PEN Ukraine published the report on the organization’s activities in 2023

In a year, the team of PEN Ukraine has implemented 27 cultural and human rights projects in cooperation with over 100 Ukrainian and international partners

PEN Ukraine is a cultural and human rights organization that unites Ukrainian journalists, writers, scholars, publishers, translators, and human rights activists. PEN Ukraine is one among 146 national centers of PEN International.

The activity of PEN Ukraine in wartime is aimed at:

• supporting Ukrainian literary community;
• informing international audiences about Russia’s war against Ukraine;
• documenting experiences that the people of Ukraine are facing nowadays;
• documenting Russia’s crimes against Ukrainian media and culture;
• restoration of cultural life in Ukraine.

Key achievements of PEN Ukraine in 2023:

• 17 new members joined the organization to make the total number of PEN Ukraine authors 163 by the end of the past year
• 27 cultural and human rights projects, including the Unbreakable Libraries, In Solidarity With Ukraine, People of Culture Taken Away by the War, REQUIEM, and Proper Names, were implemented
• Over 100 cultural and human rights offline and online events, including the Vasyl Stus Prize, The Yuri Shevelyov Prize, Drahomán Prize , the George Gongadze Prize, #EmptyChairWeek, Letters to the Free Crimea, Protasiv Yar Festival in remembrance of Roman Ratushnyi, were organized by the team of PEN Ukraine in cooperation with partners
• 35 public events, including book presentations, discussions, poetry readings, exhibitions, film screenings, literary and music home parties etc., were held at PEN Ukraine Space in Kyiv
• 9 literary volunteering trips to the frontline and de-occupied territories of the Mykolaiv, Kherson, Chernihiv, Sumy, Dnipro, Kharkiv, Donetsk, and Zaporizhzhia regions were organized involving 37 authors, PEN Ukraine team members, foreign writers and journalists. The PEN van has crossed 15,000 km of Ukrainian roads
• Ukrainian authors were granted 46 fellowships for a total amount of 1 350 000 UAH within the PEN Ukraine Emergency Fund program
• 2 books were published in partnership with the Vivat Publishing House - Amidst Sirens: New Poetry of the War and I Am Transforming… Diary of the Occupation. Selected Poetry by Volodymyr Vakulenko-K.
• Over 100 Ukrainian and international partners were involved in the projects implementation
• 33 foreign authors visited Ukraine at the invitation of PEN

The activities of PEN Ukraine in 2023 were made possible by institutional support of the National Endowment For Democracy, International Renaissance Foundation, PEN International, Smart Foundation, Prague Civil Society Centre, Taiwan Foundation For Democracy, Embassy of the United States of America, PEN Netherlands, Thames & Hudson, Book Aid International.

The full public report for the year 2023 and plans for 2024 is available below:

"In 2023, we managed to enhance and scale our main lines of activity and initiatives that have emerged in our work since the beginning of the full-scale invasion. These still include documenting Russia’s war crimes against the Ukrainian media and culture, and organization of volunteering trips to frontline and liberated territories with participation of Ukrainian and foreign authors. At the same time, we continued with developing our awards, publishing important books, launching new media projects and maintaining our advocacy work abroad, which would not have been possible without our friends and partners in different parts of Ukraine and around the globe", — says Tetyana Teren, executive director of PEN Ukraine.