News Archive : Event Reports

02/05/11

World-Wide Reading Day for Liu Xiaobo: Scottish PEN hosts 5 events!

On 20 March more than 49 cities and centres around the world staged readings featuring poems by Liu Xiaobo to call attention to his plight and the plight of other Chinese dissidents. This event, organised by the Peter Weiss Foundation in Berlin, was marked by no fewer than five readings in Scotland, second only to Germany itself in the number staged. All four corners of Scotland - North, South, East and West - were involved, from Ullapool to Dumfriesshire. Not bad for a small nation! Our thanks to all those enthusiastic SPEN members who organised the events. To see details click on the 'Read more' button.

Event Report , Writers in Prison

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02/02/11

Precious Metal: 16 Days of Action at the Red Road Centre

Precious Metal: 16 Days of Action Against Violence Against Women at the Red Road Centre Last year Scottish PEN's Writers in Exile Committee were approached by the International Women's Group at Sighthill Community Centre, to take part in an event for Refugee Week. The immediate result of this fruitful collaboration was the postcard collection, which has proved extremely popular (only 230 left unsold of the 1000 ordered and a modest profit already made for both organisations). But that was just the start. So successful was the first collaboration that we were asked to take part in Precious Metal, an afternoon organised by the North Glasgow Integration Network, of which IWG is part, as part of Glasgow's 16 Days of Action To Eliminate Violence Against Women staged in Glasgow last December.

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07/12/10

Scottish PEN Empty chair - A 'Chair for Liu Xiaobo’

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Since the announcement that imprisoned Chinese writer Liu Xiaobo had won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize, it was clear Chinese authorities would not allow him passage to Oslo to receive his award. A group of staff and students at Lomond School in Helensburgh however, decided to highlight his absence from the occasion by creating a chair which will be the visual centrepiece of a major reception jointly hosted by the Norwegian Centre of PEN International and Amnesty in Oslo’s famous House of Literature on Friday 10 December 2010.

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21/04/10

Report of the International PEN Writers for Peace Conference in Bled, Slovenia, March 2010

The round table sessions of the Bled conference were devoted to 'Globalisation, an opportunity for all or a new colonisation for many'; 'Literature and Globalisation'; and 'Peace between diurnal and nocturnal dreams'. Delegates spoke in Slovene, French or English.

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03/03/10

China Inside-Out. 11-13 March 2010. A celebration of Chinese Women Writers in English.

A Scottish PEN collaboration organised and sponsored by the Confucius Institute for Scotland in the University of Edinburgh.

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15/12/09

Celebrating Human Rights Day

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Glasgow University PEN celebrated Human Rights Day three days early

Event Report , Writers in Prison

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13/08/09

Global Forum on Freedom of Expession

Oslo, Norway, 1st-6th June 2009. Oslo, Norway, 1st-6th June 2009. The forum was planned by The Freedom of Expression Foundation, Norwegian PEN and the International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX). It was the largest gathering ever held of organisations working for freedom of expression.

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