Scottish PEN

I am an active member of the Scottish branch of PEN, an organisation which links writers globally and campaigns for freedom of expression.

I help to edit the biannual New Writing magazine which features poetry and prose from Scottish PEN members alongside work by writers in exile, refugees, and asylum seekers resident in Scotland.

The current issue, PENning Water, features writers from Scotland, Zimbabwe, Shetland, Pakistan, Congo, Syria, and Sri Lanka, taking a journey through watery celebrations, transformations, memories and fears in poetry and prose. The featured writer this issue is Aminatta Forna, a novelist born in Scotland and raised in West Africa. In ‘Love Stories’, she tells what has impassioned creative writers as Sierra Leone recovers from war.

With Philo Ikonya, President of PEN Kenya, at PEN Congress 2007, Senegal