March 13, 2006

Save the date: 2006 Freedom-to-Write Award Ceremony

The 2006 Vasyl Stus Freedom-to-Write Award Ceremony will be held on Thursday April 20, 2006 at 7:00 PM at the First Parish Church in Cambridge. Click here for full details.

April 10, 2005

New Fund for American Writers

PEN New England Announces New Fund for American Writers

Thomas Paine Freedom-to-Write Award Will Honor Writers Imperiled Because of their Work

The Freedom-to-Write Committee of PEN New England announced today the creation of the Thomas Paine Freedom-to-Write Fund for American Writers in Peril. The Fund will be used to support American writers persecuted in this country for their writings, with a new award recipient announced yearly in conjunction with PEN New England's Vasyl Stus Freedom-to-Write Award.

A fundraising campaign is being launched, and nominations for the prize will be accepted via this Web site.

The Fund is named after Thomas Paine, a tireless and eloquent promoter of the rights of individuals, who wrote that "Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it." Paine's 1776 pamphlet Common Sense decried the exploitation of the American colonies by Great Britain and urged them to proclaim independence. Also an editor and poet, Paine continued his writings in England—where his The Rights of Man was suppressed and he was tried for sedition—and in France, where he drafted The Age of Reason from jail after being imprisoned by Robespierre.

The creation of Paine Fund will be announced to the public during the annual Vasyl Stus Freedom-to-Write Award ceremony, on Wednesday, May 11, 2005, 6:30 p.m., at Boston's storied Faneuil Hall—known as the "Cradle of Liberty."

Anthony Lewis, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and former New York Times columnist, will deliver the keynote address. Lewis, whose books include Gideon's Trumpet and Make No Law, has been a longtime advocate for civil rights and freedom of expression.

The 2005 Vasyl Stus Award, which recognizes a writer who has been persecuted for the peaceful expression of his or her views, will be presented to Ali Al-Domaini, a leading Saudi Arabian poet and novelist who has been detained without trial, along with two other constitutional reformists, since March of 2004 for criticizing the slowness of official human rights initiatives in Saudi Arabia.