PEN International: 100 Years Celebrating Literature and Promoting Freedom of Expression
Wed, Nov 17, 2021
5:30 PM–6:30 PM
This event will take place online via Zoom. Please register below. This event will be closed captioned.
Watch the video recording of this event here:
Click here to join the event via Zoom, starting at 5:30 PM (EST).
Launching of the book PEN International: An Illustrated History, the
extraordinary story of how PEN International has placed the celebration of literature
and the defense of free speech at the center of humanity’s struggle
against repression since 1921. The book takes the reader through the key
moments of PEN’s history over the last 100 years, in 320 pages and more
than 500 pictures, letters, documents, posters and maps. From opposing
book-burning and the persecution of writers in Nazi Germany, to
supporting imprisoned writers across the world today, PEN has worked to
safeguard against all kinds of censorship and self-censorship. The
extraordinary writers who have been PEN cases include: Federico García
Lorca, Stefan Zweig, Musine Kokalari, Wole Soyinka, Salman Rushdie,
Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Anna Politkovskaya, Hrant Dink and Svetlana Alexievich.
Join Esther Allen and Susan Harris who will introduce Jennifer Clement, President of PEN International 2015-2021, and Carles Torner, PEN’s Executive Director 2014-2020, both authors of the book, will narrate stories of the 100 years of PEN’s evolution illustrating them with pictures of missions, handwritten letters of prisoner writers and other crucial PEN documents.
Free and open to all, but please click here to Register for the event and for access to the Zoom link.
Click here to learn more about the PEN International: An Illustrated History, and watch the video preview below for more about the book.
Read more about the PEN Centenary in the new issue of Words Without Borders (WWB), “New Fiction for the PEN Centenary“
This event is organized by PEN Internationaland co-sponsored by Words Without Borders, and the Center for the Humanities at The Graduate Center, CUNY.
