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Theme: I see you in an amber

Article

TO NOT BE ALLOWED TO WRITE IN YOUR NATIVE LANGUAGE

Şeyhmus Diken was born in Diyarbakir and he is an educated political scientist at the University of Ankara. He has contributed articles to some ten Turkish papers and he has written more than twenty...

Text: Şeyhmus Diken May 11 2023
Article

WHAT A EURPEAN HAS SEEN IN KURDISTAN

Herekol Ezîzan is a nom de plume for Celadet Ali Bedirkhan. Celadet was born in 1893 in Istanbul and died in 1951 in Syria. He had a Masters Degree in Law from Istanbul University and he finished his...

Text: Herekol Ezîzan May 11 2023
Article

Language is a sign of existence

Şerefxan Cizîrî was born in Syria, but has grown up in the Turkish part of Kurdistan. In 1975 he moved to Sweden. For three rounds he has been the local government commissioner in the municipality of...

Text: Şerefxan Cizîrî May 11 2023
Article

NÛDEM WAS A PORTAL FOR THE AUTHORS

Berken Bereh is a Kurdish poet, born in 1954 in the city of Sirnak. He started writing in Kurdish in 1978. His articles and poems have been published in many journals and newspapers and he has...

Text: Berken Bereh May 11 2023
Poetry

Poems by Abdulla Peshew

Abdulla Peshew was born in 1946 in Erbil. Between 1970-1973 he worked as a teacher in Erbil. In 1973 he traveled to the Soviet Union (USSR) and studied at the Institute of Foreign Languages ​​in...

Poems: Abdulla Peshew May 11 2023
Fiction

Mother’s Dress

Lorîn S. Dogan was born in 1975 in Nusaybin, in the province of Mardin. She is an educated biologist. She has published three collections of short stories so far. She lives in Diyarbakir.

By Lorîn S. Dogan May 11 2023
Poetry

POEMS BY AXÎN WELAT

Axîn Welat is active as a poet and writes in Kurdish, Arabic and Swedish. She lives and works as a writer in Sweden and is a member of Sweden's Writers' Association. Eight books have been published by...

Poems: Axîn Welat May 04 2023
Article

Housewives and Teachers

Rewşen Bedir-Khan was born in 1909 in Turkey and died in 1992 in Syria. She was a writer, translator and a co-worker at the magazine Hawar, the only female writer. Bedir-Khan was married to Hawar's...

Text: Rewşen Bedir-Khan April 17 2023
Poetry

Poems by Farhad Shakely

The poet Farhad Shakely (1951) was born in the province of Kirkuk, in southern Kurdistan. Shakely was an active opponent of Saddam Hussein's regime. He joined the Kurdish liberation movement as...

Poems: Farhad Shakely April 06 2023
Article

Literature as a cultural unity

What is the significance of culture and literature for an oppressed people and a forbidden language? How is literature kept alive when language is strangled? The Kurdish writer Suzan Samancis tries to...

Text: Suzan Samanci March 11 2023
Poetry

Poems by Dilsha Yusuf

Dilsha Yusuf is a poet, journalist and translator. She debuted in 2002 with the poetry collection "Mötets ringklocka." Yusuf has published 12 books. Two of them are poetry collections and the rest are...

Poems: Dilsha Yusuf February 16 2023

Theme: Ukraine

Editorial

“May the World Listen…”

Oksana Zabuzhko, poet, fiction writer, and essayist, is one of contemporary Ukrainian literature’s foremost voices in...

Leader: Mikael Nydahl, guest editor April 20 2022
Article

Sounds of Peace

Former president of Ukrainian PEN Andrey Kurkov is one of the most translated Ukrainian writers. Kurkov received great international attention with the book Death and the Penguin. Since the beginning...

By Andrey Kurkov February 24 2023
Article

Speech at Mårbacka

Speech at Mårbacka was performed during the Literature Festival at Mårbacka on July 30, 2022. Like many people in Ukraine after February 2022, the author of the speech, Olena Stepanenko, writes russia...

By Olena stepanenko December 03 2022
Article

Why you should not be naïve about Russian culture

Philosopher Volodymyr Yermolenko gives a brief look into the history of ideas to help us reflect on what is happening now. He advocates a critical approach to Russian culture which, according to him...

By: Volodymyr Jermolenko September 16 2022
Article

Reinforced Concrete: From the Kharkiv Diary

In this travel diary, Tetyana Teren writes about the literary city of Kharkiv. The diary was written in June during a train trip she made from Kyiv to Kharkiv together with five Ukrainian PEN writers...

Text: Tetyana Teren September 06 2022
Fiction

Love in the Time of War

What happens to love when the man is at the front or alone and abandoned in his home separated from the woman he loves and the bombs are within reach? When the wife who has been forced to flee...

By Irena Karpa August 26 2022
Interview

An interview with Oksana Zabuzhko

PEN/Opp publishes an exclusive interview with author Oksana Zabuzhko, made by Stefan Ingvarsson. At the time for the interview, Oksana Zabuzhko stayed at a writer's residence in the city of Gdańsk...

Interview by Stefan Ingvarsson August 05 2022
Fiction

41 Days

Oleg Mikhailov is a Russian-Ukrainian playwright. He was born in Yekaterinburg (Russia) in 1975 and has lived in Kharkiv since 2009, where he has been living during the entirety of the war, despite...

By: Oleg Mihajlov May 13 2022
Article

Ukrainian writers – defying the Russian invasion 

As the Russian attack on Ukraine wreaks destruction and creates millions of refugees, many of Ukraine's writers have found themselves turning to activism by joining volunteer groups, the Armed Forces...

Interview: Joakim Medin April 29 2022
Poetry

Poems by Daryna Gladun

The Ukrainian poet Daryna Gladun lived in Bucha until the beginning of March. When she realized that the Russian troops were not only bombing the airport but were also aiming to take over the city...

Poems: Daryna Gladun April 22 2022
Article

Am I panicking enough?

This article, written and published on January 18 in German by the Ukrainian author and publisher Kateryna Mischenko, is a prologue to PEN/Opp's upcoming Ukraine issue, which will be launched in ten...

By Kateryna Mishchenko March 07 2022

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