After the Book Fair is before the Congress. We are pleased to provide you with the most important information about this year’s PEN Berlin Congress:

Date: 2.11.24, from 2 pm, Hamburg, Fabrik Altona
Theme: »On we go«
 
This year’s keynote speaker is Israeli writer Etgar Keret. He follows in the footsteps of last year’s speaker, the British writer A.L. Kennedy, and the US author, playwright and then-President of PEN America, Ayad Akhtar, who delivered the keynote address at the first PEN Berlin Congress in 2022.

Keret will be preceded by renowned Bulgarian political scientist Ivan Krastev and internationally renowned political commentator Fintan O’Toole, who will talk to Eva Menasse about the upcoming US presidential election – and what its outcome means for the world. In a continuation of our major series of talks in eastern Germany over the summer, Daniel Morgenroth and Daniel Ris, directors of theatres in Görlitz and Senftenberg respectively, talk to other cultural workers from the new federal states about the pressures on culture there.

Other topics include: the writer Stella Nyanzi on the human rights situation in Uganda, the country with the harshest homophobic laws in the world; Alain Sulzer, Dana Grigorcea and other writers on self-censorship in writing; and a public debate on whether extreme right-wing views and parties should be banned, with keynote speeches by the lawyer David Werdermann and the writer Philipp Ruch. The event will conclude with a short concert by the musician Daniel Kahn. The full programme and more information on the participants can be found here.

Please click here for the full programme and for more information on the guests.