Taciana Niadbaj
English PEN Writers at Risk Residency 2024

We were delighted to welcome Taciana Niadbaj for our 2024 Literature Residency in collaboration with English PEN. Taciana Niadbaj is a poet, human rights activist, and the President of PEN Belarus. She is the author of the poetry collection Sirens Are Singing Jazz, for which she received the Maksim Bahdanovič Debut Award, and is the founder of the publishing house Połackija Łabitynty.

Taciana is also a translator into Belarusian of Imperial Knowledge: Russian Literature and Colonialism by Ewa Thompson, co-author of translations into Belarusian of Our Merry Apocalypse by Leszek Kołakowski, and Twentieth-century Literary Theories by Anna Burzyńska and Michal Paweł Markowski.

In December 2022, she published Ales, by the Nobel Prize-winning writer, activist, and fellow PEN Belarus member Ales Bialiatski.

PEN Belarus is the Belarusian branch of the international writers’ association PEN International. The acronym PEN stands for Poets, Essayists, Novelists. The organisation advocates globally for freedom of expression, human rights, and the protection of persecuted writers.

PEN Belarus was established in 1989 by a committee of 20 Belarusian authors. In May 1990, at the 55th PEN Congress on the island of Madeira, the organisation was officially admitted to PEN International. The Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Belarus formally registered PEN Belarus on 16 November 1990, based on its statute and the Council of Ministers’ Resolution No. 274 dated 1 November 1990. A renewed registration followed on 31 October 1999. As a member of PEN International, PEN Belarus holds Category A status with UNESCO and consultative status with the United Nations.

In 1994, PEN Belarus introduced two annual literary awards to honour outstanding literary achievements: the Ales Adamovich Award and the Frantsishak Bahushevich Award. In 2012, PEN Belarus also became a co-founder of the Jerzy Giedroyc Literary Award. These awards continue to be presented today, alongside the development of new projects and honours.

Since 1996, PEN Belarus has been a member of the Writers in Prison Committee, which was founded in 1960 by the General Assembly of PEN International.