Activities 2020–2021 LITERARY Covid restrictions disrupted PEN Canada’s literary programming throughout 2020. The first lockdown prevented a patrons’ salon with New Yorker staff writer Andrew Marantz and CBC’s Nora Young on social media’s distortion of the digital public sphere. Further restrictions led to the cancellation of a book launch and literary readings in Vancouver. PEN maintained residencies for exiled writers at George Brown College and the Humber School for Writers. In 2020 George Brown suspended its residency due to Covid lockdowns. Maria Saba was awarded the 2020 residency at the Humber School. In November PEN Canada co-sponsored the screening of Nasrin, a documentary about Nasrin Sotoudeh in collaboration with Innis College and the Critical Studies in Equity and Solidarity Program, New College, at the University of Toronto.
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PEN also co-sponsored a screening at the 18th Annual Human Rights Watch Toronto Film Festival. A La Calle is a first-hand account of the extraordinary efforts Venezuelans have made to reclaim their democracy from the dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro. On March 9, 2021, Massey College screened The Cost of Freedom: Refugee Journalists in Canada. The film chronicles the lives of three members of PEN’s Writers in Exile group: Abdulrahman Matar from Syria; Luis Nájera from México and Arzu Yildiz from Turkey. The film was produced by James Cullingham, an independent filmmaker.
