New spotlight on Tomorrow Club is live, amplifying young voices across Asia until the new year.
Over 30 bright young names from 20 countries joined up with inspiring stories, in truth and fiction, opening personal windows into a diverse range of contexts and experiences around the region ⬇️
Asia Spotlight is live! 🌏
This new series from our Young Writers Committee @youngwriterspen.bsky.social features voices from Bangladesh, Singapore, Thailand, and more, exploring censorship and resilience through personal reflections.
Read the full overview ⬇️
tomorrowclub.world/spotlights/s...
Young writers are wielding their pens to confront urgent global issues. Ege Dündar, author and project lead with @youngwriterspen.bsky.social, discusses why we must support the next generation of writers and advocates to build solidarity and drive change. bsky.app/profile/peni...
Delighted to work with @youngwriterspen.bsky.social on the spotlight on Asia.
www.tomorrowclub.world/spotlights/s...
Highly recommend @youngwriterspen.bsky.social
Young people have long led solidarity movements. In SPOTLIGHT: AMERICAS, a new trilingual publication of the Tomorrow Club (@youngwriterspen.bsky.social), young writers embody free expression and show solidarity through poetry, prose and translation.
Read & share: tomorrowclub.world/spotlights/s...
BRAVA! BRAVO! BRILLIANT Tomorrow Club LAUNCHED by @youngwriterspen.bsky.social! To archive & amplify young people's voices shaping our societies; connect brave creative witnesses across borders & exchange stories, strategies & solidarity, & learn from & support each other.
www.tomorrowclub.world
Meet the next generation speaking out for free expression.
From shrinking civic space to defending democracy, PEN International’s Young Writers Committee (@youngwriterspen.bsky.social) raises their voices with urgency and hope ⬇️
www.pen-international.org/committee-ne...
📍 Read the full piece at tomorrowclub.world
✍️ Words that should never have to be written — but must be.
#VoicesFromGaza #HassanAbuQamar #TheTomorrowClub #PENInternational #FreedomToWrite #WritingUnderOccupation #GazaUnderSiege #EmptyChair #YouthVoices #freepalesti̇ne
This is not a conflict. This is the deliberate annihilation of a people — their homes, their histories, their hopes.
“Jail isn’t always a room. Sometimes, it’s an entire city.”
In his piece “Beyond This Wall of Sea: Dreams and Oppurtunities Await”, young journalist Hassan Abo Qamar writes from Gaza — a place where dreams are trapped behind barbed wire, and even the sea feels like a wall.
📍Read the full piece on tomorrowclub.world
#PENInternational #TheTomorrowClub #WamoNunyali #SpotlightAfrica #YouthVoices #FreedomToWrite #AfricanLiterature #HappyThirsts #WritingAsResistance
“Freedom still tastes like a distant promise.”
In Of Freedom, Culture, and Happy Thirsts, Togolese writer Wamo Nunyali explores how the illusion of post-independence freedom still weighs on Africa’s youth — and how culture, silence, and survival shape the way they resist.
🐦 “A baby needs freedom more than food and water.”�In this intimate allegory by Iranian writer Benyamin Abbasi, two birds trapped in a cage debate hope, motherhood, and what it means to live freely — or die trying.
💭 Read full story:
tomorrowclub.world/articles/yel...
@peninternational.bsky.social
With membership from 58 countries, @peninternational.bsky.social’s new Young Writers Committee is mobilizing the next generation of writers and advocates.
Read and share our latest blog to support their work and follow youngwriterspen.bsky.social: pen.org/pen-internat...
Nadia, Translation and International Manager at English PEN (@englishpen_)
and member of the Young Writers Committee (@pen_youth) steering group, shares how initiatives for under 35s are helping young people speak freely and share their voices amid growing threats to freedom of expression.
Featured in the latest PEN/OPP: Tomorrow Club – Young Voices 📖 Malawian poet Wongani Nyasulu writes with urgency and clarity about gender equality and the right to speak up.
Read her powerful poetry in PEN/OPP ⬇️
penopp.org/articles/gir...
Read more from PEN America (@penamerica.bsky.social) about how the Young Writers Committee's (@youngwriterspen.bsky.social) new global network is shaping the future of literary activism ⬇️
From protest to poetry, this piece is a call to witness, and a reminder:
We rise not because we love to fight, but because we love to live.
📝 Read the full text at tomorrowclub.world
“Freedom is not given. It is a struggle.”
In Freedom, Youth, and Africa, Malawian poet and activist Wezi Glory Msukwa-Panje reflects on the weight, betrayal, and persistence of freedom across African history — and the fire still carried by its youth today.
Author Ege Dündar, with a mustache and wearing a dark shirt, sitting in front of a backdrop of plants and framed by graphic quotation marks. Text on the image contains a quote about challenging authoritarianism and creating dynamic spaces for youth.
Photo of author Ayi Renaud Dossavi, smiling, with a quote about the fusion of global and local concepts in literature. The background is orange, and there is a logo of PEN America at the bottom.
Young people worldwide refuse to be silenced. Authors Ayi Renaud Dossavi and @ege-dundar.bsky.social spoke to us about the power of international solidarity and how @youngwriterspen.bsky.social connects young authors with storytelling spaces, advocacy, and mentorship. pen.org/pen-internat...
On May 13th, PEN America ( @penamerica.bsky.social ) announced that Galal El-Behairy will be awarded the 2025 PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Award at its annual literary gala in New York City on May 15. The award recognizes his courageous commitment to truth, art, and human rights.
After serving his sentence, he was re-detained under new charges in a practice known as “rotation”, used to prolong political imprisonment without trial. PEN International (@peninternational.bsky.social) is closely monitoring the case for years and calling for his immediate release.
Egyptian poet, lyricist, and pro-democracy activist Galal El-Behairy has been unjustly imprisoned since 2018. Initially detained for the lyrics of the protest song “Balaha”, he was later sentenced to three years in prison for his poetry collection The Finest Women on Earth.
🎧 Her episode of our podcast series Brave Young Voices of Today and Tomorrow is available now on Spotify—tune in to hear her story and words in her own voice.
#GirlsLikeUs #WonganiNyasulu #PENInternational #YoungVoicesFromAfrica #FreedomToWrite #AfricanPoetry #GenderJustice
✍️ Wongani is an economist and co-founder of Awake for Change, an NGO supporting rural girls through education and human rights. She’s also a member of PEN Malawi and the Commonwealth Youth Gender and Equality Network.
Through bold and lyrical storytelling, Wongani speaks to the resilience of young Malawian girls who dare to write, dream, and live beyond imposed expectations.
In her powerful poem Girls Like Us, Malawian writer and gender activist @wongie_nyasulu explores what it means to grow up as a girl navigating culture, silence, and survival—with a pen in hand.
Use your voice!
More on tomorrowclub.world
📣 Help us amplify his voice.
📝 Tell his story.
✊ Demand justice.
