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Novelist Burhan Sönmez from Turkey has been elected the new President of PEN International. While the other candidates for the position were Gioconda Belli and Ben Okri, Burhan Sönmez has been a member of the Executive Board of the PEN International.
Announcing the election of Sönmez on its Twitter account, PEN International has said, "We are delighted to announce that award winning Turkish Kurdish novelist and human rights lawyer Burhan Sönmez is our newly elected President. Burhan Sönmez will lead our work and reaffirm PEN's mission over the next six years, in what is the beginning of our second centenary."
An excerpt from the acceptance speech of Burhan Sönmez has also been shared by PEN International on Twitter:
"I thank my fellow PEN members for entrusting me with PEN's future - an honour and a responsibility that I recognise and will keep in my mind and heart as I fill the role of President of our noble organisation."
"I thank my fellow PEN members for entrusting me with PEN's future - an honour and a responsibility that I recognise and will keep in my mind and heart as I fill the role of President of our noble organisation." Burhan Sönmez's acceptance speech as new PEN International President pic.twitter.com/wPzrI7ohke
— PEN International (@pen_int) September 24, 2021
"As the new President of PEN International I feel proud to have been in the line of great people of literature and freedom like Catherine Amy Dawson Scott, Jennifer Clement, Per Wastberg, John Ralston Saul, H.G. Wells, Arthur Miller and Heinrich Böll," Sönmez has added further.
About Burhan Sönmez
A novelist from Turkey. He is the author of five novels. His novels are North (Kuzey, 2009), Sins & Innocents (Masumlar, 2011), Istanbul Istanbul (2015), Labyrinth (Labirent, 2018), Stone and Shadow (Taş ve Gölge, 2021). His novels have been translated into forty-two languages.
He was awarded the EBRD Literature Prize in Britain (2018). He received the "Disturbing the Peace" award of Vaclav Havel Foundation in the USA (2017).
In Turkey, he won the Sedat Simavi Literature Prize (2011), and Izmir St. Joseph Best Novel Award (2011).
He received BUYAZ Best Story Honour Prize (2015).
He translated the poetry book of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by William Blake into Turkish.
He has written for various papers including The Guardian, Der Spiegel, La Repubblica.
He was a member of the judging panel for the 2014 Cevdet Kudret Literature Prize and the 2020 Geneva International Film Festival.
He lectured in Literature and Novel at the university of METU.
He is a member of three PEN centres: English PEN, Kurdish PEN and PEN Turkey. He is on the Board of PEN International.
He lives between Istanbul and Cambridge. (Source: Burhan Sönmez official website) (AÖ/SD)
