Tony Cohan is the Chair of San Miguel PEN's Freedom to Write Committee. We are delighted to welcome him to our featured writer spot for this issue of New Writing, as a contribution to International PEN's Americas campaign. A parallel article by Lucy Popescu on the dangers to journalists in Mexico is featured on the Writers in Prison home page.

Bashabi Fraser, a PEN member, is a poet, children's writer, editor, translator and academic. Her recent books include From the Ganga to the Tay, an epic poem ( Edinburgh: Luath Press, 2009), Bengal Partition Stories: An Unclosed Chapter, A Meeting of Two Minds: the Geddes Tagore Letters and Tartan & Turban (a collection of poems). Bashabi is a Lecturer in English and Creative Writing at Edinburgh Napier University.

Tendai Huchu was born in Bindura a small mining town north of Harare and came to Scotland in 2005 to study.

Mary McCabe, a PEN member, has published Everwinding Times (novel), Streets Schemes and Stages (book on cultural projects), Die zauberhafte Reise (children's storybook in translation) and has had radio plays broadcast in Germany and Switzerland, stories, poems and articles in Scots, English and Gaelic. Through the Scottish Book Trust scheme she runs occasional writers' workshops.

Tessa Ransford is past president and committee member of Scottish PEN. She is an established poet, translator, editor and cultural activist on many fronts over the last thirty years and the initiator of www.scottish-pamphlet-poetry.com and the Callum Macdonald Memorial award for poetry pamphlets. She has recently been Royal Literary Fund fellow at Queen Margaret University. Her latest book is Not Just Moonshine, New and Selected Poems, from Luath Press, Edinburgh. 'Carbon Trading' was first published in Shades of Green, Akros 2005 and has also appeared in Not Just Moonshine.

Philo Ikonya is an author, human rights activist and President of Kenyan PEN. She was recently arrested and subsequently released for taking part in a peaceful protest about hyperinflation. To read an extract from her piece 'Ringing On My Mind' go to our New Writing page.

Elspeth Brown, a member of Scottish PEN, writes poetry, plays and short stories. Her collected poems, 'A Crab in the Moon's Mouth', has just been published by 'Markings.'

Now in Dunbar she is working on a series of poems about the ecologist John Muir who was born there.

Ken Cockburn is the former Assistant Director and Fieldworker at the Scottish Poetry Library. Since 2004 he has worked as a freelance writer, translator, editor and writing tutor. He lives in Edinburgh.

Jenni Daiches' published poetry includes Mediterranean (1995), Smoke (2005), and contributions to many Scottish magazines. Her fiction includes Letters from the Great Wall (Luath, 2006). She writes on literary and historical subjects as Jenni Calder. Her most recent book is Frontier Scots: The Scots Who Won the West (Luath, 2009). She is currently president of Scottish PEN.

Iyad Hayatleh, a Palestinian refugee poet, was born and grew up in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria in 1960. He started writing poetry early and published his work in Arabic magazines, giving many readings in Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. He has lived in Glasgow since 2000. He is now an active member of Scottish PEN and Artists In Exile Glasgow and has taken part in many events and translation and poetry workshops giving many readings in Glasgow, Inverness, Belfast, Wigtown, Aberdeen, and the Edinburgh International Book Festival, and published some of his poems in magazines and collective pamphlets in Scotland.

His first collection, 'Beyond all measure'. is published by Survivor's Press. Recently he co-led two poetry workshops in Glasgow and Inverness sponsored by Scottish Poetry Library and Oxfam. He is putting together a book of verse for publication later this winter will be published in Arabic in Damascus. This translation of 'My Mother' was published in Poetry Scotland.

Hazel Frew who collaborated with Iyad in the translation of this poem was born in Baillieston in 1968. She grew up on the east coast of Scotland in Broughty Ferry and graduated from Glasgow University in 1991. Her first poem was published in 1995 and since then she has had many poems published in magazines and anthologies including 'The Rialto', 'Orbis' and 'New Writing Scotland'. A pamphlet, 'Clockwork Scorpion' was published in 2007 and her first poetry collection, 'Seahorses' was published by Shearsman Books in 2008.