June 3rd marks the 20th anniversary of the brutal suppression of the Tiananmen student movement. To mark the occasion, excerpts from “Massacre,” an epic poem about the violence that landed the writer in jail.
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By Liao Yiwu, Wen Huang, and Bill Marx
Each time a disaster hits China, we all become refugees and strangers in our own land. — Liao Yiwu

Chinese writer Liao Yiwu, 50, revisits the earthquake damaged Gu Temple in the town of Jiezi in the Sichuan Province. He was interviewing May 12th survivors for his book “The [...]

By Bill Marx and Wen Huang
Dissident Chinese writer Liao Yiwu lives near the epicenter of the earthquake in Sichuan province. His home is about 17 miles from the school where hundreds of students were trapped. Miraculously, his building survived, though there are several giant cracks in the concrete stairway. In his immediate area more than [...]

by Bill Marx
I’m down in New York for PEN American’s annual Festival of International Literature, five days of readings, panels, and discussions on writing around the globe that emphasizes the plight of imperiled authors, particularly those that write in languages other than English.

Chinese dissident writer Ma Jian
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