Iranian journalist and human rights activist, Asieh Amini, recently did an interview with Swedish TV channel Kanal Global's Miniatyr programme. During her visit, which was in collaboration with Riksteaterns project Voices of Change, the author and journalist talked about her fight against death penalty in Iran.
Amini currently lives in Norway, where she is a Guest Writer of Trondheim City of Refuge.
The TV interview is in Persian with Swedish subtitles.
In collaboration with Catalan PEN, Shahrazad has published a book containing three texts by Zimbabwean author Chenjerai Hove. The texts are available in Spanish, French, Catalan and English, and illustrate Hove’s insight, humour, love and nostalgia for his homeland.
Letter to my mother was read at the Gobal Forum on Freedom of Expression in Oslo in 2009, The power of writing is a speech given by Hove at the ICORN General Assembly in Barcelona in 2009, while Identity is a previously unpublished poem read at the opening of the ICORN founding meeting in Stavanger, 2006.
Hove’s severe criticism of Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe forced him into exile in 2001. He has since been living in France, Norway and lastly the United States as part of the Miami City of Refuge programme run by Florida Center for the Literary Arts.
Hove writes in English and Bantu language Shona, used by the Shona people of Zimbabwe and southern Zambia. He achieved international recognition by winning the the prestigious Noma Award for Publishing in Africa in 1989 with his first novel in English, Bones.
All texts can be read in all four languages via the Catalan PEN website.
A short film presenting ICORN, the International Cities of Refuge Network, is now available on YouTube. Directed by French filmmaker Marion Stalens and produced by Bellota Films, the seven-minutes clip explains how ICORN came about, portraits some of ICORN's Guest Writers, and sees ICORN staff explain some of the major challenges ahead.
ICORN is a dynamic, flexible and participatory organisation, connecting its member cities and their Guest Writers in a global network of solidarity, creativity and mutual interaction.
– We are very happy for the opportunity this film offers to explain to a larger public how important it is to fight for freedom of expression, and to mobilise more cities to shelter persecuted writers, says ICORN director Helge Lunde.
Stalens made the film in connection with the production of her new documentary Silence or Exile, which is produced by Bellota Films with support by Fritt Ord and Shaharazad - stories for life among others.
