The round table topics this year are:
Writers for Peace: NEVER AGAIN – MEMORY IN LITERATURE
With the final defeat of the Nazis by the Allies, the appalling reality of all the concentration and extermination camps established especially during the Second World War was revealed to the world. One of them, Buchenwald, was located near the city of Weimar in Germany. Upon the arrival of the Allied forces in April 1945, the prisoners who survived the atrocities committed there greeted them with the words ‘NEVER AGAIN’ written in almost every language in the world. With enormous concern, 80 years later, writers and humanity as a whole are witnessing genocides, bombings that kill civilians (particularly defenceless women and children), and warmongers who are attempting to occupy more and more territories. However, throughout history, the vast majority of writers have resisted war, not with a sword, but with a pen. And for this reason, today we have an obligation to answer questions that are more valid than ever: How can literature bear witness to horrors in order to prevent them? Is it inevitable that, with the passage of time, oblivion will erase our memory and lead us to repeat in others the suffering we ourselves suffered? Is the legitimate right to identity above any other human right? Can our words be louder than bombs?
Slovene PEN: AI – THE ERASURE OR THE REDESIGN OF HUMANITY?
Artificial intelligence is not a neutral tool but can also be a dispositif of power: it enables the rewriting of history, automated propaganda, the erosion of journalistic ethics, and the mass production of hostile images of the Other (the migrant, the Roma, the Muslim, etc.), which can be used to legitimize exclusion and violence. In such a regime, responsibility for wars, systemic inequality, or dehumanization dangerously shifts from humans to the “algorithm,” while the alliance of capital, technological centers, and politics quietly strengthens its reach.At the same time, AI radically challenges human self-understanding: for the first time, we are faced with a created system that is not bound to mortality and could surpass the limits of human cognition. What does this mean for democracy, for freedom of expression, for human rights, for literature as the space of the human voice? Will AI become a new infrastructure of subjugation, or a new possibility for expanding the field of freedom? Who will govern the world – the human or the machine?The round table of the Slovene PEN Centre seeks to move the discussion beyond simple apocalyptic and techno-utopian narratives toward the question of whether writers and readers can co-create with AI a language in which dignity and peace remain the measure of what is human.
Young Writers: YOUNG VOICES ACROSS BORDERS: LITERATURE AS ACTIVISM
This round table brings together young writers and activists to explore how literature can drive social change and foster global solidarity. The discussion will examine storytelling as a tool to address migration, climate change, and social inequality, the role of translation and multilingualism in reaching diverse audiences, and the responsibilities and risks of politically engaged writing. Participants will also consider freedom of expression in the digital age, emerging forms of literary activism such as spoken word, podcasts, social media campaigns, and collaborative projects, and strategies for sustaining creative energy, building supportive networks, and fostering long-term international collaborations among young writers.
