Student PEN groups exist across the UK and act as hubs for a range of activities promoting the freedom to read, and the freedom to write, including:
- Defending academic freedom on campus
- Running campaigns for imprisoned writers around the world
- Promoting creative writing in the city and at the university
Student PEN Leeds is a sub-group of the national charity English PEN. Founded in 192
1, and now one of the oldest human rights groups still in existence, English PEN has attracted some of the greatest writers across the 20th and 21st centuries in their campaigning for free expression – including H. Wells (President 1933-1936), J. Priestley (President 1937), Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie, and Monica Ali. English PEN is the founding centre of PEN International, the worldwide fellowship of writers promoting free expression and literature across frontiers. There are 145 PEN centres in more than one hundred countries, providing an active and supportive community for writers and readers around the world. Its aim is to promote the freedom to write and the freedom to read, and the organisation campaigns for prisoners of conscience around the world who have been imprisoned for exercising these freedoms.
