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Case Histories: Amiri Baraka
Born as LeRoi Jones, Amiri Baraka is an American poet, essayist, fiction author, and music critic. Following the assassination of Malcom X, Baraka became a “black cultural nationalist”and wrote… More
Sex Is More Important: A Conversation with Dante Micheaux
Eros, or eroticism, functions in my poetry as rhythm. Poetic thinking, as opposed to transactional thinking, is quite fast because it is associative—there is no formula on which the… More
PEN to Russia: Human Rights Orgs are not “Foreign Agents”
PEN International and 21 other international human rights and free expression organizations have issued an open letter to the Russian Duma protesting a draft law that would label non-governmental… More
Writer and Lawyer Muharrem Erbey Writes of Two and A Half Years of Detention
Human rights lawyer, writer, and PEN Turkey Member Muharrem Erbey was arrested in December 2009 in the city of Diyarbakır in southeast Turkey, where he was president of the… More
Writer and Lawyer Muharrem Erbey Writes of Two and A Half Years of Detention
Background Information Autumn. In the morning, as I reach over the barbed wire crowning this wall six or seven metres in height, the sun as it passes briefly through our ventilation system… More
Trajectory
The bullet, spinning / to maintain a shallow arc, / carves a hot thread / through the wind / until it breaks one hair / and the deer’s neck… More
A Tribute to Pablo Neruda
The Chilean secret police / searched everywhere / for the poet Neruda: in the dark shafts / of mines, in the boxcars of railroad yards, / in the sewers… More
Journalist Frederica Jansz (F) Threatened; Fears for Safety
Background Information Article 19 gives the following information in its press release: Frederica Jansz is the editor of Sri Lankan weekly newspaper, The Sunday Leader, and was conducting a phone interview with Rajapaksa, who… More
Journalist Frederica Jansz (F) Threatened; Fears for Safety
Sri Lankan journalist Frederica Jansz received a death threat from Defense Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa during a telephone interview on July 5, 2012. More
PEN to Russia: Human Rights Orgs are not “Foreign Agents”
[caption id="attachment_14703" align="aligncenter" width="400" caption="Vladimir Putin"][/caption] PEN International and 21 other international human rights and free expression organizations have issued an open letter to the Russian Duma protesting a draft… More