connected to a life support machine in a hospital bed was...

By Marall Nasiri, Swedish actor and director at the Royal Dramatic Theatre, Stockholm November 28 2022
Article

How We Stand On and On

From the 1910 Women's Movement to Jîna Mahsa Amini: Over a Century of Struggle for Women's Rights and liberations in Iran. This text is written under pseudonym.

Farah Farnum September 18 2024
Article

Message from Narges Mohammadi

Message from Narges Mohammadi, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, on the Second Anniversary of Mahsa Jîna Amini's Death and the Start of the ‘Women, Life, Freedom’ Movement.

Narges Mohammadi September 16 2024
Article

Letter from Evin Prison

Narges Mohammadi is an Iranian writer, journalist and human rights defender. She fights for women’s rights, freedom of...

Text: Narges Mohammadi September 06 2023
Fiction

Honesty is the best policy!

The author of this short story remains anonymous. She sent the text a few weeks after that the protests had started in September. Whether she is free or behind bars remains unknown to us. The short...

Author: anonymous December 11 2022
Fiction

Our Codename is Jina

On September 13, Mahsa Zhina Amini was arrested by Iran's morality police for wearing her veil the wrong way. On September 16, she died under suspicious circumstances. This was the start of the...

Text: anonymous November 13 2022
Article

A message from Sanandaj

Neda is a Kurdish woman and human rights activist who participates in and leads the protests in the Kurdish city of Sanandaj in Iran. The regime's forces have occupied the center of the city and the...

Text: Neda from Kurdistan November 04 2022

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