Volunteering for Autumn Season

Volunteering for Autumn Season
Tuesday, August 31,


Dear All, hope everyone is well and that you've all had a great summer. Already the back to school feeling has kicked in in the PEN office and I'm now after volunteers for the Autumn schedule. Usual system - first come first served. I'll try and accommodate your preferences wherever I can. Volunteering takes the form of wine pouring, a bit of front of house work and I need one person for each event to write a report for the website. (Examples of previous reports can be found here: http://www.englishpen.org/events/reportsonrecentevents/
All the events are available to view at www.englishpen.org/events and I will need the following:
2-3 people for Granta: Crossing the Line
2-3 people for Everyone's a Critic?
2 people for Daniel Pennac
2-3 people for Ismail Kadare
2-3 people for China Mieville
2 people for PEN Pinter
2-3 people for Alberto Manguel
2-3 people for AGM and Christmas party
I'll also need around 10 people for the PEN Quiz on Monday 22nd November but we'll tackle that one a bit nearer the time.
In September, FLOW the Free Word Festival will also be happening and if you are interested in volunteering for any of the events in the festival programme: www.freewordonline/flow then please contact Rachel Buchanan on rachel@freewordonline.com. Rachel is also in need of people to invigilate an art exhibition which will be running throughout the festival period. Again, do please email her for more details.
I'll look forward to seeing some of you in the next few weeks!



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~```
Sarah Hesketh | Assistant Director | English PEN
t. 020 7324 2535 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 020 7324 2535 end_of_the_skype_highlighting | d. 020 7324 2536 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 020 7324 2536 end_of_the_skype_highlighting |
sarah@englishpen.org | www.englishpen.org
Free Word Centre, 60 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3GA
English PEN online

China: Uyghur journalist and editor sentenced

Published: August 12, 2010

English PEN is appalled by the fifteen-year prison sentence handed down to Uyghur journalist and editor Hailaite Niyazi (aka Hairat or Gheyret Niyaz) on 23 July 2010. Niyazi, who was arrested in October 2009, was convicted on state security charges for his reporting on the July 2009 riots in Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Republic (XUAR). English PEN calls for his immediate and unconditional release in accordance with Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which China is a signatory.

According to our information, Hailaite Niyazi, freelance journalist and former editor of the website Uighur Online (www.uighurbiz.net) was taken from his home in Tianshan District, Tacheng Prefecture, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), on 1 October 2009. It is believed that his arrest stems from critical interviews given to foreign media following the unrest which broke out in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, on 5 July 2009. The prosecution reportedly used as evidence essays written by Niyazi highlighting mounting ethnic tension in the region prior to the riots, and interviews he gave to Hong Kong media after the violence. Niyazi was convicted by the Urumqi Intermediate People's Court on charges of 'endangering national security' on 23 July 2010. He is appealing the sentence. Niyazi is currently detained in Tianshan Detention Centre, Urumqi, XUAR.

Hailaite Niyazi, aged 51, is a former reporter and columnist for Xinjiang Economic Daily and Xinjiang Legal News. Until June 2009 he edited and managed uighurbiz.net, the website owned by the academic, writer and Uyghur PEN member Iham Tohti, himself arrested in July 2009 and held for six weeks for allegedly 'promoting separatism'.

Three other Uyghur webmasters arrested in August 2009 were also reportedly given lengthy sentences in late July 2010 for material published on their Uyghur-language websites following the July 2009 unrest. They are Dilsha Perhat, webmaster and owner of Diyarim, Nureli, webmaster of Salkin, and Nijat Azat, webmaster of Shabnam. The men were reportedly sentenced to five, three and ten years respectively for 'endangering national security' in closed trials at the Urumqi Intermediate People's Court. All three websites have been blocked.

Background

On 5 July 2009, Uyghurs took to the streets of Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), to protest an incident in which a number of Uyghur workers in a toy factory in Guan Dong province, southern China, were attacked by Han Chinese and killed. These protests led to violent clashes with Han Chinese in Urumqi which were violently suppressed by the authorities. The state news agency Xinhua reports that 156 Han Chinese have been killed and over 1000 wounded, although details and figures are impossible verify. An estimated 1400 people are said to have been arrested.

Please send appeals:

- Protesting the detention of Uyghur journalist and editor Hailaite Niyazi, and webmasters Dilshat Perhat, Nureli and Nijat Azat;
- Calling for their immediate and unconditional release in accordance with Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which China is a signatory;
- Seeking assurances of their welfare in detention.

Appeals to:

His Excellency Hu Jintao
President of the People's Republic of China
State Council
Beijing 100032
P.R. China.

