Hello again from Iowa City!
Last week we wrote to share news of IWP’s upcoming MOOC “Every Atom” (http://courses.writinguniversity.org/courses). This week we’re writing to ask if you know any aspiring young writers ages 16-19 in Russia, Arabic-speaking countries in the Middle East and North Africa, and the US. If so, we’d be very grateful if you would share this upcoming IWP opportunity with them:
Dear PEN Colleagues –
I would like to remind you all that our exciting new prize, the PEN International/New Voices Award, is now open for submissions until May 20. The top prize is $1000 USD and will be announced during this year’s Congress.
We hope that your Centre will be happy to put forward two talented young writers; for further information please read the guidelines and application forms attached.
We look forward to receiving submissions over the next months.
With best wishes,
James Tennant
Dear PEN Centres,
In 2014 PEN International will be focusing on the theme of Translation and Linguistic Rights across all areas of our work.
During the year, the Translation and Linguistic Rights Committee will be working with the PEN International office to strengthen this thematic area of our work. We will organise this work around two major international days:
International Mother Language Day: 21 February 2014
International Translation Day: 30 September 2014
Human rights lawyer, writer and PEN Turkey member Muharrem Erbey was arrested in Diyarbakır, south-eastern Turkey, in December 2009. He is one of scores of lawyers, politicians, writers, journalists, publishers, trade unionists and academics detained as part of a wide-reaching anti-terror probe into pro-Kurdish intellectuals, political activists and civil society organisations in Turkey. December 2013 marked the fourth year of his incarceration as the trial against him and some 80 others continues to be heard. The next hearing of his trial is scheduled to start on 13 January 2014.
Draconian restrictions on freedom of expression in Russia must be lifted
by Cathal Sheerin
Writers, Tech Giants and Governments demand reform of US and UK practices
18 December 2013
Ola Wallin, Chair of the International Publishers Association’s Freedom to Publish Committee, and Ann Harrison , Programme Director of PEN International’s Writers in Prison Committee, today called for urgent reform of Turkish obscenity legislation.
The closing date for nominations for the 2014 IPA Freedom to Publish Prize is 6 January 2014.
The Prize will be awarded on 27 March 2014, during the IPA Congress in Bangkok, and the recipient will receive CHF20,000, thanks to the generous sponsorship of the following publishers: Albert Bonniers Förlag, Elsevier, HarperCollins, Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, Kodansha, OUP, Penguin Random House, and Simon & Schuster.*
We have come to Sweden to run in the nude, because it was here where Mo Yan, a defender of censorship and a senior Communist cadre, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature last year.
With our act, we want to remind this forgetful world that there is a staunch denouncer of censorship, a witness of the Tian’anmen Massacre in 1989, a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, who was sentenced to eleven years in prison for his writings and views, and he is now behind bars in China. His name is Liu Xiaobo.
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