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PEN International Day of the Imprisoned Writer

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Event Status

Writers and journalists are often among the first citizens targeted and punished by autocratic leaders. With creeping authoritarianism and instability in many regions around the world, it’s an increasingly dangerous time for writers of all kinds.

On the eve of PEN International’s Day of the Imprisoned Writer, we’ll hold a special panel event as part of our Writers in Exile series to discuss old and emerging threats to literary freedoms today.

Host Sami Shah will welcome back the three writers who have shared their personal stories of exile  – journalist Roza Germian, playwright Samah Sabawi and playwright and poet Mammad Aidani – for the last conversation in the series. They’ll discuss their own experiences and their knowledge of press and literary restriction in their respective home countries. They’ll talk, too, about the role Australia can and should play on the international stage with regards to protecting and protesting the freedom of writers here and overseas.  

Join us as we talk free minds, free words and free expression today.

Presented in partnership with PEN Melbourne.

This event will be Auslan interpreted.

Featuring

Sami Shah

Sami Shah is a multi-award winning comedian, writer, and journalist. Sami is a lecturer in journalism at the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Advancing Journalism, and is the Ambassador-at-Large for PEN Melbourne. ... Read more

Roza Germian

Roza Germian was born in the second year of the eight year-long Iran-Iraq war, in the city of Kirkuk under the Baathist rule. The majority of Kirkuk’s population were of Kurdish background and regularly targeted by the Baathist regime. In 1991, during the first Gulf War, her family along with four... Read more

Samah Sabawi

Dr Samah Sabawi is an award-winning playwright. In 2020 she received a Green Room Award for best writing for her play THEM, also nominated for Best Independent Theatre Ensemble, Best Independent Production and Best Direction, and shortlisted for both the Victorian Premier Literary Awards and the Nic... Read more

Mammad Aidani

Mammad Aidani is a human rights advocate, acclaimed poet, playwright, theatre director, and distinguished psychosocial researcher investigating the violence, torture and trauma experienced by Iranians and Middle Eastern immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers who have resettled in Australia and the... Read more

Location

The Wheeler Centre

176 Little Lonsdale Street Melbourne Victoria 3000

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