A wonderful weekend event of Writers’ and Publishers’ Talks at Clunes http://www.booktown.clunes.org/writers.htm including a Melbourne PEN event on Saturday, May 1, 12.30 – 1.30pm

Books Change Lives, Don’t They?

Toni Jordan and Arnold Zable
Join award-winning authors and members of Melbourne PEN talking about books that have changed their lives.

Chaired by Anthony Lawrence
Sponsored by Melbourne PEN

Plus the Melbourne PEN stall on Saturday and Sunday.

Melbourne PEN declares its concern that Robert Dessaix, an acclaimed writer funded to attend the Shanghai International Literary Festival as one of a delegation of Australian writers, has been refused a Chinese visa. The grounds are said to be his HIV-positive status, frankly declared on the understanding that there was not an objection.
However, it is highly likely that the refusal relates to Australian protests against the jailing of the Chinese writer Liu Xiaobo, a Charter 08 campaigner against China’s strict censorship. Robert Dessaix was nominated to attend the Festival as a replacement for Frank Moorhouse, who had withdrawn in protest against the censorship and imprisonment of Liu Xiaobo.
Melbourne PEN deplores China’s use of the visa application to deny passage to an ambassador of literature. This denial is a rebuff contrary to the declared relationship between our nations and a contravention of the free access to literature which PEN members are pledged to support.

For its first event of 2010, Melbourne PEN celebrates the work of women writers in dangerous places. Featuring readings from works by:

Taslima Nasrin (Bangladesh)
Lydia Cacio  (Mexico)
Philo Ikonya (Kenya)
Odgeroo Noonuccal (Australia)
Irina Ratushinskaya (Russia)

Read by Kate Holden, Paddy O’Reilly, Toni Jordan, Judith Rodriguez
Introduction by Cynthia Troup.
While the event is free, bookings are strongly recommended. Bookings can be made through the Wheeler Centre website by clicking on this link.
The reading will be from 2pm to 3pm only, so please arrive on time.

We are very pleased to announce that Melbourne PEN Honorary Member Wajeha Al-Huwaider has received the inaugural MEMRI Martin Lurther King Jnr Reformist Award.

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) will from this year recognise a reformist in the Arab world whose efforts to advance the rights of people in their societies embody the courageous and non-violent activism epitomized by Dr. King. The first such award has gone to Wajeha Al-Huwaider for her ceaseless efforts on behalf of women in Saudi Arabia. For a full account of the award and of Wajeha’s activities please look at this website.

We are very sad to learn that Haitian PEN President Georges Anglade and his wife Mireille Neptune have been killed in the earthquake in Haiti.

The Haitian Centre is one of the newest in PEN and we were delighted that a centre had been formed in one of the world’s poorest and harshest countries.

Both Georges Anglade and Mireille Neptune were important to the social and cultural development of Haiti.

The following is from The Wall Street Journal, January 14, 2010, by Stephen Miller:

‘Mr. Anglade, 65, was born in Haiti and emigrated in the 1960s to France, where he studied geography. Active in the exile Haitian democracy movement that opposed the government of François Duvalier, he was imprisoned when he returned to Haiti in 1974, his daughter, Pascale Anglade, said.

Mr. Anglade lived in Montreal and was a professor of geography at the University of Quebec’s Montreal campus. He stayed active in the Haitian exile community.

‘If we can just move Haiti from misery to poverty, we’ll have done a lot,’ Mr. Anglade told the Guardian of London when Jean Bertrand Aristide was first elected president of Haiti, in 1991. A close advisor to the president, Mr. Anglade was appointed Minister of Public Works, Transport and Communication in 1995. He returned to Canada a year later.

Mr. Anglade was author of several books, most recently Haitian Laughter, a book of short stories told in lodyans, an oral narrative genre native to Haiti.

His wife, Mireille Anglade, was a retired economist who had worked for the United Nations.
In 2008, Mr. Anglade founded the Haitian chapter of PEN, the international organization that seeks freedom for writers. Mireille attended the Women Writers’ meetings at the Linz congress, so we got to know her a little. She wrote, among other books, L’Autre Moitié du Developpement, which shed light on the contribution of women to Haitian society.

The first PEN committee meeting of 2010 will be in the Board Room of the new Wheeler Centre for Books, Writing and Ideas at the State Library of Victoria at 7.30pm on Tuesday 9 February 2010. All welcome but PLEASE BE PROMPT AS SOMEONE WILL HAVE TO LET YOU IN TO THE CENTRE. Entry to the Centre is on Little Lonsdale Street.

The first event for 2010 will be ‘Women Writers – Double Jeopardy’ also at the Wheeler Centre for Books, Writing and Ideas at the State Library of Victoria. It will be held between 2 and 3 pm on Sunday, 14 March 2010. Celebrating women writers who are living and working under threat. The event will only be an hour long and cannot run over time, so we ask everyone to arrive by 2pm sharp. Cost is a donation to Writers in Prison. More information will be posted on this event, but put it in your diary now. THIS WILL BE THE FIRST EVENT MARKING THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ESTABLISHMENT OF PEN’S WRITERS IN PRISON COMMITTEE.
There are places in the world – all too many of them – where it is dangerous to be a writer – and there are places where it is dangerous to be a woman. Where these two ‘perils’ exist together, life can be almost impossible.
Nonetheless women in such places write about their lives and the injustices they face. From Russia to Guinea to Saudi Arabia, the lives of women writers are at times terrifying. Melbourne PEN Centre’s first event for 2010 will celebrate the lives of these brave women with readings and a discussion. 2pm Sunday, March 14, 2010 at the Centre for Books, Writing and Ideas at the State Library of Victoria.

President Arnold Zable begins his final editorial of 2009 with this exciting news
‘To begin at the end, this afternoon I was shown around the new Centre for Books, Writing and Ideas at the State Library. The centre is still being renovated, but some of the key players have moved in. They include the directors and staff of the Melbourne Writers Festival and the Victorian Writers Centre.
Melbourne PEN is being provided with a desk, and we can begin to use it in February, next year. Finally we have a stable and central address, Melbourne International PEN, at the Centre for Books, Writing and Ideas. The facilities include meeting rooms, the boardroom, which is ideal for committee meetings, an auditorium that will seat 200, and rooms for more informal gatherings.
There will be a coffee shop at street level near the entrance, with seating both inside and on the pavement, which is due to open in March.’
To read more, download our December 2009 newsletter