Reports of Press Mistreatment During Baltimore Protests and Riots

Reports of the mistreatment of members of the media by police during the ongoing protests and riots in Baltimore following the death in police custody of Freddie Gray are concerning, PEN American Center said today.

Various members of the press have reported being detained, physically assaulted, and shot at with rubber bullets and pepper balls by the Baltimore police. Late on Saturday, April 25, J.M. Giordano, photo editor at City Paper, was forced to the ground and hit and kicked by several officers. Video footage of the incident can be found here. Sait Serkan Gurbuz, who was shooting pictures for Reuters, was detained at around the same time as Giordano, while he was photographing an interaction between police and a photojournalist. Gurbuz was issued a citation for “failure to obey orders”. Freelance reporter Shawn Carrie was arrested on Monday, April 27, and reportedly held for 49 hours before being released without charges. He also sustained a concussion from a rubber bullet, and says police singled him out for arrest while he was taking photos. 

The Baltimore Police Department (BPD) later apologized for detaining Gurbuz and reportedly recalled the citation. The BPD also says police have been instructed to give media access to all interactions between police and protestors.

PEN is very concerned by the treatment of Giordano, Gurbuz, and Carrie. The media's right to document public demonstrations is protected under the First Amendment and international human rights law. PEN also welcomes the BPD's efforts to respect press freedoms in the midst of a challenging situation.

PEN American Center published an extensive report on violations of press freedom during the protests in Ferguson, Missouri, including an overview of press freedoms under U.S. and international law. The report is available here.

Advocacy

Advocacy

Freedom of Expression

journalists

post from sitemap

Read More

Pen Review: Think Pens Gatsby

Material: Acrylic
Nib: Steel
Appointments: Silver-colored
Filling System: Standard International C/C
Length (Capped): 131mm
Length (Uncapped): 126mm
Length (Posted): 163mm
Section Diameter: 11mm
Barrel Max Diameter: 13.2mm
Cap Max Diameter: 16.1mm
Weight, Uncapped (with ink and/or converter): 14g
Weight, Capped (with ink and/or converter): 26g

One of the things I most enjoy about reviewing pens is that I get to try pens I would never naturally buy for myself. Perhaps my favorite aspect of the fountain pen hobby over the last two and a half years has been the opportunity to learn about brands  and models that don’t pop up that often. My recently reviewed Merlin 33 is one example. The Think Pen Gatsby is another.

I wish I could give you some background on the Think Pens company. Unfortunately, information is not readily available. At least not without more journalism than I care to exert. I have only seen their pens for sale through two retailers (Fountain Pen Hospital and Fahrney’s). Their website is, for all intents and purposes, unusable. And even what info I could find in the forums is vague or even conflicting. But in the end, the history of the company isn’t important; the pen itself is.

I purchased this Gatsby, in the “Chaplin” acrylic, for $40 USD. It had a list price of $100, a rather astonishing price for such a simple pen. The pen’s packaging is unusual, but kinda cool. It’s a long, skinny box, and the top slides off at the short end. The pen itself is nestled into a bed of material under the removable lid. It reminds me of a pencil case I had in elementary school.

The pen itself is a little less cool. The Chaplin acrylic from which it is made is…well…ugly. It is a pale cadaver grey with clots and veins of deep red. It looks like it was made from a mangled corpse.

The pen is flat-topped, with a large ’T’ emblem embedded into the top of the cap. The clip is made of folded metal, and is quite stiff. Both the clip and the cap band are a chrome/steel color, and the cap retains a very cylindrical shape, with no visible taper. The cap band sports the word “THINK.”

The barrel is also quite plain, with a cylyndical shape and only a whisper of a taper toward the end of the barrel, which terminates in a flat stop.

Removing the cap, you find a black acrylic section. I really like the difference in material for the section. The section in the same Chaplin acrylic wouldn’t have looked quite right. The section itself has a very comfortable shape for my grip, with a rounded lip toward the nib end.

The steel nib features another simple, clean ’T’ design that I like quite a bit. It appears to be a standard #6-sized nib, and likely replacable if you thought it necessary. I didn’t.

The pen uses standard international cartridges and converters, and comes with a fairly high-quality converter, but not cartridges. The pen also appears to be fully eyedropper compatible. It has all-acrylic construction, tight threads, and a massive barrel chamber for a whole lotta ink.

In the hand, the pen is quite comfortable. The shape of the section is nice. The girth of the pen fits my hand well, and the pen is just long enough for me to use unposted. It can be posted, and seems to maintain a nice balance when it is.

The nib, which is quite firm and very smooth, has a moderate amount of pleasant feedback. Ink flow runs from low-moderate to moderate, and seems to be a bit more sensitive to ink than most pens I have tried. Kaweco Ruby Red, for instance, tended to run quite dry, while Montblanc Oyster Grey was a bit better. Were this going to stay in my collection, I would increase the pen’s wetness a touch , and would also polish the nib tip to a slightly smoother point.

At no point in writing the first draft of this review did I run into any issues with hard starts, skipping, or ink starvation. This pen was clearly made to be a workhouse of a writer.

At the discounted price of $40, I feel like the Think Pens Gatsby is a really nice pen. While I don’t care for the material choices, putting this pen is the same category as the Lamy AL-Star, the Faber Castell Loom, the Monteverde Impressa, The TWSBI Diamond 580, etc., makes sense. This pen easily holds its own against any of those pens.

At the full price of $100, though, I don’t believe I would pony up the dough. It wries as well or better than many $100 pens I have used before. But at $100, I start to look for things that make a spen special. The Think Pens Gatsby is a solid pen and a solid writer. But from a design and materials perspective, not to mention a nib perspective, it is fairly pedestrian. That being said, were there a material option I liked, I would likely be buying another of these for myself. I would love to see this in a colored-acrylic demonstrator, and turned into an eyedropper.

The Think pens Gatsby is one of the pens that will be raffled to Pen Habit supporters at the end of Season 2 in June. For more information about supporting the Pen Habit, please visit this page.

post from sitemap

Read More

The PEN Ten with Ladan Osman

The PEN Ten is PEN America's weekly interview series. This week, guest editor Nicole Sealey talks to poet Ladan Osman. Ladan Osman’s chapbook, Ordinary Heaven, appears in Seven New Generation African Poets (Slapering Hol Press). Her poetry collection The Kitchen-Dweller’s Testimony (University of Nebraska Press) is winner of the Sillerman First Book Prize. Ladan Osman lives in Chicago.

When did being a writer begin to inform your sense of identity?

Only a few years ago did I begin to see the relationship between my exiled body and my yearning to connect via language. Once, my mother told me she wanted to write a letter to a dictator. I asked why she didn’t. She said: “I am who? Besides, I was in another country at the time, and I’m not a poet.” I write partly because my parents said in many ways they had no space to be still, to think. Space to meditate and create is power. The more I come into that power, the more I recognize its demand. I’m never really writing for myself or by myself.

Whose work would you like to steal without attribution or consequences?

Toni Morrison’s allegory and Jamaica Kincaid’s lyric have a baby, and I run away with it and call it my own.

Where is your favorite place to write?

I mostly write at two desks, at home. One desk is by two huge windows, in the kitchen. My other desk is in the office, facing the wall (like Patricia Highsmith, haha) but with a fire escape off the window. This space is better for long, concentrated writing. There are fewer distractions, and it’s easy to get fresh air, dance on the fire escape, bird-watch with my binoculars. I write at the Garfield Park Conservatory and libraries but my own desks usually have all the tools I need: books, almost excessive natural light.

Have you ever been arrested? Care to discuss?

I’ve never been arrested. I’ve been detained without cause a number of times.

Obsessions are influences—what are yours?

