PEN and the writer as prisoner

This chapter explores the centrality of the imprisoned writer to the identity and advocacy work of writers’ organisation PEN International, considering the implications of the visibility of the imprisoned writer for the organisation’s representation of writers and literature in general. By revisiting some key moments in PEN’s history (particularly in the context of the Cold War and decolonisation), drawing on material from the PEN archives, and engaging with publications like Siobhan Dowd’s edited anthology of prison writing, This Prison Where I Live: A Pen Anthology of Imprisoned Writers (1996), the discussion charts the growing visibility of the imprisoned writer within the organisation’s structures and activities, focusing especially on the foundation of the Writers in Prison Committee in 1960, and the parallels with other emerging human rights organisations of the same period. The chapter argues that the centrality of the imprisoned writer in PEN is bound up with the PEN Charter’s assertion that literature should remain “untouched” by “national and political passion”, which ultimately acts as a strategically useful platform from which to defend writers from oppressors of various ideological hues