PEN American CENTER Annual Report 2011
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
PEN AMERICAN CENTER ANNUAL REPORT 2011 LIAO YIWU PERFORMS HIS POEM ABOUT THE 1989 CRACKDOWN IN TIANANMEN SQUARE IN HIS FIRST U.S. APPEARANCE PEN AMERICAN CENTER ANNUAL REPORT 2011 BOARD OF TRUSTEES 2011 K. Anthony Appiah, President John Troubh, Executive Vice President Ron Chernow, Vice President Victoria Redel, Vice President Maria B. Campbell, Treasurer Roxana Robinson, Secretary Susan Bernofsky Jeri Laber Walter Pozen Rose Styron Ed Burlingame Joanne Leedom-Ackerman Theresa Rebeck Annette Tapert Anne Burt Claudia Menza Susanna Reich Lynne Tillman Ron Chernow John Oakes Hamilton Robinson, Jr. Monique Truong Morgan Entrekin Christian Oberbeck Esmeralda Santiago Danielle Truscott Wendy Gimbel Tess O’Dwyer Elissa Schappell Davis Weinstock Peter Godwin Hannah Pakula Clinton Ives Smullyan Jr. Jacob Weisberg General Counsel Leon Friedman Executive Director Steven L. Isenberg PEN AMERICAN CENTER ANNUAL REPORT 2011 // 02 PEN AMERICAN CENTER STAFF 2011 Antonio Aiello, Website Editor Emma Connolly, Executive Assistant Jasmine Davey, Membership, Literary Awards, & Writers’ Fund Coordinator Robyn DesHotel, Director of Finance & Administration Alena Graedon, Manager of Membership & Literary Awards David Haglund, Managing Editor, PEN America & Communications Coordinator Sarah Hoffman, Freedom to Write Coordinator Steven L. Isenberg, Executive Director Meghan Kyle-Miller, Development Associate Stacy Leigh, Readers & Writers and Open Book Director Chuck Leung, Associate Website Editor M Mark, Editor, PEN America Linda Morgan, Director of Development Deji Olukotun, Freedom to Write Fellow László Jakab Orsos, Director of the PEN World Voices Festival & Public Programs Jessica Rotondi, Executive Assistant & Social Media Associate Larry Siems, Freedom to Write & International Programs Director Stefanie Simons, Readers & Writers Associate Tim Smalls, Prison Writing Mentorship Program Coordinator Jackson Taylor, Prison Writing Program Director Elizabeth Weinstein, PEN World Voices Festival & Public Programs Manager PEN AMERICAN CENTER ANNUAL REPORT 2011 // 03 TABLE OF CONTENTS 05 WELCOME LETTER CLICK ON PAGE # TO JUMP TO SECTION 07 FREEDOM TO WRITE 10 CAMPAIGN FOR CORE FREEDOMS 11 2011 PEN WORLD VOICES FESTIvaL OF INTERNATIONAL LITERATURE 16 PUBLIC PROGRAMS 18 READERS & WRITERS 20 OPEN BOOK 20 PRISON WRITING 21 INTERNATIONAL PROGRAM 22 PEN AMErICA: A JOURNAL FOR WRITERS AND READERS 23 LITERARY AwarDS 27 MEMBERSHIP 28 MEMBERSHIP COMMITTEES 29 CHILDRen’s/YOUNG ADULT BOOK AUTHORS PROGRAM 30 TRANSLATION 31 PEN WRITERs’ Fund 31 PEN.ORG 33 PEN AMERICAN CENTER BRANCHES 35 IN MEMORIAM 36 FINANCIAL REPORT 37 DONORS 45 GET INVOLVED PEN AMERICAN CENTER ANNUAL REPORT 2011 // 04 WELCOME LETTER CLICK ON GREY BOXES TO JUMP TO MEDIA Dear PEN Members and Friends, As recent events across the globe have shown—the continued imprisonment of Liu Xiaobo, the abhorrent record of violence against journalists in Mexico, the thrilling citizen protests at the heart of the Arab Spring, attempts by repressive governments to control the spread of information through new media—PEN American Center’s mission remains vitally relevant. In 2011, writers under threat in Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Ecuador, Tibet, Syria, and several other countries reached out to PEN for support and assistance as we continued our efforts to free imprisoned writers and journalists, challenge torturers, mobilize writers as human rights advocates, challenge First Amendment violations, and create, through our public programs, a bridge across cultural divisions. We are enormously grateful to all those who make our work possible: our Members and Associate Members, individual donors, foundation, corporate, and government supporters, programming partners, and our dedicated staff, volunteers, and interns. 2011 brought some important new support in the form of a grant from the Ford Foundation, PEN’s first, which expanded our free expression campaigns in Russia, South Africa, and Haiti. A challenge grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York for a complete overhaul of PEN.org will strengthen our freedom of expression and human rights advocacy and allow for wider dissemination of our public programs. The new site will be launched in beta in the fall of 2012, with the full launch to take place a few months later. Highlights of the past year include: • the 2011 PEN World Voices Festival, which brought together 150 participants from 30 countries, including Gioconda Belli (Nicaragua), Elif Shafak (Turkey), Vladimir Sorokin (Russia), and Wole Soyinka (Nigeria), and received unprecedented press coverage • the “Reckoning with Torture” project, which seeks to document the United States’ use of torture to help restore this country’s credibility as a defender of