Water. The primordial. People excluded from the record. War and commotion, failure of the state, what some would like to call failure of a nation, of a people. Ceremony and ritual.

What’s the most daring thing you’ve ever put into words?

A few times I’ve told people they must be sure about me. A lot of my book acknowledges that I was lonely while not alone. Whenever I’ve repeated the holy commands: Be! Write! Recite!

What is the responsibility of the writer?

I feel responsible for producing the best possible artifacts, for seeking increasing levels of understanding and specificity, for trying to distill and clarify aspects of human experience.

While the notion of the public intellectual has fallen out of fashion, do you believe writers have a collective purpose?

The act of invention is an act of faith. And the language of law seems concerned with asserting the immaterial, asserting order, so there are many parallels to creative work. I think that’s why artists are so dangerous to regimes: revolution requires faith, must be followed with generation—new story, new ritual. I think the requirement of creative pursuit, which is a privileged one, is service. Our best work, to the best of our ability. We’re responsible for serving others in expanding rings of intimacy: self, family, nation, eras we consider in imagination.

What book would you send to the leader of a government that imprisons writers?

Neruda's The Book of Questions. May the desire for answers cause that leader to release the people whose expertise is interrogation and dialogue.

Where is the line between observation and surveillance?

It’s hard for me to believe the line between the two isn’t a little too fluid. I think about the abstract sciences a lot, what it means for the gaze to affect, if not to create, the object altogether. So often we are stuck in contracted stories, or keeping others in manageable narratives. We look, but what are we looking for? How does the point of origin inform the gaze? It appears a government is incapable of determining this line for its citizens.  

Poets Ladan Osman, Amaud Jamaul Johnson and Parneshia Jones will read from their recently released collections at New York University’s Lillian Vernon House, 58 West 10th Street, New York, NY, on May 8, 5 pm. Visit Cave Canem's full calendar here.

Online Series

Interview

The PEN Ten

post from sitemap

Read More

The PEN Ten with Mark Nowak

The PEN Ten is PEN America's weekly interview series. Over the next few weeks, we'll be speaking to participants of the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature, which runs May 4–10 in New York City.

Mark Nowak is the author of Shut Up Shut Down (Coffee House Press, 2004), a New York Times “Editor’s Choice,” and Coal Mountain Elementary (Coffee House Press, 2009), which Howard Zinn called “a stunning educational tool.” He is a 2010 Guggenheim fellow and recipient of the Freedom Plow Award for Poetry & Activism from Split This Rock (2015). A native of Buffalo, Nowak currently directs both the MFA Program at Manhattanville College and the Worker Writers Institute at PEN.

Mark Nowak will be participating in Say it Loud! Stories from New York's Worker-Writers at the PEN World Voices Festival.

When did being a writer begin to inform your sense of identity?

When writing became a way for me to engage in labor activism. It connected me to the steelworkers and Rosie the Riveters and domestic workers and union VPs and nurses and postal workers and clerical workers in my immediate family.

Whose work would you like to steal without attribution or consequences?

I visited the workers occupying FaSinPat, a worker controlled ceramic tile factory formerly known as Zanon, in Neuquén, Argentina in 2005, and they’re still inspiring me. “Autogestión” (workers’ self-management or workers’ control) is certainly an idea to be cut and pasted as widely as possible.

Have you ever been arrested? Care to discuss?

Arrested, detained, pulled over on rural roads by cops with K9s on my windshield, almost run over by a motorcycle cop during the Occupy marches.

Obsessions are influences—what are yours?

“No justice, no peace.”

What’s the most daring thing you’ve ever put into words?

It’s probably the messages I send out to invite workers to attend the poetry workshops I lead with workers’ centers, trade unions, and other progressive labor groups in the U.S. and around the world. Workers writing poems, as Jacques Rancière says in Proletarian Nights, is still a pretty radical idea. 

What is the responsibility of the writer?

What isn’t the responsibility of the writer?

While the notion of the public intellectual has fallen out of fashion, do you believe writers have a collective purpose?

Perhaps only in countries with folks like the Koch Brothers, Rush Limbaugh, and Fox News does it feel as if public intellectuals have fallen out of fashion. I don’t really see this as a problem when I leave the United States.

What book would you send to the leader of a government that imprisons writers?

I’d send a care package of three absolutely brilliant books: Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Detained: A Prison Writer’s Diary, Liao Yiwu’s For a Song and a Hundred Songs: A Poet’s Journey through a Chinese Prison, and Joy James’s The New Abolitionists: (Neo)slave Narratives and Contemporary Prison Writing.

Where is the line between observation and surveillance?

Probably your last Facebook post or tweet.

 

Online Series

Interview

The PEN Ten

post from sitemap

Read More

Rejecting the Assassin's Veto

Only a handful of people are willing to put themselves in peril to build a world in which we are all free to say what we believe. In continuing publication after their offices were firebombed in 2011 and again after the massacre in January, Charlie Hebdo’s current staff have taken that exact position.

The "assassin's veto" over speech has become a global phenomenon in recent years and, even more vividly, in recent months, when we've seen killings not just in Paris but also in Copenhagen and Bangladesh. Reflecting the intensification of violent intolerance for speech considered offensive by some, former PEN American Center President Salman Rushdie has commented that while he would write The Satanic Verses again today, he does not believe that he would survive the reprisals in this era.

Charlie Hebdo has positioned itself in the firing line of this battle, refusing to accept the curtailment of lawful speech by those who meet it with violence. It is undoubtedly true that in addition to provoking violent threats from extremists, the Hebdo cartoons offended some other Muslims and members of the many other groups they targeted. Indeed, were the Hebdo cartoonists not satirical in their genesis and intent, their content and images might offend most or all of us. But, based on their own statements, we believe that Charlie Hebdo's intent was not to ostracize or insult Muslims, but rather to reject forcefully the efforts of a small minority of radical extremists to place broad categories of speech off limits—no matter the purpose, intent, or import of the expression.

The rising prevalence of various efforts to delimit speech and narrow the bounds of any permitted speech concern us; we defend free speech above its contents. We do not believe that any of us must endorse the content of Charlie Hebdo's cartoons in order to affirm the importance of the medium of satire, or to applaud the staff’s bravery in holding fast to those values in the face of life and death threats. There is courage in refusing the very idea of forbidden statements, an urgent brilliance in saying what you have been told not to say in order to make it sayable.

There are powerful disincentives to challenging head-on the willful shrinking of the space for free speech: doing so poses grave risks of reputation and safety. In the aftermath of the Hebdo attacks, we saw a spike in PEN new memberships from writers, many of whom wrote eloquently about being inspired by the attacks to defend free speech more intently. Charlie Hebdo's refusal to retreat when confronted with these threats, coupled with their magnanimity in the face of tragedy, have similarly motivated us to present them with the 2015 PEN/Toni and James C. Goodale Freedom of Expression Courage Award at the PEN Literary Gala on May 5.

We recognize that these issues are complex, and that there are good faith differences of opinion within our community. ‎At PEN, we never shy away from controversy nor demand uniformity of opinion across our ranks. We will be sorry not to see those who have opted out of the gala, but we respect them for their convictions. We feel very privileged to live in an environment where strong and diverse views on complex issues such as these can take place both respectfully and safely.

PEN Literary Gala

Advocacy

2015 PEN Literary Gala

post from sitemap

Read More

Penaphernalia: Franklin-Christoph Command Center Folio

I, like many fountain pen nerds, work in the technology industry. I’m not entirely sure why so many fountain pen people work in tech. Perhaps it is a way for us to escape from our modern prisons of grey-fabric cubicle walls and blue-tinted LCD screens—one of our few links to the world of tangible things rather than the world of electrons, photons, bits, and bytes.

