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| Nasrin Sotoudeh |
I received a newsletter from PEN American Center recently and it told of another author being jailed for speaking their mind. Nasrin Sotoudeh, a 47-year-old mother of two, is a journalist and human rights attorney in Iran. She was imprisoned for eleven years for "spreading lies against the regime" among other things. They confiscated her only writing instrument so she can't write to her family, she can't work on her defense, she can't even mark the days of her sentence as they go by. On April 28, 2011 570 PEN luminaries and supporters honored her as she received the 2011 PEN/Barbara Smith Freedom to Write Award. Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi accepted the award on Sotoudeh's behalf. A letter written by Sotoudeh's husband Reza Khandan was read to the crowd. It contained the following quotes:
"According to the current court ruling, and her situation, without any additional charges, she will be without a pen for nearly 4000 days."
"We will honor and record the day of March 17, 2011, in our history so that our children will remember the dedication and sacrifice of all those around the world for the freedom to write."
We honor her sacrifice and of others like her. Enjoy some of the following Iranian/Iranian-American writers:
Hamid Dabashi--He is professor of Iranian Studies & Comparative Literature at Columbia University and has written over 20 books.
Firoozeh Dumas--She is an Iranian-American most famous for her memoir Funny in Farsi.
Porochista Khakpour--A former arts & entertainment journalist, her first novel won the 77th California Book Award Prize.
Shahriyar Mandanipur--He is an award-winning novelist of Modern Persian literature and now a well know international writer.
Taghi Modarressi--He was a child psychiatrist and fiction writer who was married to novelist Anne Tyler for 34 years. He died in 1997.
Azar Nafisi--She is an academic whose bestselling book Reading Lolita in Tehran has been translated into 32 languages.
Shahrnush Parsipur--Many of her works have been banned in Iran and she was imprisoned multiple times. She now lives in exile in the United States.
Marjane Satrapi--Most well known for her graphic novel Persepolis.
Mahbod Seraji--His first novel Rooftops of Tehran has been on multiple notable booklists.
For more information: PEN American Center
PEN American Center, the largest branch of the oldest literary and human rights organization, has announced the winners of the 2010 PEN Literary Awards. Each year PEN confers over $100,000 to writers, editors, and translators. The following winners and runners-up were honored on October 13th in New York City:
Don DeLillo--Achievement in American Fiction
Susan Choi--Fiction Writer in Mid-Career
Marilyn Hacker--Poetry
Tinkers by Paul Harding
In the Valley of the Kings by Terrence Holt
Daughters of the Stone by Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa
Soul of the Age: A Biography of the Mind of William Shakespeare
by Jonathan Bate
Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom
by Graham Farmelo
Sweet Thunder: The Life and Times of Sugar Ray Robinson
by Wil Haygood
Outcasts United: A Refugee Soccer Team, an American Town
by Warren St. John
On the opposite coast, PEN USA (West Coast), unveiled the winners of its 2010 Literary Awards competition. The winners and finalists will be honored at the Beverly Hills Hotel on November 17, 2010. Past winners include: Ray Bradbury, Barbara Kingsolver, Ursula K. LeGuin, Gore Vidal, and Alice Walker.
Mathilda Savitch by Victor Lodato
The Heydey of the Insensitive Bastards by Robert Boswell
Last Night I Sang to the Monster by Benjamin Alire Saenz
Some of the Dead Are Still Breathing by Charles Bowden
The Adderall Diaries by Stephen Elliott
Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans by Dan Baum
Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original
by Robin Kelley
International PEN, PEN USA, and PEN American Center all strive to protect the rights of writers around the world and to stimulate interest in the written word.
For further information:
International PEN--http://www.internationalpen.org.uk/--was founded in London in 1921 after World War I. Today they are composed of 145 centers in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, the Middle East, and the Americas.
PEN American Center--http://www.pen.org/--was founded in 1922 and is the largest of the centers in 101 countries.
PEN Center USA--http://www.penusa.org/--is one of the two centers in the United States and the third largest in the world. It was founded in 1943 and has a membership of more than 800 writers.
"The freedom to write is under threat today, with more than 1,000 writers, journalists, and publishers known to be imprisoned or persecuted in more than 100 countries. Some have been tortured, some have been killed. All understand the cost of speaking up and speaking out." And so goes the description of a fantastic PEN anthology titled Writers Under Siege. I read this back in March and I was reminded of it again when I heard about another Chinese author being thrown in jail this week, and this on the eve of the Olympics. I cannot express how lucky I feel everytime I read a book that I have the freedoms I do. The essays in this book are inspiring, touching, even funny, and so, so brave. So read it and experience it and thank these writers and others like them for sharing their words and sacrificing so much of themselves to make the world a better place.
