Free Liu Xia: A Reading and Screening of Never-Before Seen Footage of Detained Chinese Poet

Join the Independent Chinese PEN Center (ICPC), PEN American Center, and Friends of LXB for a reading and screening of a never-before-seen video, filmed secretly in December 2013, of poet and artist Liu Xia while under house arrest in China. Her husband, writer and Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo, is serving an 11-year prison sentence for his writing. The event will begin with a screening of the new documentary short “The Wife Outside the Barred Window,” examining the history of Liu Xiaobo and Liu Xia’s cases, followed by readings of Liu Xia’s newly translated poems by Victoria Redel, Kathleen Kraft, and other American poets (TBA) in English and by Hua Ze, Zhang Zhen, and Xingnai Liu in the original Chinese. The event will conclude with a discussion of Liu Xia’s current living situation and the state of free expression in China to raise awareness of the couple and others who suffer under political persecution in mainland China.

Liu Xia is a poet, artist, and founding member of Independent Chinese PEN Center. Since her husband was named winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in October 2010, Liu Xia has been held in her Beijing apartment without access to phones, Internet, doctors of her choice, or visitors. As she enters the third year of detention, security appears to be tightening around her. As reported last month in the New York Times, increased restrictions on the poet have raised concerns that she is suffering from severe depression.