When I first started using fountain pens to take notes at work, I would travel from meeting to meeting clutching a wirebound notebook in my hands. Before I knew better, it was whatever cheap, generic, POS notebook the company kept in the supply closet. Before long, my snooty tastes and preference for wet pens with wider nibs required I invest in some better paper. So, I could often be found with the bright orange Rhodia wirebound notebooks or the shockingly candy-colored offerings from Clairefontaine. After about a year of this, I decided I wanted to class it up and get myself a nice folio or notebook cover.

I’m a sucker for leather goods, so while browsing the Franklin-Christoph website, as one does when one is a fountain pen nerd, I decided to look through their leather folio covers. I’m a big fan of most of Franklin-Christoph’s products, and have been since the purchase of my Model 19 “1901” fountain pen.

Franklin-Christoph offers their leather Command Center folio in three sizes: A6 ($70), A5 ($100), and the monstrous A4 ($130). Since I usually use A4 notebooks for my work notes, I opted for the A4 version of the folio, despite what I considered to be a rather excessive price for a leather folder.  The folio, which comes in solid black leather and a black/brown leather combination, looked well-made and very attractive, however, so I ponied up the dough.

The command center folio comes with your choice of a Franklin-Christoph side-bound journal (which I have reviewed here) or a Franklin-Christoph top-bound notepad. I opted for the A4 journal with my folio, and have been using it as my main journal ever since. I like their journals quite a bit, and I recently picked up three more A5 journals from Massdrop when they had them on sale.

When my folio arrived, I was both pleased and disappointed. The folio looked wonderful, and felt as well-made as it looked. The quality of the leather was top-notch, and it lacked that very acrid chemical smell you sometimed get with leather goods. (Franklin-Christoph uses vegetable-tanned leather, which probably helps alleviate some of that “chemical” smell.)

I was disappointed, however, at the coloring of the leather. The F-C website photos show the brown/black folio with a fairly high degree of contrast between the dark black and the lighter brown leather colors. Either I had been sent the wrong folio, or they had changed the brown of the leather they used for the two-color combination, because the brown on my folio is barely distinguisable from the black. I think I can see some brown in the pieces that are supposed to be brown, but it didn’t look anything like the photos on the website. I was a little disappointed, but not enough to send it back.

The Command Center Folio exhibits several trademarks of the Franklin-Christoph design aesthetic. Made of top quality leather, with nice, taupe-colored stitching, the folio also features  cut-off corners, reducing the possibility of damage to the folio corners over time. The front of the folio has a zippered flap, which could easily hold a cell phone, iPad Mini, Kindle, or other small electronic device. The back cover has an embossed Franklin-Christoph logo.

The folio employs a thick, elastic strap which can be used to hold the notebook closed. While I appreciate the though behind this particular feature, I find it to be more of a nuisance than a feature. I suppose if I carried around a lot of loose papers in my folio, I could see that as being a benefit. For the most part, I just found it annoying. In the end, I kept the elastic wrapped around the back flap only, so I could keep it out of the way.

Inside, the folio features a leather flap on the left for holding loose papers (I use mine to hold a wad of paper towels in case of a pen-blowout during a work meeting.)  The interior is lined with a textured, almost plastic-y, fabric in black.  On the right is where you attach your notebook or notepad.

The folio was designed to accept both top-bound and side-bound A4 notebooks. As mentioned earlier, I had ordered the A4 journal to accompany my folio, but after a while, I pulled it out of the folio and replaced it with a topbound, wirebound Rhodia or Clairefontaine notebook. The main reason for this change is due to the sheer amount of table real estate the folio and notebook take up when open. It’s fine when I’ve got a nice expansive surface on my writing desk or dining room table at home. At my cramped workstation or at crowded conference room tables, the A4 folio was just too big. With a topbound notebook I could flip my used pages over the top of the folio, and fold the front cover behind the back, thus allowing me to take up much less space. It wasn’t really possible to do that with the sidebound journal.

Also on the inside of the folio are two leather and elastic loops which function as a double pen loop. (Two loops for one pen, not a loop for two pens.) Because the back of the flap is elastic, it holds pens in a wide ranges of sizes, including very large pens like the F-C Model 19, Edison Collier, or Montblanc 149.

I should mention that there are two issues on the inside of the folio that bug me. The first issue is the stitching. On the outside of the folio, the stitching is perfect: even, nicely spaced, and straight as a ruler. On the inside, the stitching was a bit sloppier. The difference was minor, but when you have such light-colored stitching over black fabric as a design element, it makes imperfections really stand out.

The other, and much more significant, issue for me was around the slots for inserting notebooks or journals. I’m not sure if my folio was just sloppily assembled or if this is by design, but neither of the slots (for the topbound or sidebound notebooks) lays flat. They curl up at the edges, as though they weren’t cut straight or sewn properly.  Because the stiff fabric doesn’t lay flat, the notebooks don’t lay flat either, especially as you get toward the end of the notebook. I found myself having to hold the paper flat with my left hand while using my right hand to write. More than once, I ended up smearing ink in places I didn’t want to because the notebooks wouldn’t lay flat.

Now, in the grand scheme of things, this is a fairly minor complaint. But for a $130 leather folder, and from my previous experience with Franklin-Christoph products, I expected higher quality.

I purchased this folio toward the end of 2014, and I recorded the video review above about a month after I received it.  I have continued to use the folio for the past six months or so, and I  still use the folio to carry around my notebooks on a day to day basis at work. But these days, my notebooks never get “attached” to the folio. The issue with the back flap made it annoying enough to write on my notebooks that I have just given up on keeping the notebook inside the folio when I write. Instead, I leave the notebook loose inside the folio, remove it when I get to my destination, and set the folio aside during the meeting. It’s not ideal, and were something to happen to the folio, I probably wouldn’t purchase another one to replace it. What good is a leather folder for your notebook if you can’t use your notebook while it’s in the leather folder?

The Franklin-Christoph Command Center folio is very attractive. And were it not for that one issue, I would probably love it. If you’re not as compulsive as I am about things like that, it probably wouldn’t bother you at all. But between the color disappointment, the uneven inside stitching, the notebook slots that won’t lay flat, and the high price point, I’m rather ho-hum about this folio.

post from sitemap

Read More

PEN outraged by targeted murder of Pakistani rights activist

NEW YORK—The murder of Sabeen Mahmud, director of bookstore and community space The Second Floor (T2F), today in Karachi showcases the heinous fear tactics used to quash dissent in Pakistan, PEN American Center said in a statement. Mahmud was leaving the T2F space with her mother on Friday evening when unidentified gunmen shot at both women. Mahmud died on the way to the hospital of several gunshot wounds. Her mother remains in critical condition.

A staunch advocate of free of expression, the liberal arts, and open dialogue, Mahmud founded T2F in the coffeehouse tradition of sparking discussion and discourse about a multitude of topics among individuals with varied viewpoints and perspectives. Earlier today, T2F hosted an event on the sensitive topic of Balochistan, featuring a conversation between several activists.  Balochistan province, in southwestern Pakistan, is an area embroiled in a conflict between the Pakistani authorities and Balochi nationalist groups, who desire more autonomy and, in some instances, full independence. The worsening conflict has led to a broad range of human rights violations, including disappearances and extrajudicial executions by Pakistani authorities, restrictions on freedoms of assembly and association, and censorship of media and other forms of expression.

“Sabeen’s murder is a despicable act of intimidation intended to frighten others into not discussing Balochistan or other issues the Pakistani military would rather sweep under the rug,” said Karin Deutsch Karlekar, Director of Free Expression Programs at PEN American Center. “Her killing is the latest chilling example of the ongoing silencing of voices promoting tolerance, human rights, and free expression. We urge the Pakistani authorities to thoroughly investigate her murder and end the culture of impunity in Pakistan.”

