“When human beings are scared and feel everything is exposed to the government, we will censor ourselves from free thinking. That’s dangerous for human development.” Ai Weiwei (b. 1957, China)
PEN American announced this weekend that artist Ai Weiwei (Ai Weiwei’s blog,Writings, Interviews, and Digital Rants, 2006-2009) will receive the Artistic Expression Award at the organization’s 2018 LitFest Gala in Los Angeles. Ai is renowned for making bold aesthetic statements that expose fault lines, unmask hypocrisies, and unleash empathy on a global scale. This honor comes in the wake of the razing of Ai Weiwei’s Beijing studio, including the destruction of several artworks, purportedly to make way for gentrification.
Ai Weiwei – Forever, 2018, Artz Pedregal, Mexico City courtesy of Keizers under CC BY-SA 4.0
“Ai Weiwei’s inventive, iconic, and utterly original lens on contemporary life both within and outside China have bridged the worlds of art and activism, awakening millions to the plight of refugees, government corruption, and human suffering. His dramatic, insistent, and impossible-to-forget films, artworks, and installations have jolted the art world, inspired millions, and stoked fear in the minds of governments alert to the power of creativity to spark social change,” said PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel.
“Ai Weiwei has, for decades, endured the personal price of harassment, intimidation, and constraints on his freedom in his determination to speak out and be a voice for those who cannot. Coming without warning, the demolition of his studio last weekend was a vivid reminder of the arbitrary and unpredictable exercise of power that Ai’s work has consistently exposed and contested. PEN America has been proud to stand with Ai Weiwei in his courageous posture of artistic defiance, and is honored to present him with our Artistic Expression Award this year.”
From architecture to installations, social media to documentaries, Ai Weiwei uses a wide range of mediums as expressions of new ways for his audiences to examine society and its values.
Recent exhibitions include: Good Fences Make Good Neighbors with the Public Art Fund in New York City; Ai Weiwei on Porcelain at the Sakip Sabanci Museum in Istanbul; Maybe, Maybe Not at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem; and Ai Weiwei. Libero at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence. In the fall of 2018, Ai Weiwei will open three major exhibitions in Los Angeles.
Ai currently resides and works in Berlin. He is the current Einstein Visiting Professor at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK) and the 2012 Václav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent from the Human Rights Foundation. Ai’s first feature-length documentary, Human Flow, premiered at the 74th Venice Film Festival in competition.
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PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect open expression in the United States and worldwide. It champions the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world. Its mission is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible.
Poet and writer, I was once columnist and associate editor of a regional employment publication. I currently run this site, The Poet by Day, an information hub for poets and writers. I am the managing editor of The BeZine published by The Bardo Group Beguines (originally The Bardo Group), a virtual arts collective I founded. I am a weekly contributor to Beguine Again, a site showcasing spiritual writers. My work is featured in a variety of publications and on sites, including: Levure littéraure, Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature,Compass Rose, Connotation Press, The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, Second Light, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Meta / Phor(e) /Play, and California Woman. My poetry was recently read byNorthern California actor Richard Lingua for Poetry Woodshed, Belfast Community Radio. I was featured in a lengthy interview on the Creative Nexus Radio Show where I was dubbed “Poetry Champion.”
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The PEN Center USA Literary Awards, Calls for Submissions:”… is accepting teleplays by writers living west of the Mississippi River. Entries are reviewed and judged by panels of distinguished writers, critics, and editors. Winners will be announced in the late summer of 2017. Each winner receives a $1,000 cash prize, a one-year membership to PEN Center USA, and two tickets to the Literary Awards Festival in the fall of 2017.” Further Details HERE.
The University of Arkansas Press has deadlines coming up on three contests:
$5,000 Miller Poetry Prize deadline is September 30, 2017. The judge is Billy Collins and the entry fee is $28. This is for collections. Further details HERE.
