In this exclusive interview, the award-winning filmmaker and Surrealist Jan Švankmajer discusses censorship, the history of the Czech-Slovak Surrealist Group, his most recent work, and his ideas on freedom and revolution.
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From our ongoing series “The Writer’s Block,” a Q&A with investigative journalist and poet John Schoorl conducted during his visit to City of Asylum Pittsburgh. Schoorl is the author of A Capella and Uitloopgroef (‘Run-out-groove’).
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In this interview, political science professor Jonathan Harris talks about the documentary Putin’s Kiss, the pro-Kremlin Nashi movement, the limits of freedom of speech in Russia, and the future of political opposition and dissent in the country.
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From our ongoing series The Writer’s Block, a Q&A with Dutch poet Lucas Hirsch at City of Asylum/Pittsburgh. Hirsch is the author of two collections of poems, familie gebiedt (2006) and tastzin (2009).
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A video of our interview with Hélène Gelèns, writer of poetry, essays, and short prose, conducted on Sampsonia Way, in front of the Jazz House. Gelèns and other Dutch poets came to Pittsburgh to read at a City of Asylum event.
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In this interview novelist Ismet Prcic discusses the seven year process of writing Shards, the sometimes fine line between reality and fiction in the novel, and the ways in which war can restructure the fabric of life as we know it.
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Daniil Kislov, founder and editor-in-chief of Ferghana News, paints a bleak outlook for journalism in Uzbekistan and says the independent media in the country is in a “deep freeze.”
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In this interview Khet Mar describes her childhood in a fishing village, the inspiration to become a writer, the political uprising and her life in prison, how she was released, her subsequent disaster relief work, and the risks she took in reporting.
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In this interview the editor of the blog Coup Four and a Half talks about the changes that the lifting of the state of emergency will bring to Fiji, the censored stories of three killed tourists, and the steps the country needs to take in order to establish freedom of speech.
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Poet and essayist Tommi Parkko talks about his modernist tendencies, the difficulties of writing long-form poems in the post-post-modern age, and how mythology helps him get in touch with the “unspoken mental history” of a society.
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