The banning of books is an alarmingly flexible tool that can be employed to stamp out debate on the key social issues of the day.

Wigtown Book Festival celebrates the power of the written word but Scottish PEN is deeply concerned about how unwarranted and suspicionless surveillance can undermine the ability of novelists, poets and playwrights to express themselves free from coercion or duress.

Thank you for taking our Defamation Quiz on Buzzfeed! Read our full list of results to learn more about defamation law in Scotland.

August has arrived and that can only mean one thing: the festival season has started. We’ve compiled a list of Scottish PEN member events at the Book Festival so you can easily catch them reading and speaking this month.

We are delighted to announce that we have been awarded a grant of £40,000 from the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. Over the past months, we have built our capacity for advocacy on issues of defamation, surveillance and human rights legislation, and we look forward to continuing this work with the support of this grant.

The Edinburgh Art Festival starts today, so we’re offering our pick of events that amplify marginalised voices and explore free speech in the digital age.

Without reform of defamation laws, the people of Scotland will continue to be deprived of essential protections for free speech.

On the fourth anniversary of his imprisonment, we call on the UK government to do more to secure Raif Badawi’s release.