Oxfam Novib PEN Awards

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With the PEN Awards Oxfam Novib and Dutch PEN honour writers, journalists and filmmakers who, against the current, and at the risk of their own lives, search for the truth and spread it. Writer an secretary of PEN Netherlands Manon Uphoff will present the Oxfam Novib/PEN Award in Theater aan het Spui, as part of the Writers Unlimited Winternachten festival The Hague. The Syrian writer Samar Yazbek witnessed the brutal violence against demonstrating citizens in her country. She published about it, was severely threatened and consequently had to leave the country.

The other prize winners this year are Enoh Meyomesse (Cameroun), Nargess Mohammadi (Iran), Déo Namujimbo (Congo) and Büþra Ersanlý (Turkey). Samar Yazbek is the only winner present during the ceremony.

 The prize-winning ceremony is followed by a debate organised by Dutch PEN about censorship, self-censorship and the ethics of writers, journalists and bloggers, chaired by Volkskrant columnist Sheila Sitalsing. Arabist Petra Stienen, Remco Breuker (a professor and an expert on East Asia), Michel Maas (a correspondent in Indonesia) and writer Joris van Casteren. Prizewinning ceremony is in English, the debate in Dutch.

Information

Date and time Thursday 17 January 2013 from 15:30 to 17:00 hrs
Location Theater aan het Spui - grote zaal

Line-up

Samar Yazbek

(Syria, 1970), journalist and writer of novels, short stories, scripts and non-fiction, is a great champion of human and above all women's rights in Syria. Yazbek fled her country after openly resisting the regime and lives in exile in Paris. She has won many awards, including the Oxfam Novib PEN Award during 2013's Winternachten Festival. The Crossing (2015), about her secret return during the war in Syria, was awarded Best Foreign Book in France. Her personal stories uniquely illustrate the situation in that country. In 19 Women: Tales of resilience from Syria (2018), Yazbek focuses on the role of women during the revolution. Her upcoming De Blauwe Pen (The Blue Pen) is a lively, poetic novel about a Syrian girl who cannot stop running through the middle of the insanity of the war.
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Petra Stienen

(Roermond, NL, 1965) studied Arabic and Middle East studies. Her second book was published in 2012: Het andere Arabische geluid (The Other Arab Voice), about voices of humanity and hope during the hectic transition period in the new Middle East. Her first book Dromen van een Arabische lente (Dreaming of an Arab Spring, 2008) was about the life and work of a human-rights diplomat in the Arab world. In both books she goes in search of the kind of stories that get little attention in Western media. Currently, Stienen is a publicist and independent consutant. She writes for NRC Handelsblad and De Volkskrant newspapers, has a column in the women's monthly magazine Opzij, and reguarly appears as a commentator on radio and television programmes and in debates at home and abroad.
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Joris van Casteren

(Rotterdam, NL 1976) is a writer, poet and journalist. His book Het zusje van de bruid (The Bride's Sister, 2011) deals with his relationship with an addicted borderline girl. In his characteristic mixture of reportage, autobiography and historical writing Van Casteren tells the story of an amour fou. In 2008 he wrote the autobiographical Lelystad. He was accused of grave insult because of the book, which was nominated for the 2009 AKO Literature Prize. Van Casteren studied journalism and philosophy. At the age of 21 he became an editor with the Amsterdam based weekly De Groene Amsterdammer, where he made a name for himself with extensive reports. Four stories which he made in Nigeria were collected in Redactie Binnenland (Home Desk) and awarded the Dick Scherpenzeel Prize. Van Casteren also worked for the daily newspaper NRC Handelsblad and the weekly Vrij Nederland and now works for the Amsterdam daily newspaper Het Parool. He published poetry in Maatstaf and Passionate Magazine. He also wrote portraits of forgotten poets and writers, published a collection of his reports in Een vreselijk land (A Terrible Country) and the collection of poems Grote atomen (Large Atoms). In January 2013 he published his novel Been in de IJssel (Bone in the IJssel).
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Michel Maas

(Roermond, NL 1954) is De Volkskrant and NOS Journaal (Dutch 8 o' clock news) correspondent in southeast Asia. He studied philosophy and worked as a journalist for De Volkskrant from 1986. As a literary reporter he talked to A.F.Th. van der Heijden, W.F. Hermans, Hugo Claus among others and Nobel Prize winners Derek Walcott and Seamus Heaney. In 1994 his first novel was published, De Vleugels van Lieu Hanh (Lieu Hanh's Wings), on a journey through Vietnam in which history plays a prominent role. It won him the Geertjan Lubberhuizen Prize. In 1996 he settled as eastern Europe correspondent in Budapest and covered the war in Kosovo. His reports were collected in Kosovo: Verslag van een oorlog (Kosovo: Report of a War). It was awarded the NDP Prize for daily newspaper journalism. In 2001 he exchanged eastern Europe for southeast Asia and started working for NOS (a public network). In 2010 he himself was in the news when during a live radio broadcast of the eviction of a protest camp in Bangkok he was shot at.
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Remco Breuker

(Zaandam, NL, 1972) is a professor of Korean Studies at the University of Leiden. He studied Japanese and Korean, and lived for a time in Seoul while earning a second Master's degree. Breuker collaborated on the first Korean-Dutch dictionary(2002). In 2006, he obtained his doctorate (with distinction) with When Truth is Everywhere: The formation of plural identities in medieval Korea, 918-1170. In 2008, Breuker worked as a researcher at Australia's National University (ANU). Then he worked on the research project Conceptualizing Northeast Asia: World history through the lens of Koryǒ and Liao. Breuker is the acting director of the project History as Social Practice: Unconventional historiographies of Korea. He is editor-in-chief of the e-magazine Korean Histories and an editor with the magazine East Asian History. In 2010 he received the KNAW Heineken Young Scientists Award for Historical Learning for research into Korean identity. Together with Imke van Gardingen he translates contemporary Korean literature. 

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Sheila Sitalsing

(Suriname, 1968) is a journalist, writer, and economist. She writes books, essays and columns on politics and society. For eleven years, she wrote a widely read column in Dutch national daily newspaper de Volkskrant every other day, for which she was awarded the Heldring Prize for best columnist in the Netherlands. In 2024, she received an honorary doctorate from the University of Humanistic Studies. She wrote the political biography Mark, portret van een premier (2017; Mark, portrait of a prime minister) and compiled her columns about the COVID pandemic year 2020 in Dagboek van een krankzinnig jaar (Diary of a Mad Year). In 2025, her book Waar ik me voor schaam (What I am ashamed of) was published, a non-fictional, perceptive account of a search for the workings of intergenerational shame and totalitarian temptation.
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Manon Uphoff

(The Netherlands, 1962) is a Dutch writer, screenwriter and visual artist. She made her debut in 1995 with the collection of short stories Begeerte (Desire), which was nominated for the AKO Literature Prize, the Anton Wachter Prize and the ECI Prize. The title story was awarded the Rabobank Spring Prize for Literature. Her first novel Gemis (1997) was nominated for the Libris Literature Prize. Her most recent book, Vallen is als vliegen (Falling is Like Flying, 2019), was shortlisted for both the 2019 Bookspot Literature Prize and the 2020 Libris Literature Prize. The novel was named the best Dutch-language novel of 2019 by NRC Handelsblad and Humo. Uphoff was editor of the literary magazine De Revisor and board member and president of PEN Netherlands. As a screenwriter, she wrote the feature film screenplay Een Groot Geweld (Topkapi Films).
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