Max Porter

'What would a literary opposition to violence even sound like?' The 2026 PEN Lecture was delivered by the renowned English writer Max Porter on 29 April 2026. In a speech almost entirely framed as a series of questions, he urges us – particularly writers and literary practitioners – to genuinely reckon with our complacencies at a time of ongoing war and genocides stoked by heightened militarism, fascism, patriarchy, and technocapitalism. What does peace even mean in a world like this? What can it possibly look like, how can it come into being? 'Are we only allowed to dream of profit, victory, security, defence?'