###

Founded in 1922, PEN American Center is an association of 4,000 U.S writers working to break down barriers to free expression worldwide. Its distinguished members carry on the achievements in literature and the advancement of human rights of such past members as Langston Hughes, Arthur Miller, Susan Sontag, and John Steinbeck. www.pen.org

Advocacy

Advocacy News

Pakistan

human rights

Advocacy

Free Expression

post from sitemap

Read More

Onslaught on Free Expression Intensifies in Turkey

In the latest onslaught on free expression, the government of Turkey made international headlines this month when it again went head-to-head with internet sites Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and Google over the issue of censorship. The contestation began when the government instituted a ban on press coverage of the kidnapping of Turkish prosecutor Mehmet Selim Kiraz. In particular, the Turkish government sought to censor images and video of one of the kidnappers holding a gun to Kiraz’s head just before the prosecutor was killed as a result of failed negotiations.

In what can only be seen as an effort to avert visual depictions of its own failure in the hostage situation, the government invoked its repressive new internet laws to shut down Twitter and YouTube until the sites complied with Turkey’s demand to pull the images or shut down the accounts of those that posted the pictures. Additionally, the government threatened Google and Facebook with a shutdown if they did not comply.  It also banned any media outlets that published the photos from attending the prosecutor’s funeral, accusing them of supporting terrorism.

Sadly, this type of scenario has become all too familiar under the Erdogan regime. Human rights organizations have been speaking out about the attacks on free expression in Turkey since 2012. According to Freedom House’s Freedom of the Press report, Turkey’s protections for press freedom have been on a slow decline since around 2009, culminating in a precipitous drop in 2014 that repositioned it into the Not Free category. The Committee to Protect Journalists places Turkey in the list of the top 10 biggest jailers of journalists around the world with countries like China, Syria, Egypt, and Vietnam. The regime seems determined to keep a tight rein on public opinion by quashing the voices of its detractors.

Over the past several years, the government has regularly targeted journalists for criminal prosecution by utilizing anti-terror laws as well as troubling provisions in its penal code. In an alarming illustration of this point, a Turkish journalist association recently released a report  on the first quarter of 2015 noting that between January and March, 13 journalists faced investigations. This crackdown has not only decimated independent reporting but has resulted in an increase in self-censorship among those in the media who hope to avoid the same fate.

Meanwhile, internet and social media platforms have been waging their own battle, mostly unsuccessfully, against the Erdogan government. Leaked documents from Turkey’s National Security Council (NSC) denote social media as one of the greatest threats to domestic security.

According to Twitter’s 2014 Transparency report, Turkey played the largest role in a worldwide 84% increase in content takedown requests. Turkish requests alone increased by 156% during the second half of last year: Twitter received 477 requests, either in the form of a court order or a directive from a government agency, from Turkey. In more than 70% of these cases, Twitter filed formal objections with Turkish courts on the basis that Turkey restricted free expression but was mostly unsuccessful, succeeding in challenging Turkish orders in only about 5% of cases. In the past few years, Twitter and other social media platforms have learned several times that when they refuse to take down material, the Turkish government simply blocks or bans access to their sites. This often occurs concurrently with important political moments such as elections and anti-government protests.

Despite the way the government throws around the word ‘terrorism’ in its efforts to stymie free speech, ISIS recruiting sites and other sites that support terrorist activities and jihad are freely operating in Turkey while the government spends its time pursuing censorship of ordinary citizens and journalists that dare to criticize the Erdogan government and religion. Tens of thousands of websites have been blocked over the past few years by the Turkish government under the draconian Internet Law 5651, with reported numbers ranging from 15,000 to more than 67,000 websites blocked. Among those websites blocked are the websites of the country’s first atheism association, the French magazine Charlie Hebdo, and the independent news provider T24, which aired the terrorist attack on the Charlie Hebdo office. Turkish citizens have become so accustomed to government-mandated blocking of websites and social media sites that many have begun to use circumvention technology to be able to continue accessing them. This is not, however, a long-term solution. In order to reverse the trend of burgeoning internet censorship in Turkey, internet and website companies must be willing to stand by their principles on censorship and free speech, even when it means losing revenue. Additionally, internet and website companies must work in solidarity with human rights groups and the business community to maintain pressure on Turkish authorities, release imprisoned writers, end official harassment of journalists, revise laws and policies to protect the media’s rights to report freely, and clear the path for social media to be an avenue of free expression.

Advocacy

Advocacy News

Advocacy

Blog

Free Expression in Turkey

Censorship

post from sitemap

Read More

PEN Opposes Re-authorization of Patriot Act Surveillance Programs without Reform

NEW YORK—PEN strongly opposes Senator Mitch McConnell's effort to summarily reauthorize the Patriot Act's provisions on mass surveillance in their current form without any debate. On Tuesday night, McConnell introduced a bill that would reauthorize Section 215 of the Patriot Act--the legal authority the NSA uses to justify its bulk collection of U.S. telephone records and which could also be used to conduct other sweeping forms of information-gathering like the collection of library patrons' reading and internet records--until 2020. McConnell is also seeking to bypass the traditional Senate committee process and bring the bill directly to the floor for a vote.

"Thirteen years after 9/11 and nearly two years after stunning revelations about the massive scope of dragnet surveillance programs, it is astonishing that Senator McConnell would push for a straight reauthorization of Section 215 without any attempt to respond to public concerns," said Suzanne Nossel, executive director of PEN American Center. "McConnell's attempt to fast-track a vote on the bill would set in stone the pervasive surveillance of Americans here at home that has upended our notions of privacy and been the subject of compelling reform proposals that deserve both debate and passage."

###

Founded in 1922, PEN American Center is an association of 4,000 U.S writers working to break down barriers to free expression worldwide. Its distinguished members carry on the achievements in literature and the advancement of human rights of such past members as Langston Hughes, Arthur Miller, Susan Sontag, and John Steinbeck. www.pen.org

Advocacy

United States

Advocacy

Surveillance

post from sitemap

Read More

The PEN Ten with Mona Eltahawy

The PEN Ten is PEN America's weekly interview series. Over the next few weeks, we'll be speaking to participants of the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature, which runs May 4–10 in New York City.

This week, we talk with Mona Eltahawy, an Egyptian-American freelance journalist and commentator. Her essays and op-eds on Egypt, the Islamic world, and women’s rights have appeared in The Washington Post and The New York Times. She has appeared as a guest commentator on MSNBC, BBC, CNN, PBS, Al-Jazeera, NPR, and dozens of other television and radio networks. She lives in Cairo, and is the author of Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution, released this month by FSG.

At the PEN World Voices Festival, Mona Eltahawy will be participating in the events Opening Night: The Future Is Now on May 4 and Mona Eltahawy: Headscarves and Hymens on May 6. Use code HH2015 to receive a discount at Mona Eltahawy: Headscarves and Hymens, valid until April 22 11:59pm EST.

When did being a writer begin to inform your sense of identity?

I was 16 when I knew I wanted to be a journalist. I became one when I was 21 and switched from news reporting to opinion writing when I was 34. That was when I started identifying as a "writer" and not a "journalist."

Whose work would you like to steal without attribution or consequences?

Zadie Smith.

When, if ever, is censorship acceptable?

Never.

Have you ever been arrested? Care to discuss?

In November 2011, during a protest on Mohamed Mahmoud Street near Tahrir Square. Riot police beat me, broke my left arm and right hand, and sexually assaulted me. I was detained for six hours by the Interior Ministry and six hours by Military Intelligence, who interrogated me while I was blindfolded.

