PEN Perth Annual General Meeting 2026

Name: PEN Perth Annual General Meeting 2026
Start: 2026-08-20T17:00:00+0800
End: 2026-08-20T17:45:00+0800
Location: Centre for Stories

Thu, 20 Aug, 5pm - 5:45pm AWST

Centre for Stories

Northbridge WA, Australia

PEN Perth

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NOTICE OF PEN Perth Annual General Meeting 2026

The Annual General Meeting of PEN Perth will be held at 5 pm on Thursday 20 August 2026 at the Centre for Stories, 100 Aberdeen St, Northbridge; and will be followed at 6 pm by a poetry event entitled "Poems of War and Peace".

All members and prospective members are welcome to attend the AGM but only members can vote.

The agenda for the AGM is as follows:

1. Attendance, proxies and apologies

Members unable to attend may appoint another member to serve as their proxy at the meeting; please notify the Secretary at cfmacfarl@gmail.com in advance or bring a letter signed by the member to the meeting. Members unable to attend may send apologies to the Secretary or present them through another member at the meeting.

2. Approval of Minutes of AGM, 23 August 2025

3. Reports for the period 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2026

Chair’s report

Financial report

Writers in Prison report

5. Appointment of Interim Chair

A Chair will be appointed to conduct the 2026/27 PEN Perth Committee elections.

6. Election of Office Bearers and Committee members

The current committee comprises Krishna Sen (Chair), Christopher MacFarlane (Secretary), Robin Bower (Writers in Prison Coordinator), Vivienne Glance, Hélène Jaccomard, Lakshmi Kanchi and Luisa Mitchell.

New committee members would be warmly welcomed; nominations, including self-nominations, are strongly encouraged. These should be sent to the Secretary at cfmacfarl@gmail.com preferably before the meeting. Co-options to the Committee after the meeting are also possible.

7. Other business

Other business may be raised by any members present.

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PEN Perth is a chapter of PEN International, working at the intersection of writing and politics. PEN International was founded in London in 1921 and now has 150 centres worldwide.

PEN Perth is active on local and international issues — including Indigenous incarceration, refugee detention, and a free press — and campaigns for the release of wrongfully imprisoned writers. It advocates responsible freedom of expression, raises public awareness, and promotes a world where writers can speak freely and respectfully.

At the apex of PEN Perth’s activities, we are involved with a number of other centres to ensure the release of writers and journalists who have been wrongfully imprisoned. This means being advocates for those who are in jail and working towards their release into a society that is safe and values them and their work.

We promote campaigns where we ‘adopt’ writers at risk and raise awareness of their situations. We do this by writing to imprisoned writers, their families, their embassies or their support networks and encouraging others to join these activities.

At our events, and those of our partners, we keep an empty chair as a powerful symbol of writers who are imprisoned, persecuted, or missing due to their work. This chair serves as a reminder that these writers — whose voices have been silenced — should be present among us, sharing their words and ideas. By acknowledging the Empty Chair, we honour their courage, draw attention to their plight, and reaffirm our commitment to defending freedom of expression worldwide.