Iranian filmmaker Mahnaz Mohammadi arrested in Iran and taken to Evin Prison, which is notorious for its political prisoners’ wing. Her passport confiscated, Mohammadi was unable to attend the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.
Read more...
This year, Melville House published Sánchez’s new book: Havana Real: One Woman Fights to Tell the Truth about Cuba Today. Unable to attend a literary event in New York, she sent a recorded speech thanking her supporters everywhere.
Read more...
Ai Weiwei’s mother, Gao Ying, spoke to the press about the artist’s release last week after 81 days of unlawful detention by the Chinese Communist Party. Here is a transcript of the television interview.
Read more...
On June 22, twenty-one Bahraini bloggers, human rights activists, and political activists were found guilty of plotting to topple the Bahraini monarchy.
Read more...
In Search of My Homeland: A Memoir of a Chinese Labor Camp chronicles Er Tai Gao’s life under the political persecution of China’s Communist government. Read an excerpt of the memoir.
Read more...
Excerpt from Kenya, Will You Marry Me? by Philo Ikonya, the exiled Kenyan poet and novelist. She is known for speaking out against injustice and corruption and has written extensively on governance, mass poverty and post-election violence in Kenya.
Read more...
Two poems from Meena Kandasamy’s Ms. Militancy, a poetry collection that retells Hindu and Tamil myths from a feminist and anti-caste perspective. Kandasamy uses her poetry like a scalpel to dismantle stereotypes.
Read more...
Like the many facets of Shteyngart’s novel Super Sad True Love Story alternate future, this conversation between the author and John Allison (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) turned to unexpected topics like pornography, immortality, and Russia.
Read more...
Michelle Yeoh Choo-Kheng, who stars as Aung San Suu Kyi in Luc Besson’s film The Lady was deported by the authorities in Yangoon, Burma.
Read more...
In this video, poet Yusef Komunyakaa describes his revision process, talks about the importance of silence in poetry, and dispenses advice for young poets. The video was created by Sampsonia Way magazine and published also by Rattapallax.
Read more...