The activity of PEN Romania has focused, in the past year, especially on supporting Ukrainian writers, the Romanian writers giving the measure of their „altruism, collegiality, solidarity,” poet and civic activist Ana Blandiana, the honorary president of the 2022 edition of the Gaudeamus Radio Romania Book Fair, declared.
„The fact that in the past year the activity of the PEN Club was mainly focused on supporting the Ukrainian PEN and the writers was an extraordinarily impressive moment. The appeal to the Romanian writers who have houses and can make them available immediately had a whole series of answers, which gave the measure not only of altruism, collegiality, solidarity, but also the extent to which the writers had houses that they could make available. It was a truly extraordinary moment”, stated Blandiana at the launch PEN Centenary Album, held at the stand of the Romanian Cultural Institute at Gaudeamus.
The poet revealed the fact that, in the years after 1990, the PEN Club was an organization in which „there were many struggles, in the sense of preserving the literary character, of preserving the status of an elite organization, made of writers.”The release of the PEN Centenary Album at the ICR Publishing House, coordinated by the writer Mariana Gorczyca, marks the completion of a century since the establishment of the Romanian PEN Centre. The work was presented at the launch by its coordinator, Ana Blandiana, and literary critic Radu Vancu, president of PEN Romania.
