PEN Bosnia and Herzegovina

PEN Center of Bosnia and Herzegovina (P.E.N. Centar u Bosni i Hercegovini / П.Е.Н. Центар у Босни и Херцеговини) is one of the 148 centres of PEN International, and is based in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was founded in the first year of the war in Bosnia, on 31 October 1992. As part of Yugoslavia, Bosnia and Herzegovina didn't have the right for membership as an independent center, according to the rules of the International PEN.

History
PEN Center of Bosnia and Herzegovina is one of the 148 centres of PEN International, and is based in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. The founding assembly was convened on 31 October 1992, and held in Holiday Inn Hotel in Sarajevo, under heavy shelling as the Bosnian war and the Siege of Sarajevo already started. Thirty-six writers managed to reach the Holiday Inn Hotel that day, and decided to establish the association. Because of the war-related circumstances, PEN of Bosnia and Herzegovina was temporarily represented by PEN Center of the Republic of Slovenia in international contacts and relations. PEN Center of the Republic of Slovenia also helped in organizing and collecting aid for the writers, artists and intellectuals of Sarajevo during the siege, which was delivered to the city under difficult circumstances.

The admission of the Bosnian and Herzegovinian PEN was plebiscitarily confirmed at a congress in Spain in the autumn of 1993, however, Bosnian writers could not attend, because they were not able to safely exit the besieged city. The PEN delegation of Bosnia and Herzegovina finally managed to attend the congress of the PEN in Prague in the fall of 1994.

Function
The center serves on the association and for the benefit of its members – writers, journalists, editors, publishers, publicists, literary critics and historians, literary translators, and other intellectuals and authors, representing their interests in cooperation with an authorities and organizations in the country and abroad, with the aim of "affirming and promoting literature, tolerance, culture of dialogue and freedom of expression in accordance with the Charter of the International P.E.N. Organizations".

Novi Izraz magazine
The literary magazine “Novi Izraz” (the “New Expression”), is organization's main publication, and is more than 60 years old.