English PEN is one of the world's oldest human rights organisations and the founding centre of PEN International, a worldwide writers’ association with 147 centres in more than 100 countries. The charity works to promote literature and to defend freedom of expression in the UK and internationally. Harold Pinter (1930 - 2008) was a Vice President of English PEN. He visited Turkey on behalf of PEN’s Writers in Prison Committee with Arthur Miller in 1985 where they were accompanied by Orhan Pamuk
Arundhati Roy was born in Meghalaya state in north eastern India and trained as an architect. She worked in cinema as an actor, screenplay writer and production designer. In 1997 she won the Booker Prize for her first novel The God of Small Things which was translated into more than 40 languages. Her second novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (2017) has been translated into more than 50 languages. Her non-fiction books include Capitalism: A Ghost Story (2014), Broken Republic: Three Essays (2011), Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers (2009), The Algebra of Infinite Justice (2002), The Doctor and the Saint (2013), My Seditious Heart (2018) and Azadi: Freedom, Fiction, Fascism. (2019) and her latest book is The Architecture of Modern Empire (2024). She has been honoured with the Norman Mailer Prize for Distinguished Writing (2011), the Sydney Peace Prize (2004), the Mahmoud Darwaish Award (2016) and the Lannan Foundation's Cultural Freedom Award (2002).