Blog post from Linda Cracknell about PENning magazine from 22 Sept 2013.

Hame-comin Gerda Stevenson’s entry – Hame-comin – to the YES Arts Festival Poetry Challenge was selected as the winning poem by judges Allan Massie, Rosemary Goring and Tom Murray. The challenge was to respond to the words The Flooers of the Forest, in Jean Elliot’s great song of that title, which is about the Battle […]

Kosova, a very young Republic In early 1999 NATO planes flew over Kosova, then still part of Serbia, dropping bombs on significant targets, to stop the Serbian military and paramilitaries from their destructive and intimidating assault on unarmed civilians, who had begun to leave their homes in huge numbers, refugees crossing borders into Macedonia, Albania, […]

Simona Grazia Dima is Secretary of Romanian PEN, a poet, essayist, literary critic and translator. In her introduction to her latest volume of poetry she presents the background to her writing – the political and cultural milieu, her ideas, ideals and in particular the extraordinary experience which led her to become the writer that she […]

Times Stephen Spender Translation Prize for Brian Holton Many congratulations to Scottish PEN member Brian Holton whose translation of Du Fu’s poem has been commended in the 2012 Times Stephen Spender Prize for poetry in translation. As far as we know it is the first time a major UK translation prize has given an award […]

Unstated: Writers on Scottish Independence It may be a coincidence that just as the post-ironic Creative Scotland crumbles a book is published that expresses the views of 27 writers on the cultural implications of Scottish independence but I can’t help seeing a connection. Over half the writers are members of PEN (and the rest would […]

Book Festival Transwonderland by Mario Relich The fiftieth anniversary of the famous Writers’ Conference during the 1962 Edinburgh International Festival was celebrated with various events at this year’s Book Festival. I chose, however, to go only to a number of events which particularly interested me. Online podcasts of the 50th anniversary events are in any […]

Two War Correspondents Remember Bosnia Discussion at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, 17th August 2012 – Janine di Giovanni and Ed Vulliamy, – twenty years on from the beginning of the war in Bosnia. by Morelle Smith The War is Dead, Long Live the War; Bosnia, the Reckoning – Ed Vulliamy   Ghosts by Daylight; […]