Press release of 2 December 2025
General Assembly: PEN Berlin grows to 720 members – new names include Irina Scherbakowa, Ulrike Draesner, and Harald Welzer
The PEN Berlin writers’ association held its annual general assembly on Sunday, November 30, 2025. At the meeting, writer Sophie Sumburane, who had been a member of the board since its founding, stepped down and Linn Penelope Rieger, author, literary mediator, and managing director of Edit and Netzwerk Lyrik, was elected to the eleven-member executive committee.
The 35 newly admitted members include Nobel Peace Prize winner Irina Scherbakowa, journalists Christian Bommarius and Georg Mascolo, literary critic Iris Radisch, sociologist Harald Welzer, philosopher Eva von Redecker, youth book award winner Maren Amini, and Julia Draganović, director of the German Academy Rome Villa Massimo. Also elected were the writers Ulrike Draesner, Matthias Nawrat, Maruan Paschen, and Dana Ranga, as well as publishers Tim Jung (Hoffmann und Campe), Tom Kraushaar (Klett-Cotta), and Oliver Vogel (S. Fischer).
Founded in June 2022, PEN Berlin has grown to around 720 members, with women making up 50.1 percent of the membership (compared to 40.0 percent when it was founded in June 2022). The PEN Berlin Cultural Congress took place on the eve of the general meeting under the motto “Who’s going to clean this up now?” In her opening speech, writer and PEN Berlin spokesperson Thea Dorn explored the possibility—and necessity—of civil society engagement as a means of countering the view of democracy as a liberal hyper-service provider.
Guests discussing various topics on different panels included Nino Haratischwili, Nora Krug, Wolfgang Kubicki, Renate Künast, Kristof Magnusson, Helge Malchow, and Ulrike Winkelmann. Finnish author Sofi Oksanen gave the keynote speech on deported Ukrainian children and the Russian calculation behind it. Her speech will appear in the taz newspaper this coming weekend.
PEN Berlin. We stand by our word.