Tonight, just hours before the Olympic Games open in Beijing on Friday, PEN American Center will host “Bringing Down the Great Firewall of China: Silenced Writers Speak on the Eve of the Olympics,” an event to honor the work—and call once again for the release—of more than forty writers and journalists imprisoned by the Chinese government for expressing dissenting views. U.S. writers including Edward Albee, Russell Banks, Philip Gourevitch, Jessica Hagedorn, Hari Kunzru, Rick Moody, Martha Southgate, and Francine Prose, will gather at the New School in New York City to read never-before-translated statements and writings by the silenced writers, along with pieces by prominent Chinese authors such as Ma Jian and Xiaolu Guo.
According to a report issued in July by three international PEN centers monitoring government repression of free speech, more writers are imprisoned in China now than there were last December, despite the nation's vow to eliminate restrictions on reporters and journalists leading up to the Olympics. For the past eight months, PEN has conducted the We Are Ready for Free Expression campaign to release the incarcerated in China. In addition to speaking out at events such as tonight's reading, in May, PEN representatives delivered a petition signed by over three thousand individuals to the Chinese Mission to the United Nations.
Francine Prose, president of PEN American Center, said in a press release for the reading, “Our urgent and intense concern for our colleagues, locked up in Chinese jails for the crime of writing honestly, has made us want to mark the opening of the Beijing Olympics by honoring their courage and by asking, again, that they be set free.”
The event, presented in collaboration with the Independent Chinese PEN Center, will be held at 7 PM at the New School’s Tishman Auditorium, located at 66 West 12th Street. It is free and open to the public.
