We are back for our second year! Royal Holloway English PEN is a student centre of the worldwide organisation International PEN that works to promote and protect free speech around the world.

Here’s what we want to do at our university:

– We will ensure members have an unrestricted platform to publish, perform and circulate their creative work via our blog and organised events such as open mic nights.
- We will invite speakers to the university who will run creative workshops, Q&A sessions etc. These will hopefully include celebrated authors, artists, poets, protesters and campaigners who are affiliated with English and International PEN.
- Our charitable outreach will be broad and innovative. We will campaign to protect free speech worldwide, in countries and cultures where the human right to free speech is not upheld. We shall be looking into this locally, nationally and internationally.
-We will run weekly meetings that focus on the creative genius of Royal Holloway students. We will ensure that students feel they have an adequate and safe outlet for their thoughts, beliefs, disappointments and outrage on subjects from racial inequality to poverty, from the disregard of gender issues to the refugee crisis.

At the end of the year, we are also hoping to run a trip to a PEN Centre abroad! We shall be site seeing around the city but also volunteering at the Centre. We also hope to take with us a significant donation to the chosen PEN Centre.

If this society is something you are interested in and you would like to find out more, come say hello to us at Fresher's Fair, follow us on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/rhulenglishpen/?fref=ts) or send us an e-mail at EnglishPEN@su.rhul.ac.uk!

Please also take a look at the main English PEN organisation website:https://www.englishpen.org/