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Txomin Peillen has won the 2009 PEN Quill Pen Mention
2009-06-18 ¦ .
The writer received the award on June 11
Txomin Peillen has won a 2009 PEN Quill Pen Mention for his work to promote Basque culture and freedom of expression. The writer received the award on June 11 at the Bilbao Book Fair.
This year’s was the fifth annual PEN Quill Pen Mention. In 2005, Joan Mari Torrealdai won the award for his work to promote Basque culture and for his work on censorship under Franco. In 2006, British writer and Nobel Prize winner in literature Harold Pinter received the PEN Quill Pen Mention to highlight his work on behalf of minority literatures, such as his play about the Kurdish language, Mountain Language. In 2007, Juan Jose Agirre received the award for his work since 1973 on the Benedictine archives in Lazkao. Finally, last year’s award went to Kurdish writers Adnan Hassanpour and Hiwa Butimar, both of whom received the death penalty in Iran.