Scottish PEN condemns the recent police raid on the Quaker Meeting House, central London, on Thursday 27th March 2025. This raid and the subsequent arrest of 6 young women is deplorable and constitutes a violation of human rights, freedom of expression, the right to protest and is, additionally, a violation of a place of worship.

Join Scottish writers reading international writers struggling against oppression and sharing their own work at this free International Women’s Day event, 7th March 2025

On Saturday, 25 January, The Times published an article by senior news reporter Marc Horne, regarding the release of security service files that have recently been opened and placed in the UK National Archives at Kew. These documents disclosed that MI5 and the police monitored James Findlay (JF) Hendry, the poet, editor and writer for decades over […]

Every year on 27 January the UK marks the horrific organised slaughter perpetrated in Europe in the 1930s and 40s and in many other parts of the world since then. This year marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi German Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp in Oswiecim, Poland. At a time when […]

image credit: Lilian Wagdy, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons Alaa Abd el-Fattah’s vital writing in his collected works, You Have Not Yet Been Defeated is like an explainer of why the principles of the PEN International Charter are so vital. Scottish PEN is proud to join PEN International, fellow PEN Chapters, Reporters Without […]

Scottish PEN Trustee Dave Manderson writes on the threat to the arts in Glasgow

As the Edinburgh Festival Fringe comes to a close for another year, Scottish PEN finds itself in a position for a second year running where it must express regret regarding a continuing situation in Scotland and beyond.

Scottish PEN is shocked and appalled at the level of violence used by Police Scotland against peaceful activists on Wednesday 3rd July 2024.