A poignant message delivered by the poet Maya Angelou on behalf of the American people in memory of Nelson Mandela who died on December 5.
Read more...
Today’s cartoon is by Marian Kamensky (Austria). Sampsonia Way’s Cartoons section features cartoonists from around the world whose work offers unique political and social commentary, as well as sharp wit.
Read more...
Shezanne Cassim, an American citizen, is being held in a maximum-security prison in the United Arab Emirates after posting a satirical YouTube video. He is the first foreign national to be charged with the country’s draconian cybercrimes decree.
Read more...
Nearly 800 writers, poets, journalists, translators, and editors are currently in prison around the world. Approximately one tenth of them are in Turkey, where an Anti-Terror Law has been broadly applied to target writers. Here PEN Turkey president explains and names the writers under threat.
Read more...
Writer Israel Centeno’s ‘search to ascribe a tangible meaning to the oblique feeling that goes above and beyond simple nostalgia’ has led him to a close reading of Fernando Pessoa’s works and the stories of Venezuelan writer Enza García Arreaza.
Read more...
This week we remember the influential publisher André Schiffrin who died in Paris on Sunday. In this interview from 2007 Schiffrin discusses his political and economic split with Random House, the experience of starting The New Press, and working with writers like Studs Terkel.
Read more...
On November 15, the Chinese Communist Party finally abolished its notorious system of labor camps called laojiao (reeducation through labor). While Chinese human rights activists welcome the news, they also called for the banning of ‘black jails and other rogue camouflaged measures of laojiao.’
Read more...