In September 2012, I was arrested in New York at the Times Square subway station after, in an act of protest, I spray painted over an ad I considered racist and bigoted. I didn't black out the words but used pink spray paint as an act of nonviolent civil disobedience. I was charged with criminal mischief, making graffiti, and possession of a graffiti instrument. I was going to stand trial, but the judge eventually dismissed the case in the interest of justice.

Obsessions are influences—what are yours?

I'm obsessed with Twitter. I live there!

What’s the most daring thing you’ve ever put into words?

A poem I wrote called “Sekhmet's Tits.” And writing in my book about why I waited so long to have sex.

What is the responsibility of the writer?

To provoke and to prod and to find the places that society tries to hide, and to uncover them.

While the notion of the public intellectual has fallen out of fashion, do you believe writers have a collective purpose?

Yes, I believe it's the writer's job to tell society what it pretends it doesn't know.

What book would you send to the leader of a government that imprisons writers?

The Handmaid's Tale because the unchecked torment of women indicates a willingness to torment all.

Where is the line between observation and surveillance?

Governments deliberately muddy it and continually push it, but it's clear to even them that surveillance is wrong, or else they wouldn't hound whistle blowers such as Edward Snowden.

Online Series

Interview

The PEN Ten

post from sitemap

Read More

A Letter from an Azerbaijani Prison

By Khadija Ismayilova

Khadija Ismayilova is the recipient of the 2015 PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award. An Azerbaijani journalist at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), she has gained international acclaim for her hard-hitting investigative reporting on official corruption. After a years-long government campaign against her, Khadija was arrested on December 5, 2014, on spurious charges of inciting a former colleague to suicide—a charge she vehemently rejects. She remains in pre-trial detention, which has been twice extended through May 24, 2015.

Please forgive my long silence. I was put in solitary confinement after my last letter was passed through these prison bars and published. My cell was searched and all my notes, including lists of things I was requesting from home, were taken. I have not received these back. I guess there are many devoted readers of mine at the penitentiary. They are taking turns reading my notes. That is why it is taking them such a long time to return what they have taken from me.

I have not been allowed to see my family, either. The arbitrariness of the penitentiary system allows me two phone calls each week that I use to speak with my mother but, contrary to the law, denies her and my lawyer regular visits. I have access to very little information. At least I have books to keep me company. I am translating one of these—Children of the Jacaranda Tree by Sahar Delijani—a novel about history and memory that is woven around the interlocking stories of three women imprisoned in Iran, and the people who support and are supported by them.

Maybe I will write a sequel to tell the stories of my five cellmates, and what their incarceration says about this country and its future. Among us we have created a family, a tiny ecosystem that gives us strength and helps us stay strong. My cellmates are also my new audience, that most precious thing that every journalist must have, even a journalist whom the government is trying to silence and pack away. I am no longer on the air, but inside these walls I’m connected to the struggles of Azeris in a more direct and personal way.

“Why am I here?” is a question that everyone in prison asks themselves, no matter the crime. Corruption is the reason I am in my prison, but the regime’s corruption, not mine. The only way to prove oppressive regimes wrong is to continue exposing corruption, and I have promised more investigations for 2015. Yes, there is a price to pay, but it is worth it! My arrest proves one more time that we must build a new reality where telling the truth will not require courage.

But what about the real crimes—the theft, the contempt for the law? What pushes people to commit these crimes?

In a country where unpunished crimes are at a record high and deeply rooted in all levels of government, there is a simple logic that prompts people to commit crimes. “If it is good, why can’t I do it?; if it is bad, why are they doing it?” And then the conclusion: “If they can do it, I’ll do it, too.” This is the mentality bred by a morally bankrupt regime that has turned my country’s justice system into a corrupt machine.

But the heart of the matter goes deeper than this. It is about power and greed, beginning with the president of the country down to the petty officials who showcase the most dramatic examples of corruption and impunity. This a country where money and power can cover up any crime, and where truth and deception have traded places. As a result, there are some 100 political prisoners behind bars in Azerbaijan. Think about the significance: In a very small, yet strategic and potentially volatile country bordering Russia and Iran, 100 of its best and brightest, its most aware, active and internationally engaged citizens have been removed from public life for the crime of seeking decency and fair play.

We also constantly ask ourselves where are we going, and what will we get in the end? In Kurdakhani prison, where I am now, the usual answer is three to five or five to twelve years in jail. But my answer is that there is no end. The fight between good and evil goes on, and the most important thing is that this fight should not end. If we can continue to reject the thinking that is imposed on us and believe that human dignity is not for sale, then we are the winners, and they, our jailers both inside and outside prison, are the losers. Prison is not frightening for those trying to right a twisted scale, or for those who are subject to threats for doing the right thing. We see clearly what we must fight for.

Life is very complicated, but sometimes we get lucky and are offered a clear choice, between truth and lies. Choose truth and help us.

PEN Literary Gala

Advocacy

2015 PEN Literary Gala

PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award

post from sitemap

Read More

Two Poems by Jericho Brown

This week in the PEN Poetry Series, guest editor Heather Christle features two poems by Jericho Brown. About Brown's work, Christle writes: "Sometimes I imagine what it would be to distill a poem into an imaginary infinitive: to contain an excess of anger within a tiny song / to open, as a bloom, an eye, a voyage / to make present the history of a body and its wounds / to close, as a tight-fitting rhyme. Jericho Brown, in these two poems, knits two environments into a corporeal being, lays open that same corpus to the world's sometimes violent permeations. With the kind of controlled, steady release of (under)statement that implies an incipient explosion, Brown sings readers into a tense beauty, an unquiet to which we are drawn, even as it stings us."

Flower

Yellow bird.
Yellow house. 
Little yellow
Song

Light in my
Jaundiced mouth.
These yellow
Teeth need

Brushing, but
You admire
My yellow
Smile. This

Black boy
Keep singing.
Tiny life.
Yellow bile.

Layover

Dallas is so far away
Even for the people who live
In Dallas is Dallas far away
A hub
Through which we get
To smaller places
That lurch and hurt
Mean stopping
In Dallas and all are
From small towns and farms
If all keep going
Back far enough
Pay attention
Keep your belongings near
Everyone in Dallas
Is still driving
At 3:24 a.m. off I-20
Where I was raped
Though no one
Would call it that
He was inside
By the time I realized
He thought it necessary
To leave me with knowledge
I can be hated
I was smaller then
One road went through me
No airport
I drove him home
There had been a wreck
On the interstate
I sat in traffic
My wallet on the seat
In between my legs.

Once a week, the PEN Poetry Series publishes work by emerging and established writers from coast to coast. Subscribe to the PEN Poetry Series mailing list and have poems delivered to your e-mail as soon as they are published (no spam, no news, just poems). 

Online Series

Poetry

Poetry Series

post from sitemap

Read More

Remembering Günter Grass (1927-2015)

PEN American Center mourns the loss and celebrates the life of German PEN member, honorary PEN president, and Nobel Laureate Günter Grass, whom many called his country’s moral conscience. According to Grass's publisher, Steidl Verlag, the 87-year-old writer died in a clinic in the northern German city of Lübeck. No cause of death was given. 

Geoffrey Mulligan, Grass’s long-time British editor, was quoted in The Guardian saying that Grass was “one of the giants of world literature”, adding: “Whereas most people would be delighted to excel in one artistic discipline, Günter Grass was an accomplished artist, sculptor, poet, playwright and novelist. In person he was funny, generous and wonderful company.” 

As a young man, Grass found himself involved in a group of artists and intellectuals known as Group 47 in Dusseldorf and Berlin, but soon abandoned a potential career in visual art to devote himself to literature. In 1956 he began work on The Tin Drum, a wildly inventive book that propeled him to worldwide fame, inciting as much criticism for its view that Germany had failed to prevent Nazism as it did praise. Twenty years later, the book would find popularity again when it was turned into a film by reknowned director Volker Schlondorff and awarded the Academy Award for Best Forest Language Film in 1979. 