Chairman of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Regional People's Government
Nur Bekri
Xinjiang Weiwuer Zizhiqu Renmin Zhengfu
2 Zhongshanlu
Wulumuqishi 830041
Xinjiang Weiwuer Zizhiqu
People's Republic of China

Please send copies of your appeal letters to the diplomatic representative for China in your country:

His Excellency Liu Xiaoming
Embassy of the People's Republic of China
49 Portland Place
London
W1B 1JL

Please do let us know if you send appeals and certainly if you receive a response by emailing writersinprison@englishpen.org. Many thanks.


Read : http://www.englishpen.org/writersinprison/bulletins/chinauyghurjournalistandeditorsentenced/

In memory of Ms CHUN Sook-Hee

It is with great sadness that Korean PEN informs the PEN Community of the death of Ms. CHUN Sook-Hee, ex-president of Korean PEN and Vice President of International PEN. She passed away due to old age at 91 at a hospital in Seoul, Korea on August 9th 2010. She served as President for Korean PEN from 1983 to 1991 devoting herself to the spirit of the PEN Charter, and hosted the International PEN Congress in 1988 in Seoul, Korea. She was elected a Vice President of International PEN in 1991.

Those who wish to offer condolences, it is recommended that you send emails to admin@penkorea.or.kr so that Korean PEN can deliver them to the bereaved family.

LEE Gil-Won
President
Korean PEN

Read : http://www.internationalpen.org.uk/go/news/in-memory-of-ms-chun-sook-hee

Slow Dance : a HEART RENDING story

Slow Dance


This is a poem written by a teenager with cancer. She wants to see how many people get her poem. It is quite the poem Please read it .

Through chain of e-mail I have got this sad news:

This poem was written by a terminally ill young girl in a New York Hospital.It was sent by a medical doctor - Make sure to read what is in the closing statement AFTER THE POEM.

SLOW DANCE

Have you ever
watched
kids
On a merry-go-round?

Or listened to
the
rain
Slapping on the ground?

Ever followed a
butterfly's erratic flight?

Or gazed at the sun into the
fading night?

You better slow down.

Don't
dance so
fast.
Time is short.

The music
won't
last.

Do you run through each day

On
the
fly?

When you ask How are you?

Do you hear
the
reply?

When the day is done

Do you lie
in your
bed

With the next hundred chores

Running through
your head?

You'd better
slow down

Don't dance so fast.

Time is short.

The music won't
last.

Ever told your
child,

We'll do it
tomorrow?

And in your
haste,

Not see
his
sorrow?

Ever lost
touch,

Let a good
friendship die

Cause you
never had time

To call
and say,'Hi'

You'd
better slow down.

Don't dance
so fast.

Time
is short.

The music won't
last..

When you run
so fast to get somewhere

You
miss half the fun of getting
there.

When you worry and hurry
through your
day,

It is like an unopened
gift....

Thrown
away.

Life is not a
race.


Do take it
slower

Hear the
music

Before the song is
over.

Dear All:
PLEASE Do some needful help. It is the request of a special girl who will soon leave this world
due to cancer. This young girl has 6 months left to live, and as her dying wish, she wanted to send a letter telling everyone to live their life to the fullest, since she never will.

She'll never make it to prom, graduate from high school, or get married and have a family of her own. By helping her you can give her and her family a little hope, to her treatment and recovery plan.


PLEASE PASS ON AS A LAST REQUEST.

-**************************************
Amita Pal, PhD, FNASc.,
Professor,
Plant Molecular & Cellular Genetics,
Bose Institute, Kolkata- 700054, West-Bengal.
Office Phone: 033-25693219(Office),
033-25693264(Lab),
Mobile 09830009846.
E.mail: amita@bic.boseinst.ernet.in
Fax: +91-033-23553886


-----------------------------------------

I tried to think that my number of days on this planet have been fixed. I shall die. Its terrible.What a mental agony/ helpless state......
For a writer---- I wish my fellow writers will come forward and do something that the girl can fight her death. We writers know no boundaries or border of political cause. this globe is mine and for all in common humanity.
----- Albert Ashok

PEN READS: THE HOUR OF THE STAR

PEN READS: THE HOUR OF THE STAR A new entry has been posted at PEN Reads, an online reading group that brings together readers and writers to discuss works of literature relevant to PEN's mission. In our second post, Ben Moser, award-winning author of the Clarice Lispector biography Why This World, explores his and others' fascination with the Brazilian author. In the first post, Colm Tóibín compared reading the novel to "being brought backstage during the performance of a play and allowed odd glimpses of the actors and the audience." I Am All of Yourselves by Ben Moser Over the five years I worked on Why This World, my biography of Clarice Lispector, I got used to hearing people say: But I've never heard of her. And I would say: That's the whole point. One of the fun things about being a writer or a critic or a journalist is the chance to steer other people toward your enthusiasms, and to help put artists on the map who haven't received the attention they deserve. I hoped that my biography would make people see just how great Clarice Lispector was, and why I was ready to give up several years of my life in order to study and write about her. I did, however, have a secret weapon: I knew I wasn't the only one. Read the entire post and join the discussion online at PEN.org

