The PEN Melbourne committee congratulates PEN member Carrie Tiffany on winning the inaugural Stella Prize – presented on Tuesday night, for her novel, ‘Mateship with Birds’. Carrie was our guest speaker at our 2012 AGM, back in November, and spoke about her ongoing correspondence with a Vietnamese writer who has been on PEN International’s case...

PEN Melbourne committee members wish to express their solidarity with, and support of the twenty-five refugees on hunger strike at the Broadmeadows’ detention centre, euphemistically named Melbourne Immigration Transit Accommodation. As one of 146 PEN International Centres we deal on a daily basis with the unjust persecution and imprisonment of writers worldwide. We have witnessed time...

This year, together with the Wheeler Centre, PEN Melbourne’s annual International Women’s Day event features a conversation with the bestselling author Alice Pung, the celebrated author of Her Father’s Daughter and Unpolished Gem, and editor of the anthology Growing Up Asian in Australia. Alice will talk about south-east Asian women’s rights in a developing and developed world, drawing on...

Nigerian-born, Belgian resident Chika Unigwe has been praised as ‘one of the most probing, thought-provoking writers of the recent renaissance in African fiction’. She tells stories of African women oppressed by poverty and their gender – in Europe and at home. But her prose is as alluring as her subjects are challenging; her characters empathetic...

Joyful Strains, an anthology of stories from people who have chosen to come and live in Australia, will be launched tomorrow night, Thursday 24 June, 6-8pm at the Bella Union Bar, Trades Hall, Carlton. All welcome! Joyful Strains is edited by Kent MacCarter and Ali Lemer, and published by the fabulous Melbourne publisher Affirm Press....

Please join us for the grand launching of Joyful Strains: Making Australia Home. Thursday 24 January, 6-8pm Bella Union Bar, Trades Hall, Carlton VIC There will be brief readings by Dmetri Kakmi, Maria Tumarkin and Amy Espeseth … as well as a few words from Kent MacCarter and Ali Lemer, the collection’s editors. Martin Hughes...

Here is Melbourne PEN’s final Quarterly for 2012, with reports on the AGM and card writing event, the Melbourne Festival panels, Writers in Prison, the PEN Internatioal Congress and much more. Download the PEN quarterly December 2012

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The Wheeler Centre is pleased to announce the return of our popular Hot Desk Fellowships, made possible by the generous support of the Readings Foundation . Twenty writers will be offered fellowships in 2013. Offering a $1000 stipend, and workspace in the Wheeler Centre over a two month period, the fellowships have been created simply...

Tomorrow, 15 November, is International Day of the Imprisoned Writer. Darebin Libraries is setting up an Empty Chair at two libraries – the ghost chair at Northcote Library and the Reading Throne at Preston Library – to commemorate writers who have suffered for the practice of their professions. This information will be placed on the...

Please come along to the PEN Melbourne Annual General Meeting and to our Annual Card-writing to writers who are imprisoned, tortured, threatened, attacked, exiled or even murdered for the peaceful practice of their professions. This year PEN member Carrie Tiffany will share her story of ongoing correspondence with a writer in Vietnam which began during one...