Sarah's writing journal

ENGLISH PEN INTERNATIONAL WRITERS’ DAY
‘MIGRATIONS OF THE MIND’

SATURDAY 13 MAY 2006, 12.00-6.00
ICA, THE MALL, LONDON, SW1Y 5AH. TEL: 020 7930 3647

Booking is now open for this year’s PEN International Writers’ Day. Titled Migrations of the Mind, this year’s event celebrates the ideas-traffickers of the twenty-first century – the international writers who fuse cultures, challenging received wisdom and opening up spaces in which radical new stories can be told. Smuggled inside their novels, plays and memoirs, writers transmit thoughts across frontiers.

Since 1921, PEN has colluded in writers’ defiance of the intellectual border police who seek to limit the free trade in ideas. Now our work is even more important than ever. Join us for a day of talks, readings and debate about the role of literature in an increasingly globalised society. For more information visit http://www.ica.org.uk/index.cfm?articleid=14842

Tickets are available from the ICA box office on 020 7930 3647
Full Price: £25
Concession: £20
PEN Members: £18 – Please quote ‘PEN’ when you book

PLEASE DO NOT CALL THE PEN OFFICE TO BOOK TICKETS
We hope to see you there!

ENGLISH PEN INTERNATIONAL WITERS’ DAY PROGRAMME:

12.00-1.00 WILD WORDS
Jung Chang’s books are tightly censored in China, but these controls are counter-productive, giving her work added cachet. In the opening lecture, Chang, author of the international bestseller Wild Swans, describes the fate of her new biography of Mao, which has just been released in Taiwan. Has the book even made it into China – and if so, with what effect?

1.00-2.00 LUNCH
Sandwiches will be available in the ICA café; alternatively, the fleshpots of the West End are only a few minutes walk away.

2.00-3.15 WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A CULTURAL BREAKTHROUGH
The novelist Elif Shafak, one of Turkey’s brightest exports, joins Croatian writer Dubravka Ugresic, whose The Ministry of Pain was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2006, and Monica Ali, author of the critically-acclaimed bestseller Brick Lane, to ask why women writers so often find themselves on the front line of cultural collisions.

3.15-4.30 STAGES OF DEFIANCE
When does mob rule veer over into state censorship? Playwright Gary Mitchell has been personally threatened as a result of his controversial depictions of Northern Irish culture. In conversation with David Edgar, he asks why the stage arouses such extreme passions, and why the Government cannot do more to protect writers.

4.30-5.00 COFFEE

5.00-6.00 NORTH, SOUTH, EAST, WEST – HOME’S BEST?
The Moroccan novelist Tahar Ben Jelloun has long lived in self-imposed exile in Paris. In the closing address he asks whether the confrontation between Western and Islamic cultures is a clash of civilizations, or just another battle between rich and poor.

6.00-6.15 LAST WORDS