In Mexico mission, PEN speaks for a silenced press
The leading American author Russell Banks set the tone on Sunday as he stood among international writers and their local colleagues in Mexico City: “A nation’s journalists and writers, like its poets and story-tellers, are the eyes, ears, and mouths of the people. When journalists cannot freely speak of what they see and hear of…
Only some Chinese writers allowed to attend PEN Festival
The stage was full of empty chairs on Thursday at “China in Two Acts,” part of the five-day PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature in New York, which ended on Sunday. A two-part program featured writer Zha Jianying speaking for the first part followed by a panel discussion in the second. The chairs, a…
When a defender is persecuted, what rights are left?
Everyone at some point has needed someone to stand up for them. These people shine in our memories for gestures or actions taken on our behalf, whether as children against the schoolyard bully or as adults in favor of a scholarly proposition or professional advance. But an especially powerful embodiment of an advocate is that…
At PEN, CPJ event, Mexico press crisis examined
The line of people at the stairs leading down to the Great Hall at Cooper Union in lower Manhattan formed early and turned into an audience of 500. They came to hear prominent Mexican and U.S. writers and free expression advocates assess, denounce, and seek solutions to the wave of violence wracking Mexican media.
PEN, CPJ call attention to Mexico press crisis
“Tell them not to kill me!” pleads a man in the opening lines of a fascinating tale of violence with the same title by one of Mexico’s most esteemed writers, Juan Rulfo. It is, sadly, the same cry for help that Mexican journalists are sending out to the world today. On Tuesday, October 19, prominent writers…