Monthly Archives: 2 月 2017

‘My Brother Has Been Appallingly Treated’

Zhu Xiaoyan, the U.S.-based sister of veteran jailed democracy activist Zhu Yufu, has called on the ruling Chinese Communist Party to end the beatings and mistreatment meted out to her brother in prison. Continue reading

Torture & the Criminalization of Human Rights Advocacy

A new report released this week by Chinese Human Rights Defenders highlights the widespread use of systematic torture by Chinese security agencies as a key tactic aimed at extracting forced confessions from detained . The report notes that this phenomenon is part of a broader move by the Chinese state to legalize repressive measures and criminalize human rights advocacy. Benjamin Haas at The Guardian reports: Continue reading

PEN World Voices Festival: Gender and Power

New York, NY (February 16, 2017) –The thirteenth annual PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature will focus its lens on today’s fractious relationship between gender and power. Taking place in New York City, May 1-7, 2017, the weeklong Festival will use literature and the arts to address how gender both enables and impairs full participation in politics and society. At a moment of unprecedented threats to freedom and truth, and of emboldened mobilization and resistance, the Festival will connect leading global writers, artists and thinkers with concerned citizens to examine bigotry, misogyny and xenophobia, and to bolster the movement to counter them. Continue reading

Bradley Winterton: Beyond China: a new category

China and the World by Zhu ShoutongThis new book, from a distinguished professor at the University of Macau, argues that a concept such as “Chinese literature” is tricky and also outmoded because it’s frequently used as a synonym for “literature from China.” Continue reading

The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao

Ian Johnson. Pantheon, $28.95 (464p) ISBN 978-1-101-87005-1

Johnson, a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who has lived in China on and off over 30 years, reports on his six years of research into the reemergence of religion in China. Continue reading

TLRC Meeting and Asia-Pacific Centres’ Meeting

The PEN International TLRC Meeting and Asia-Pacific Centres’ Meeting, Bengaluru, India (Wed 24th – Friday 28th April  2017)

 

PEN International are proud to organise the meeting in partnership with the literary organisation Sangam House and the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS). Continue reading

Noelle Mateer: Eve of a Hundred Midnights

Melville Jacoby is the cool uncle many of us wish we had. Or, rather – he’s the cool uncle many of us wish to be. Either way, the globetrotting war correspondent has many of the traits of cool uncles: Incredible stories, a sense of humor, badassery. Eve of A Hundred Midnights, written by Jacoby’s grand-nephew Bill Lascher, is his story.  Continue reading

Fears for Chinese Poet Liu Xia’s Life After Troubling Phone Call to Friend

NEW YORK—Reports that Chinese poet Liu Xia, who is spending her seventh year under house without charge, has made rare and risky contact with a fellow writer to lament her failing her health raise fears for her life under conditions of stringent confinement and isolation, PEN America said in statement today. Continue reading