ABOUT US

International PEN Women Writers Committee Chair
		Dr Judith Buckrich Chair, International PEN Women Writers Committee Vice President, Melbourne Centre of PEN 3/2 Lucy Street Gardenvale Vic 3185, Australia Phone: (61) (3) 95963304 (Please check the time in Australia before you call, any time between 9 am and 9 pm local Melbourne time is fine) email: <judy@judithbuckrich.com> email

to top

International PEN Women Writers Committee Brief

The International PEN Women Writers Committee (IPWWC) was created in 1991 to address the special needs of women writers. Women writers continue throughout the world to have unequal access to resources. There are countries in which a book by a woman author has never been published. As well, family and other pressures upon women, have necessitated attempts to find effective ways to protect and support women writers. The IPWWC now enjoys representation in over 70 PEN Centres. There is also a marked increase of the visibility of women writers within International PEN.

Women writers from all six continents and from a wide diversity of ethnic and linguistic groups are active in all of our Committee work. Many of these writers cannot travel to meetings at PEN Congresses, so the work goes on all year by mail, fax, email, and whatever other means we find. And much work is done at a regional level. Our work is deliberately decentralized because of the extremely disparate conditions for women in different continents. It is a challenge to the Chair to facilitate communication over many technical and linguistic obstacles in order to break down isolation.

The IPWWC has been instrumental in the creation of several new PEN Centres in Latin America and it has been working to increase representation in Africa, Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. The IPWWC sends out two newsletters a year in English, Spanish and French.

Although most centres are represented at the annual IPWWC meetings held at PEN congresses, the committee especially supports women delegates from isolated areas of the world.

The IPWWC maintains a presence at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. This link is most helpful for women writers to understand their work in a global context!

The committee has been involved in certain well-known human rights cases involving women writers, such as Nawal El Saadawi and Ebtehal Younes of Egypt, Taslima Nasrin of Bangladesh and María Elena Cruz Varela and Marta Beatriz Roque of Cuba Ebtehal Younes and Taslima Nasrin have attended our meetings.

Since its inception, the IPWWC has sponsored several regional conferences in Guadalajara, Mexico, (1995 and 1998), the 1996 Indian subcontinent regional conference in Nepal, the 2005 Central Asian conference in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan and the 2007 African conference in Dakar, Senegal.

to top

Our Translators

Our translators are volunteers

Mariam Karim

Mariam Karim-Ahlawat writes novels and short stories both for children and
adults. She has a read-aloud story column in the magazine Parenting, which
she illustrates herself, and a column on education and social issues in the
Times of India Pluses. She has been a teacher of French language and
literature in India. She also does translations for the IPWWC.

Lucina Kathmann

As well as being an advisor to the Chair, Lucina Kathmann also translates
for the IPWWC.

Ricardo Gustavo Espeja

Argentine colleague Ricardo Gustavo Espeja, who has published in several anthologies of poetry and short stories, is a specialist in near eastern peoples and cultures, especially the Kurds. Though he is not Kurdish himself, he has been elected an honorary member of Kurdish PEN for his helpful work, both of scholarship and translation. He also has done many translations for the
International PEN Women Writers Committee.

to top

Website Information

to top