In 1999 Grass was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. Speaking to the Swedish Academy, Grass explained that the reaction to The Tin Drum taught him “that books can cause offence, stir up fury, even hatred, that what is undertaken out of love for one’s country can be taken as soiling one’s nest. From then on I have been controversial.”

His last novel, 2002’s Crabwalk, dived into the sinking of the German liner Wilhelm Gustloff in 1945, which saw the deaths of four times as many as those on the Titanic. His three volumes of memoir—Peeling the Onion, The Box, and Grimms’ Words—also explored the suppression of German history in the aftermath of international defeat.

Filled with prodigious energy and life, Grass spent many of his older years involved with political debate and discussion, and was a strong supporter of many international causes, from the environment to cleaning up world debt. He was dedicated to PEN’s fight for freedom of expression, and was most recently the first signatory to a joint PEN International, German PEN, and English PEN appeal calling for greater protection of refugees in Europe. Of his writing, J.M. Coetzee said: "His strengths lie...in the acuteness of his observation of German society at all levels, in his sense of the deeper currents of the national psyche, and his ethical steadiness." 

Read the full obituaries at The New York Times and The Guardian.

Read PEN International's statement.

Tribute

Blog

Tributes

post from sitemap

Read More

Center Development Fellowship - PEN Haiti

PEN American Center seeks a Fellow for a short-term position working with PEN Haiti in Port-au-Prince. The Fellow will support the President and Board of PEN Haiti in reviewing and implementing strategic priorities in PEN’s work to promote literature and defend free expression, potentially including fundraising, outreach, advocacy, public programming, and organizational development.

Background: PEN American Center is the largest of the 144 PEN Centers that together compose PEN International, a leading international literary and free expression organization. At PEN America, the Center Development Program collaborates with PEN Centers worldwide to strengthen their work and the global network.   

PEN Haiti, founded in 2008, suffered the loss of its first President in the 2010 earthquake. It has emerged from that tragedy with new leadership and founded a House of Writers that offers a gathering point for emerging and established contributors to Haiti’s literary traditions as well as a focal point for monitoring of free expression challenges. With support and mentoring from PEN America, PEN Haiti has sought to develop organizationally and expand its membership and impact.

Position Description: PEN America has established a Center Development Fellowship to support PEN Haiti. The Fellow will work full-time for three to four months in Port-au-Prince, assisting the PEN Haiti President, Board and small part-time staff. The Fellow will work closely with PEN Haiti to identify key areas in which to offer high-impact assistance.  The Fellow also will maintain day-to-day contact with PEN America’s Center Development Program Director throughout. Responsibilities may include:

·         Supporting organizational systems such as governance, financial management, or membership

·         Engaging with prospective supporters, and developing proposals for funding

·         Supporting activities in free expression advocacy, dialogue and debate, youth programming, celebration of literature, and other areas

·         Producing communications and outreach materials, including via social media

·         Conducting research and drafting reports

The position offers the Fellow an excellent opportunity for field experience in civil society strengthening and human rights advocacy. A modest stipend is offered, along with roundtrip airfare. Applicants are encouraged to seek additional funding to supplement or extend the Fellowship, although this is not required. The Fellowship is anticipated to begin in Summer or Fall 2015.

Qualifications:

·         Previous practical experience in civil society organizational strengthening, preferably in connection with human rights advocacy

·         Master’s Degree in International Development or related field preferred

·         Demonstrated ability to work pro-actively and collaboratively, and without supervision

·         Demonstrated self-sufficiency in new settings and positions, especially in developing countries

·         Fluency (oral and written) in French and English essential

To apply: Please send your CV and a one-page cover letter describing how your experience applies to this position to Dru Menaker, Director of International Development and Partnerships, at dmenaker@pen.org.  Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis. The deadline to apply is June 15, 2015. No phone calls. 

post from sitemap

Read More

Killing Stones

This week in the Guernica/PEN Flash Series, we feature a piece by Ananda Devi, who is participating in this year's PEN World Voices Festival. Subscribe to the series and get new flash delivered to your inbox twice a month—no spam or news, just stories.

They came in broad daylight with their tools and their guns.

You knew there was a burning in their body; there was a yearning for more than a drop of water or a drop of blood.

The flesh was nothing; just a piece of meat to chop off one day at a time, several necks or maybe a hand or two, who knew?

Today they had another job and it filled them with joy. The kind of joy you feel when you’re about to take on giants and goliaths, when you become the true hero of your dreams.

That was what they were built for, these men and boys, constructed from air and wind by words that filled them with wings, that bore them aloft howling devastation because no one, you see, no one could resist the khamsin when it blew across the skin.

They had heard the words: Killing a man is nothing. It only changes the man from live to dead. What you must kill is history. Everything that reminds them of supposed greatness, pretensions of beauty, the hubris of men who should know better than to worship stones, that is what you must erase from the memory of the living. Show them that no monument can resist your breath.

And so they came with their guns and their tools and no time to contemplate Time. No need to see the perfect shapes that had defied the slow trickle of centuries, the curves, the sinuousness, the grace, for they had a gruesome grace of their own as they jumped from the trucks and jumped from the jeeps and jumped from their bodies.

Stone was but stone, and marble belonged to the hills, they said. The patient carving and chiseling of men long gone would not remain to remind us that we could be gods, if we wanted to. That we could create gods from nothing, from earth and sand and glass and the mark of a pen. Nothing would remain to tell us about ourselves. Who we were and who we could become, how the vision of men could give us all the heavens we wished for, or a hell that bulldozed its way through the wonder.

Stone to stone, they said, and they didn’t say, dust to dust. But it would have been just if their bodies had crumbled as they hit and dug and broke and crushed. They flattened walls that had sheltered bodies, and they ground mounds that were made of bones.

Children looked at them, unquestioning. They also held in tentative hands huge monsters of iron, the barking sounds resounding in their little heads throughout the night. Some of them dreamt of bodies exploding. Some of them still sucked their thumb. Some still, perhaps, remembered the taste of their mother’s milk. But they had been snatched and smashed and rebuilt, and there was no going back, no nurturing into tenderness, no calming breath of night on their forehead. They were brittle and sharp; you could cut a finger just trying to touch them.

The sand blew up and covered the rubble.

The trucks left one by one. They looked back and laughed. The glory of their ancestors crushed like a face once beloved, now unknown, beneath a boot.

The rubble did not sleep under the sand. It bled.

Online Series

Flash

Flash Series

post from sitemap

Read More

Pen Review: Merlin 33

When it comes to vintage fountain pens, there are a large number of manufacturers about whom definitive knowledge is very difficult to pin down. The Merlin Pen Company is one of those manufacturers. There appears to be no definitive information about the company online, but there are several theories. The most common of those theories is that the Merlin pen company was a German company that operated after the close of World War II, making pen parts that were shipped to Amsterdam for assembly and sale in the Dutch market.  One of the more fanciful tales about the Merlin Pen Company I found centered around a rumor that someone discovered a large number of NOS Merlin pens stashed in a cave in France by resistance fighters.

A little closer to the truth seems to be the account of Andreas Lambrou of Classic Pens fame, related by Matt (no relation) on FPN in his review of the Merlin 33. Apparently, in 1987, the widow of the Dutch distributor of Merlin pens tried to unload her remaining stock of 10,000 Merlin 33 and Merlin Merlinas, which were still unassembled. Andreas and Keith Brown bought 6,000 of the pens. Merlin manufactured the 33 in 56 different colors, and Classic Pens still has a complete set of all of the colors of the 33—at least as of 2006. (I would love to see that documented online somewhere.)