PEN American Center | 588 Broadway Suite 303 | New York | NY | 10012

Herta Müller

The 2009 Nobel prize has been awarded to Herta Müller, for depicting the 'landscape of the dispossessed' with 'the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose'
Herta Müller (born 17 August 1953) is a Romanian-born German Nobel Prize-winning novelist, poet and essayist noted for her works depicting the effects of violence, cruelty and terror, usually in the setting of Communist Romania under the repressive Nicolae Ceauşescu regime which she experienced herself. Many of her works are told from the viewpoint of the German minority in Romania and are also a depiction of the modern history of the Germans in the Banat, and more broadly, Transylvania. Her much acclaimed 2009 novel Everything I Possess I Carry With Me portrays the deportation of Romania's German minority to Stalinist Soviet Gulags during the Soviet occupation of Romania for use as German forced labor.

Müller has been an internationally well-known author since the early 1990s, and her works have been translated into more than 20 languages. She has received over 20 awards, including the 1994 Kleist Prize, the 1995 Aristeion Prize, the 1998 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the 2009 Franz Werfel Human Rights Award. On 8 October 2009 it was announced that she had been awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Everything I Possess I Carry With Me (German: Atemschaukel) is a novel by German Nobel Prize-winning author Herta Müller, published in 2009 by Carl Hanser Verlag. It is a depiction of the persecution of ethnic Germans in Romania by the Stalinist regime of the Soviet Union, and deals with the deportation of Romanian Germans to Gulag camps by Soviet occupying forces during and after 1945. The novel tells the story of a youth from Hermannstadt (Sibiu) in Siebenbürgen (Transylvania), Leo Auberg, who is deported at the age of 17 to a Soviet forced labor concentration camp in Nowo-Gorlowka (Novogorlovka, Ukraine, now incorporated in Gorlovka) and spends five years of his life there. It is inspired by the experiences of poet Oskar Pastior and other survivors, including the mother of the author. Initially, Pastior and Müller had planned to write a book about his experiences together, however, Pastior died in 2006.


A long write ups will added here soon

PEN Reads Now Live on PEN.org‏

PEN READS NOW LIVE ON PEN.ORG PEN American Center, the largest branch of the world’s oldest literary and human rights organization, announced today the launch of PEN Reads, an online reading group that will bring readers and writers together to discuss works of literature relevant to PEN’s mission. Colm Tóibín opened the group with his essay on Clarice Lispector’s The Hour of the Star (New Directions), the inaugural book chosen for PEN Reads. Each book will be discussed for five weeks on the PEN web site, which will feature a series of posts by writers, translators, scholars, and other prominent literary figures. They will discuss the novel and its author and how the book speaks to PEN’s mission to foster support for basic human rights and promote mutual understanding through the shared experience of literature. Readers are encouraged to comment on each post and participate in a larger dialogue with the discussion’s contributors and with each other by visiting www.pen.org/penreads. The initiative was created by PEN’s Membership Committee under the leadership of former Chair Jaime Manrique. He says, “PEN Reads’ choice of The Hour of the Star by the great, and incomparable, Clarice Lispector as its inaugural author reaffirms PEN’s commitment to honor, and help preserve, the literary legacy of the writers of the world whose works matter in a major way.” The Hour of the Star is currently available from booksellers everywhere. About PEN American Center PEN American Center is the largest of the 141 centers of International PEN, the world’s oldest human rights organization and the oldest international literary organization. International PEN was founded in 1921 to dispel national, ethnic, and racial hatreds and to promote understanding among all countries. PEN American Center, founded a year later, works to advance literature, to defend free expression, and to foster international literary fellowship. Its 3,400 distinguished members carry on the achievements in literature and the advancement of human rights of such past members as James Baldwin, Willa Cather, Robert Frost, Allen Ginsberg, Langston Hughes, Arthur Miller, Marianne Moore, Eugene O’Neill, Susan Sontag, and John Steinbeck. To learn more about PEN American Center, please visit: www.pen.org. PEN welcomes readers and writers from all walks of life to join us in our mission to protect free expression and to celebrate literature. To learn more about Membership, please visit: pen.org/join. For more information, contact Nick Burd at (212) 334-1660 ext. 108.

PEN American Center | 588 Broadway, Suite 303 | New York, NY 10012 | (212) 334-1660