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The train from Copenhagen airport to Malmö, Sweden took just half an hour across the 21st century Øresund Bridge, which spans five miles of water, then the train dove into 2.5 miles of tunnel. Looking out the window at farmland and the blue waters of the Baltic Sea, I imagined this journey was not so…
In the wake of events in Charlottesville, Virginia last weekend, I wanted to share my short story “The Beginning of Violence” set at the first sit-in in Nashville, TN in 1960, published in No Marble Angels and republished in Short Stories of the Civil Rights Movement: An Anthology (ed. Margaret Earley Whitt, University of Georgia…
On the Golan Heights in the hills separating Syria and Israel fields of cows graze and sleep, swishing their tails, whisking off flies. Many of the cows lying in the fields appear to be waiting and contemplating as cows do. The cows are a source of milk and of meat and income for a kibbutz…
It is an almost perfect summer day—the sun is shining in a white cloud sky; the air is warm, not yet sweltering. Light filters through white umbrellas shading diners at the outside restaurant by the park. On this almost perfect New York day I am thinking about the rulers in China who have imprisoned for…
by Joanne Leedom-Ackerman, published in World Literature Today, May 10, 2017 The new American Writers Museum, opening this May in Chicago, celebrates American literature in a lively, interactive space that honors America’s writers past and present. Located on the second floor of a grand old building on Michigan Avenue’s “Cultural Corridor,” the American Writers Museum…
Communities spring up in the buildings and spaces where families manage to find a spot. Many refugees say their hope is in giving their children a better future. By Joanne Leedom-Ackerman, published in The Christian Science Monitor, February 27, 2017 Beirut, Lebanon—I remember Syrian children living by a garbage dump near a cement factory where their…
Commentary: For the first time in two decades, Turkey is again the largest jailor of writers and publishers in the world. A PEN International delegation tried to visit a prison where most are incarcerated. By Joanne Leedom-Ackerman, published in The Christian Science Monitor, February 3, 2017 Snow was falling outside Silivri prison as we drove up…
The first march I covered as a journalist was a massive anti-war moratorium in Boston in the spring of 1970, part of nationwide protests; Boston was one of the hub cities. The demonstrators walked peacefully from the Boston Commons through the city to Harvard Square in Cambridge. But as the day and evening wore on,…
The last time I saw Şanar Yurdatapan we had coffee in the press building in Istanbul after Human Rights Watch released its 2016 World Report “Politics of Fear and the Crushing of Civil Society”. I’ve known Şanar for almost 20 years, ever since I headed PEN International’s delegation for his first Initiative for Free Expression…
The American holiday Thanksgiving is my favorite, a time when family and friends gather and take a moment to give gratitude for the good in their lives and the lives of their communities. This year of 2016 has been a rough one. In Washington, DC, where I live, the political discourse on all sides has…
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