I had never heard of the Merlin Pen Company when I stumbled across an eBay listing for this 33, made out of one of the most unique celluloids I had ever seen.  According to Richard Binder’s site, it’s a real “nitrate celluloid.” I have heard this color called “purple web” celluloid, and it is a unique lavender/purple/light blue hatched pattern that I have been told is fairly rare.  I don’t have any purple pens, and I like purple quite a bit. Plus, at well under $100, the price was right, and I bought it.

The Merlin 33 is a small pen, only a touch larger than the Waterman 52 1/2 v.  It has a very traditional design, hearkening back to the 1930s in profile. The pen has flattened finials with slightly pointed tips. The clip, which is not terribly sturdy, attaches to the cap with a ring that is visible between the cap finial and the rest of the cap. There is a single metal band just above the cap’s lip.

Removing the cap you find a concave black section (ebonite?). The pen’s barrel swells ever-so-slightly in the middle, and then comes to a black blind cap holding the pens button-filling mechanism.  (A side note: I adore button fillers. I wish that some manufacturer out there would make button-fillers an option for their pens. They’re fun.) The middle of the barrel has a foil-embossed Merlin 33 logo imprint, which looks like new on my pen.

Also, of note, there is a seam in the purple web celluloid that runs the length of the cap and the barrel. I know next to nothing about the manufacturing process of celluloid, but this would lead me to believe that this particular celluloid was cast in sheets and “rolled” to form the round parts of the pen, rather than cast in rods. Perhaps I’m way off base, but I’ve not seen a seam on celluloid pens in the past.

The nib on this pen is made of 14k gold, and the feed of ebonite.

In my hand, this is a pen that requires posting.  It’s far too short to use unposted and still write with anything approaching legibility. Fortunately, the cap posts nicely. I am a bit worried about the lip of the cap cracking from being posting, and with posting causing scratches to the barrel, as the cap posts with friction only. Fortunately, the cap’s band will help to keep any craking of the cap lip that does occur to a minimum.

When posted, the pen is a nice size. It is narrower than I generally prefer on my pens, but for some reason I haven’t quite been able to identify, it doesn’t bother me on this pen. I do generally hold the pen a little bit further up the barrel, but I will say that the shape of the section is as close to perfect as I have ever seen. So if you have a small enough hand to hold the pen on the section, I think you’ll find it quite comfortable.

This pen writes wonderfully. The seller who listed this pen on eBay didn’t mention anything in particular about the writing characteristics of the nib, so I was taking a bit of a chance when I bought it. Once I inked it up and put it to paper, I was very pleasantly surprised. The pen has a very fine line (I would consider it a western-style extra fine, or a Japanese-style fine.) It’s not a terribly smooth writing experience, providing more feedback than I generally prefer. However, the reason it doesn’t bother me is that the nib on this pen is quite springy. It’s not a full-flex nib, but it’s a solid semi-flex, with a lot of line variation, and a very snappy spring-back. It’s a lot of fun to write with. Interestingly, it makes a little bit of a clicking noise when writing, which sounds a bit like the tines slapping together or against the feed. It doesn’t seem to affect the pen’s writing in any way.

Thus far, this pen has been a very solid performer. Its fine line with a light hand is not drenchingly wet, but is nicely consistent, and great for lower-quality papers. When flexed, it lays down a nice, juicy line. I haven’t had a single issue with the ink flow being unable to keep up with my writing. It’s a pleasure to use, and it has worked out of the gate every single time I’ve picked it up.

If I had to find fault with the pen, the lack of ability to tell the ink level, common to all button- and lever-filled pens, would be my main complaint. But as it’s so typical of the filling system, it’s hardly worth a mention. And the smaller size is a bit disappointing. Merlin only ever made two models that I can find, the 33 and the Merlina, both of which were smaller pens.

Despite my general dislike of small and narrow pens, I’ll be keeping this one around for a good long while. It’s a great pen, made from a lovely material, and has a fantastic nib on it. And for just over $70? I consider that a real steal.  It’s just proof that there are still wonderful deals to be had in the vintage pen world if you’re willing to look at brands other than the most well-known names (e.g., Waterman, Sheaffer, Parker, etc.)

post from sitemap

Read More

Mike's Place

The Illustrated PEN is a weekly online series that aspires to be at the intersection of literature, journalism, and visual storytelling, where images and words come together in an ever-emerging and essential creative form. We’ll feature fiction and nonfiction graphic narratives, comics journalism and illustrated reportage, stories of social justice and personal stories that can’t be told through words alone.

This week, we feature an excerpt from the graphic novel Mike’s Place: A True Story of Love, Blues, and Terror in Tel Aviv. Written by filmmakers Jack Baxter and Joshua Faudem and illustrated by cartoonist Koren Shadmi, Mike’s Place depicts the true story of the fateful 2003 Tel Aviv bombing. That year, Baxter went to Israel to film a documentary about a local blues bar on the Tel Aviv beachfront, Mike’s Place, where everyone in the city, regardless of politics and religion, came together. While he was there filming, the bar was blown up in a terrorist attack.

Mike’s Place will be published by First Second on June 9 and can be purchased from the publisher here.

Online Series

Graphic Narrative

The Illustrated PEN

post from sitemap

Read More

The Killing Floor is Slick

This poem was submitted by Jen Fitzgerald as part of the 2015 World Voices Online Anthology.

Jen Fitzgerald's event: Who We Talk About When We Talk About Translation: Women's Voices.

Captive bolt pistol hacks, hisses,
          heaves cow to the floor.
                      Hook the hooves—invert bodies;

suits on a dry cleaner’s
           motorized line. Purple veins
                       scarlet muscle. A single

slice, skin folds back
            like theatre curtains. Parse
                       mammoth down to salable

in minutes. Whir of buzz saw, clack
            of cleaver. Move fatal air
                        through piston, a gear’s precision;

a machine, you are—single file
            death march, zapped
                        forward by arcs of electricity.

Lost count now, thought it foolish
            to keep tally after 20 years.
                        Men never talk about wide

bovine eyes drifting through dreams,
            flashing past tender moments
                         when your little one flits her lashes

against yours. Time trudges,
            Novocaine dripped through a dull
                         syringe, numbing nothing.

This poem is excerpted from Jen Fitzgerald's forthcoming collection of poetry The Art of Work, Noemi Press (2016).

World Voices

Poetry

2015 PEN World Voices

post from sitemap

Read More

Open Letter to Thomas Bach, International Olympic Committee President, on Khadija Ismayilova's Imprisonment

April 15, 2015

Thomas Bach

President

International Olympic Committee

Dear President Bach,

Like you and your colleagues on the International Olympic Committee (IOC), we are looking forward to this June’s first European Games and the remarkable athletic competitions it holds in store. We expect the Games, to be held in Baku from June 12-28, 2015, to set a high standard for future European Games.

Yet as journalists and writers who cover major sporting events both in the United States and around the world, we are joining with PEN American Center to express concern that the host country for the Games, Azerbaijan, does not abide by the central human rights principles—among them freedom of the press—that live in the spirit of the Olympic Charter and that the IOC recently agreed to require of future Olympic host cities.  Given Azerbaijan’s history of human rights abuses and current crackdown on dissent, we respectfully request your assistance to ensure that the involvement of the Olympic movement in these European Games does not result in a tacit endorsement of the Azeri regime’s brutal crackdown on free expression, and instead advances the causes of press and personal freedom as implied in the Olympic Charter.

