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Join PEN Melbourne at the Melbourne Writers Festival for Writing Wrongs, a conversation with guests Kylie Moore-Gilbert, Louisa Lim, Michelle Aung Thin and Arnold Zable Sunday 11 September at 10.30am, SLV

Melbourne Writers Festival: Writing Wrongs

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Writing Wrongs

Sun 11 Sep, 10.30am

Three writers from the frontlines of human rights crises share their remarkable stories of fighting – and writing – for freedom. Academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert (The Uncaged Sky) was incarcerated in an Iranian prison for 804 gruelling days, surviving by acts of resistance and smuggled letters. Journalist Louisa Lim (Indelible City) covered the artists trying to reclaim their story amidst the erosion of civil liberties in Hong Kong. Author of Hasina: Through My Eyes, Myanmar-born writer and academic Michelle Aung Thin‘s work powerfully renders the impact of the Rohingya conflict. Joined by participating chair Arnold Zable (The Watermill), they ask: when it comes to human rights, what is the role of the writer? And who is protecting them?

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People say that (writers) are pretty powerless: we don’t have an army, we don’t have a bureaucracy. But if that were true, then why would writers be arrested?... Because the spoken word is powerful.

— John Ralston Saul on the work of PEN International