Still Not Free: PEN America Celebrates Liu Xia

Authors, poets, and translators Nick Flynn, Mona Eltahawy, Jeremy Tiang, and Nuar Alsadir will read selections from the poetry of detained Chinese poet Liu Xia in honor of her work and as a public call for her freedom. Liu Xia, the wife of the late Nobel Peace Prize-winner Liu Xiaobo, has been under strict house arrest since 2010, cut off from her family and the outside world for eight years. At this event, organized by PEN America, writers will continue the call to #FreeLiuXia.

 Nick Flynn has worked as a ship’s captain, an electrician, and as a caseworker with homeless adults. His most recent book is My Feelings (Graywolf, 2015), a collection of poems. In 2019, two new books will appear: Stay (Ze Books), a collection of collaborations and writings, as well as I Will Destroy You (Graywolf), a collection of poems. His work has been translated into 15 languages.

Mona Eltahawy is a feminist writer and public speaker. She is the author of Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution (FSG, 2015). She lives in Cairo and NYC.

Jeremy Tiang is a playwright, translator, and fiction writer. He is the author of State of Emergency and It Never Rains on National Day (shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize). He has also translated more than 10 books from Chinese, including novels by Zhang Yueran, Chan Ho-Kei, and Yeng Pway Ngon, and is the recipient of a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant and an NEA Literary Translation Fellowship.

Nuar Alsadir is a poet, essayist and psychoanalyst. She is the author of the poetry collections Fourth Person Singular (Liverpool University Press, 2017), a finalist for the 2017 National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry and shortlisted for the 2017 Forward Prize for Best Collection in England and Ireland; and More Shadow Than Bird (Salt Publishing, 2012). Alsadir is a fellow at The New York Institute for the Humanities and works as a psychotherapist and psychoanalyst in private practice in New York.