human rights, grew in its national impact as it teamed with filmmaker Doug Liman for a documentary film project and performances at the Sundance Film Festival , featuring Robert Redford and Ellen Barkin, and at Lincoln Center , featuring Dianne Wiest and Lili Taylor • the PEN public program with Liao Yiwu , the “Studs Terkel” of China, in August 2011, marking his first appearance in the U.S. after escaping from China. Liao was slated to participate in the 2011 PEN World Voices Festival, but was barred from travelling by the Chinese government • the PEN delegation to Beijing, which met with both dissident and “official writers,” pressed the cases of dozens of writers and journalists currently imprisoned, created the framework for ongoing Independent Chinese PEN Center/ PEN American Center campaigning on China, including preparations for a major report, and celebrated ICPC’s 10th anniversary PEN AMERICAN CENTER ANNUAL REPORT 2011 // 05 • PEN’s presence at the Nobel Prize ceremony for Liu Xiaobo and our own relentless campaign for his release from prison. Read Freedom to Write Program Director Larry Siems’ dispatch from Oslo here • the “Honor Courage” campaign, an initiative to gain public recognition for the American servicemen and women, intelligence officers, and other public officials who fought to stop the abuse and torture of prisoners in U.S. custody 2011 also marked the 25th anniversary of the 1986 PEN Congress in New York, described as “a gathering of writers that has become a literary legend ” by Salman Rushdie, who was inspired by the Congress to create the PEN World Voices Festival. Presided over by Arthur Miller and then-PEN President Norman Mailer, participants explored literature as, in Salman’s words, “a lofty, transnational, transcultural force, that could in [Saul] Bellow’s great formulation, ‘open the universe a little more.’” Among those attending were Rushdie, Günter Grass, Wole Soyinka, Mario Vargas Llosa, Saul Bellow, Raymond Carver, E.L. Doctorow, Toni Morrison, Edward Said, William Styron, John Updike, Kurt Vonnegut, Susan Sontag, Czeslaw Milosz, Ryszard Kapu ´s ci ´n ski, Nadine Gordimer, and J. M. Coetzee. We honored this anniversary during the 2011 PEN World Voices Festival at a symposium with writers addressing the responsibilities of writer-intellectuals today, opened by Toni Morrison’s stirring argument for literature as a bulwark of truth, reason, and imagination to move a society forward. Shirin Ebadi, 2003 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, accepted the PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award on behalf of Nasrin Sotoudeh at the 2011 Gala, expressing gratitude to all members of the PEN community for this opportunity to put pressure on the government of Iran for Sotoudeh’s release: My dear colleague was very eager to send her personal message tonight, however, in prison, she is even deprived of prisoner’s rights…and could not send her message…I “proudly accept the prize on her behalf and thank all those who respect freedom of expression, not only in their own countries, but all over the world. Next year, 2012, we will celebrate PEN American Center’s 90th anniversary. It as an important benchmark, both for the durability of the idealism of PEN American Center’s founding principles and for the generosity of those who sustain our work. ” With warm regards, K. ANTHONY APPIAH & STEVEN L. ISENBERG K. Anthony Appiah Steven L. Isenberg President Executive Director PEN AMERIC AN CENTER ANNUAL REPORT 2011 // 06 FREEDOM TO WRITE From crowds filling public squares in the Middle East and demanding an end to authoritarian rule to spontaneous social media protests against official malfeasance in China, 2011 was a remarkable year for freedom of expression, a year that saw both the power of the Internet to advance this essential right and the extremes to which some governments will go to keep this right in check. Around the world, PEN members were on the front lines of the push for a greater voice for the people. In Tunisia, journalist and human rights activist Sihem Bensedrine returned home from exile to help build a freer press the day the Ben Ali government fell, and writer and archivist Emad Abu Ghazi was named Minister of Culture in post-Mubarak Egypt. In China, Ye Du and Teng Biao helped lead a wave of Internet activism in their country and paid a heavy price for their courage. Defending fellow PEN members and all those working to protect and expand the freedom to write is PEN’s international network of 144 centers in more than 100 countries. As the largest of these PEN affiliates, PEN American Center is making a difference every day in the lives of writers and journalists all over the world. Through joint campaigns with PEN partners in countries with acute free expression challenges, the use of our Rapid Action Network that mobilizes actions