Slovenian PEN elected writer and former politician Tone Peršak its new president on Monday to succeed Ifigenija Simonović, who has served since March 2017. Peršak, 73, already served as Slovenian PEN president in the 2000s.
He has also served as culture minister and the president of the Slovenian Writers’ Association. He once said that “PEN has no tanks or much money, but it can speak, and we believe that words still have some power”.