2018 $1,000 Etel Adnan Poetry Prize for a second book of poetry in English by a writer of Arab heritage. “Since its founding in 1996 the Radius of Arab American Writers has celebrated and fostered the writings and writers that make up the vibrant and diverse Arab American community; and the University of Arkansas Press has long been committed to publishing diverse kinds of poetry by a diversity of poets. The series editors are Hayan Charara and Fady Joudah, and the prize is named in honor of the world-renowned poet, novelist, essayist, and artist Etel Adnan.” $25 entry fee. Hayan Charara and Fady Joudah are judges and the series’ editors.Further detail HERE. April 15, 2017 is the dealine to be considered for the 2018 prize.
2018 $1,000 CantoMundo Poetry Prize for “a book of poetry by a Latina/o writer. Since its founding in 2009, CantoMundo has cultivated and supported a community of Latina/o poets and the poetry they create, and the University of Arkansas Press has long been committed to publishing diverse kinds of poetry by a diversity of poets.” Deborah Paredez and Celeste Gúzman Mendoza are the judges and the series’ editors. $28 entry free. Further detail HERE. April 15, 2017 is the deadline to be considered for the 2018 prize.
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PEN America Center (PEN), founded in 1922 and based in New York City, works to advance literature, to defend free expression, and to foster international literary fellowship. The Center has a membership of 3,300 writers, editors, and translators. PEN America Center is the largest of the 144 centers that belong to PEN International, the worldwide association of writers that defends those who are harassed, imprisoned and killed for their views.PEN America Center is one of two PEN centers located in the USA, the other is PEN Center USA in Los Angeles, it covers the USA west of the Mississippi.This week PEN America announced the establishment of the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, a literary honor that will be conferred annually on a book that has broken new ground and signals strong potential for lasting influence.
$75,000 Prize to be Awarded to a Single Writer for Originality and Impact $10,000 Grant for a Literary Oral History Project
The new award will recognize a book-length work of any genre for “originality, merit, and impact,” spotlighting a work of literature that reshapes the boundaries of its form. Funded by oral historian Jean Stein, the $75,000 award will be among the largest literary prizes in the U.S., as well as the largest prize offered by PEN. In a departure for the PEN America Literary Awards, the judging panel of distinguished writers will serve anonymously. The panel will nominate candidates internally and without submissions from the public.
“The PEN/Jean Stein Book Award will focus global attention on remarkable books that propel experimentation, wit, strength, and the expression of wisdom,” said PEN America President Andrew Solomon. “As an organization that champions literature’s power to change the world, PEN America is especially pleased to recognize work that honors creative ambition and rejoices in imagination. We are immensely grateful to Jean Stein for this opportunity to celebrate books that rethink our culture and humanity.”
Stein’s own literary pursuits have engaged some of the most influential figures in American culture, including an interview with William Faulkner for The Paris Review in 1956. She chronicled the life of Robert F. Kennedy with editor George Plimpton in the 1970 book American Journey: The Times of Robert Kennedy. In 1982, she was the author of Edie: American Girl, which was also edited with Plimpton. Most recently, she profiled five prominent families from Los Angeles in West of Eden. From 1990 to 2004, Stein was the editor of Grand Street, a literary and visual arts magazine.
In addition to the book award, Stein will also sponsor a new PEN America Literary Award for oral history. The PEN/Jean Stein Grant for Oral History will award $10,000 to support the completion of a literary work of nonfiction that uses oral history to illuminate an event, individual, place, or movement.
The PEN America Literary Awards is the most comprehensive awards program in the country, offering prizes across a wide range of genres, including fiction, nonfiction, poetry, theater, translation, and more. With the addition of these two new awards, the 2017 PEN America Literary Awards will confer over $250,000 to writers and translators.
Both new awards sponsored by Stein will be conferred for the first time in 2017, with the inaugural honorees to be named at the PEN America Literary Awards Ceremony in New York in February.
![PEN America Center (PEN), founded in 1922 and based in New York City, works to advance literature, to defend free expression, and to foster international literary fellowship. The Center has a membership of 3,300 writers, editors, and translators. PEN America Center is the largest of the 144 centers that belong to PEN International, the worldwide association of writers that defends those who are harassed, imprisoned and killed for their views.[1] PEN America Center is one of two PEN centers located in the USA, the other is PEN Center USA in Los Angeles, it covers the USA west of the Mississippi.](https://jamiededes.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/pen_american_center_official_logo.jpg?w=760){kind=logo}
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