The environment in Azerbaijan has become increasingly repressive for journalists. Media are strictly controlled by the government, leaving few independent sources of news and information. At least 26 writers are currently detained, on trial, or jailed in Azerbaijan, and others are subject to harassment, threats, and violence. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Azerbaijan is among the 10 worst jailers of journalists in the world, with the second-highest number of jailed journalists per capita. The nation has the dubious distinction of being the worst jailer of journalists in Europe and Central Asia.

The Azeri government’s crackdown on human rights defenders and investigative journalists has intensified in recent months. The high-profile case of award-winning Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) journalist Khadija Ismayilova demonstrates the lengths to which the Azeri government will go to silence its critics.

Since 2010, Ismayilova has gained international acclaim for her hard-hitting investigative reporting on official corruption—including that of the presidential family. After a years-long government campaign against her, Khadija was arrested on Dec. 5, 2014. On Feb. 23, 2015, Azeri courts convicted her in a closed-door trial on dubious charges of criminal libel. The Azerbaijani Prosecutor General’s Office has also charged Ismayilova with embezzlement, illegal business, tax evasion, and abuse of power. She has been in pre-trial detention since her December arrest, and if convicted on all counts, she faces up to 12 years in prison. Ismayilova was not allowed to see family members until late March, more than three and half months after first being brought in. Further examples of the Azeri government’s unethical treatment, including invasions of privacy and attempts at blackmail, are detailed in an appendix to this letter.

On May 5, Ismayilova, whose record of outstanding work includes having translated Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner into Azeri, will receive the PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award from PEN American Center. This prestigious annual award has a remarkable track record; 35 of the 39 recipients, all of whom have been in jail, have been released partly in response to the publicity generated by the Award.

We call on Azerbaijan’s government to immediately release Khadija Ismayilova and drop the charges against her before the European Games in Baku begin. We urge the IOC to use its leverage to make this same demand of the government, and to make clear that its crackdown on press freedom and free expression is unacceptable and antithetical to the spirit of the Olympic Charter.

We also urge the IOC to request that the government of Azerbaijan take concrete steps between now and the Games to ensure greater respect for press freedoms, including the release of other unjustly imprisoned journalists.  We ask you to reach out to President Aliyev and strongly urge him to take immediate action to ensure that the spirit of the Olympic Charter is upheld and that the rights of Khadjia Ismayilova and her fellow journalists are vindicated.

As writers and journalists who cover major sporting events such as the Olympic Games, we understand that the IOC must remain politically neutral. In this case we are asking that you uphold the fundamental human rights principles implied in your Charter, and the standards soon to be officially required of all Olympic Games host cities, by assuring that Azerbaijan abides by those principles.

           

Respectfully,

Dave Anderson, contributor, The New York Times

Harvey Araton, The New York Times

Roy Blount, Jr, Senior Special Contributor, Sports Illustrated

Howard Bryant, ESPN

Ken Burns, documentary filmmaker (Baseball)

Bob Costas, NBC Sports

Nicholas Dawidoff

Frank Deford, Sports Illustrated and NPR

Steve Fainaru, ESPN

Mark Fainaru-Wada, ESPN

Rob Fleder

Franklin Foer, New America Foundation

Art Garner

John Gierach, Fly Rod & Reel Magazine

Nicholas Griffin

Matt Higgins, contributor, The New York Times

Steve Isenberg, former Executive Director, PEN America

Kostya Kennedy, Contributing Editor, Sports Illustrated

Peter King, Sports Illustrated

Mark Kramer, Boston University

Tim Layden, Sports Illustrated

Michael Lewis, contributor to Bloomberg News and Vanity Fair

Robert Lipsyte, USA Today

David Maraniss, Washington Post

David Remnick, New Yorker

Selena Roberts

Jeremy Schaap, contributor, ESPN and ABC World News Tonight

George Vecsey, The New York Times

Dave Zirin, The Nation

*Affiliations are provided solely for identification purposes.

Advocacy

post from sitemap

Read More

PEN American Center To Honor Khadija Ismayilova With PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom To Write Award

Sports Writers Join PEN To Speak Out on Behalf of Jailed Azerbaijan Journalist Ahead of European Games

NEW YORK—PEN American Center announced today that it will honor jailed Azerbaijani journalist Khadija Ismayilova with the 2015 PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award at the annual PEN Literary Gala on May 5, 2015, at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Khadija Ismayilova is an award-winning reporter whose hard-hitting investigations have revealed corruption at the highest levels of power in Azerbaijan, including the country’s president, Ilham Aliyev. After years of escalating harassment by government and pro-government forces, she was arrested on December 5, 2014, on trumped-up charges of inciting a former colleague to suicide.

Dozens of America’s best-known sports journalists, including Bob Costas (NBC News and host of nine prime-time Olympic Games), Frank Deford (Sports Illustrated), Steve Fainaru and Mark Fainaru-Wada (ESPN), and David Remnick (The New Yorker), have joined PEN’s call for Ismayilova’s release in a letter to International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach. In June, Azerbaijan’s capital city of Baku is set to host the first-ever European Games, an Olympic-organized international sporting event. The letter implores the IOC to use its leverage to insist that Azerbaijan “take immediate action to ensure that the spirit of the Olympic Charter is upheld and that the rights of Khadjia Ismayilova and her fellow journalists are vindicated.”

Azerbaijan is among the world’s most repressive media environments, with at least 26 writers jailed, detained, or on trial there in 2014. The country’s crackdown on independent journalists has gained steam since 2012 in the wake of an embarrassing exposé by Ismayilova detailing the presidential family’s lucrative—and illegal—business interests in Baku construction projects that were mounted ahead of the Eurovision Song Contest, Europe’s wildly popular televised singing competition. Rights advocates have pointed to Ismayilova’s detention as a government attempt to avoid similar humiliation on the eve of the European Games. Since her arrest in December, authorities have twice prolonged her pretrial detention and piled up four more spurious charges against her. She faces a prison sentence of up to twelve years if convicted.

“Khadija Ismayilova knows no fear. Again and again she has unearthed and exposed stories that have cast a harsh light on widespread corruption and self-dealing at the highest levels of the Azeri government,” said PEN Executive Director Suzanne Nossel. “She is truly irrepressible, sending inspiring missives drafted from her prison cell that that make clear her determination not to be silenced until all writers in Azerbaijan have the freedom to express themselves without fear of persecution.”

The PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award is presented annually to a writer imprisoned or persecuted for his or her work. Since its inception in 1987, thirty-five of the 39 writers who were in prison at the time they won the award have been freed, due in part to the attention and pressure generated by the award. Fellow Azeri journalist and friend Emin Milli, who served his own 17-month prison sentence in 2009 on trumped-up charges of hooliganism, will accept the award on Ismayilova’s behalf at the Gala. “The Freedom to Write Award has proven to be an exceptionally potent tool in securing the freedom of some of the world’s most courageous writers,” said PEN President Andrew Solomon. “Khadija Ismayilova is firmly within that tradition and we hope the Azeri government will ensure her immediate release.”

PEN American Center’s May 5 Gala will also honor esteemed playwright Sir Tom Stoppard with the PEN/Allen Foundation Literary Service Award for his extraordinary career. Paris-based satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo will be honored with the PEN/Toni and James C. Goodale Freedom of Expression Courage Award, to be received by staff member Jean-Baptiste Thoret, who arrived to work late on January 7 and barely escaped the attack that killed twelve. The Gala will also salute Penguin Random House CEO Markus Dohle for his leadership role in the global literary community.

###

Founded in 1922, PEN American Center is a community of 4,000 writers working to bring down barriers to free expression worldwide. Its distinguished members carry on the achievements in literature and advancement of human rights of such past members as Langston Hughes, Arthur Miller, and Susan Sontag. To learn more, visit www.pen.org.

Freedom to Write

2015 PEN Literary Gala

post from sitemap

Read More