English PEN Writers at Risk Residency
English PEN is one of the world's oldest human rights organisations and the founding centre of PEN International, a worldwide writers’ association with 130 centres in more than 90 countries. The charity promotes literature and defends freedom of expression in the UK and internationally.
Since 2022, the Goethe-Institut London and English PEN have been cooperating in a residency programme for international authors. This collaborative project was developed for writers facing major challenges in their home countries, offering them a supportive environment for reflection, creativity and a break from everyday life.
As part of the Writers at Risk programme, the Goethe-Institut London facilitates residencies that provide time, space and financial support for participants to recover and work on their own projects. The partnership has already welcomed three international writers to London. Since the safety of the writers is of the utmost importance, all residencies are documented digitally once the writers have completed the programme.
About the project
From June 2021 to December 2024, I worked as an Online Editor at the Goethe-Institut London. As one of only three team members in the Communications team, I played a pivotal role in the digital production and delivery of the first two residency programmes, which welcomed Turkish writer, lawyer, and human rights defender Nurcan Kaya in 2022, and Belarusian poet, human rights activist, and President of PEN Belarus, Taciana Niadbaj, in 2024.
My responsibilities included attending meetings with English PEN and the residents to coordinate project timelines, using my CMS skills to build and update the Goethe-Institut UK’s residency webpages, translating English-language copy into German, and creating multimedia content in Canva in line with the organisation’s editorial guidelines.