1st President

Dr. muhammad shahidullah was born in Peyara village, 24 Pargana, West Bengal (now in India) to a devoutly religious family. His father, Mafizuddin Ahmed, was a warden of a shrine. Shahidullah passed his school final Entrance exam in 1904 from Howrah Zilla School. In 1906 he passed the FA exam from Presidency College in Kolkata. He received the Bachelor of Arts degree with Honors in Sanskrit in 1910 from City College, Kolkata, and Master of Arts in 1912 in comparative philology from the University of Calcutta. He earned his PhD degree from Sorbonne University in 1928 for his research on the dialects of the Charyapada.He was the first Indian Muslim to receive this doctorate degree. The first president of PEN Pakistan was the renowned scholar, writer and linguist Dr. Muhammad Shahidullah.
Shahidullah began teaching in Jessore Zila School in 1908. After working as the headmaster of Sitakunda High School for some time in 1914, he practiced law at Bashirhat in 24 Parganas. In 1915 he was elected Vice-Chairman of the town’s municipality. He was Sharatchandra Lahiri Research Fellow (1919–21) under Dinesh Chandra Sen at the University of Calcutta and joined the University of Dhaka as a lecturer in 1921 in Sanskrit and Bangla. During his period at the University of Dhaka he did research on the origins of the Bengali language. In 1925, he presented his thesis that Bangla as a language originated from Gaudi or Magadhi Prakrit. He was principal of Bogra Azizul Huq College from 1944–1948. He then returned to the University of Dhaka, serving as head of the Bangla Department and dean of the Faculty of Arts. He taught part-time at the Law Department (1922–25) and the International Relations Department as a teacher of French (1953–55). He worked as head of the Bangla and Sanskrit Department of the University of Rajshahi (1955–58).

2nd President

Ahsan, Syed Ali (1920-2002) educationist and writer, was born in the village of Alokdia of Magura district on 26 March 1920. His father, Syed Ali Hamed, was a School Inspector. His mother, Syeda Kamrunnegar Khatun, was the daughter of Syed Mokarram Ali, the zamindar and pir of Agla village in Nawabganj thana, Dhaka
In 1967 Ali Ahsan became Professor of Bangla and Dean of the Arts Faculty of the newly established Chittagong University. For more than three years he led many educational and literary programmes of Chittagong and adjacent areas. At the beginning of the war of liberation in March 1971 he went to India. In calcutta he worked for independence for nine months. He played an important role in building up local and world public opinion through his speeches and writings.

Ali Ahsan was appointed Vice Chancellor of jahangirnagar university in 1972. In addition to developing the newly-established university as a modern and full-fledged institution he played a key role in many important national events. He helped in finalising the Bangla version of the constitution of Bangladesh and constitution of the Bangla Academy. He also played a part in combining Bangla Academy and Bangla Development Board, and contributed to the Informal Education Commission. Moreover, he was responsible for the official version of the English translation of the national anthem of Bangladesh.
In Bangladesh period Syed Ali Ahsan became the first president of PEN Bangladesh.

3rd President

Farida Hossain Was born in 19th January 1945 in Kolkata, India. Her home district is in Chittagong, Bangladesh. She is a short story writer, novelist, playwright, drama director and producer, lyricist, music composer, reciter and social worker. She mostly writes short stories, novels and child literature with focus on fairy tales for children with special message. Farida Hossain is the founder president of Anjum Shichu kollayan Foundation, a social welfare organization and founder editor of literary magazine Obinosshor. She has written and edited about 15 books and received many literary awards including Ekhushe Padhok, a national award on literature.

President

Syed Manzoorul Islam (born 18 January 1951) is a Bangladeshi critic, writer and a former professor of Dhaka University. As a literary critic, he has written criticism on writers including Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Kazi Nazrul Islam, Sudhindranath Dutta, Samar Sen, and Shamsur Rahman. He received a Bangla Academy Literary Award in 1996, and his 2005 short stories collection Prem o Prarthanar Galpo was Prothom Alo‘s book of the year. He became the president of PEN Bangladesh in January 2018.

He received his graduate and post-graduate degree from the University of Dhaka respectively in 1971 and 1972. Later he went to Canada and earned a PhD from Queen’s University, Kingston in 1981. In 1989, he went to the University of Southern Mississippi at Hattiesburg as a Fulbright Scholar and taught there one semester. He retired from the faculty position at the University of Dhaka and joined University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh.

Islam describes himself as “a critic by training and a writer by compulsion”. Though he writes in many genres, he himself values his fictional work more than his other writings.

Secretary General

Mohammed Moheuddin writes fiction and drama and edits Golpokar, the first literary journal in Bangladesh entirely devoted to fiction. He has been bringing out the monthly Golpokar for over four years now. He is also a long-term member of PEN Bangladesh and serves currently as the  Secretary General.
Moheuddin’s first novel ‘Nishachar Abed Ali’ (2000) won the Kabir Chowdhury Best Under 30 literary award in 2001, which was handed over that year by the president of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh. He is the author of 10 novels and a short story book. Golpokar has served printed about 400 writers to-date, out of whom about 100 made their debut in Golpokar. 
Mohammad Moheuddin obtained Masters in English Language and Literature. He also studied Media and Journalism under Oslo University College on a Norwegian scholarship. In addition PEN International Bangladesh Centre, which he joined in 2011, he is also a founder-member of Asia Pacific Writers.