Photo courtesy Democratic Voice of Burma.

Reading Burma: A Benefit for Cyclone Relief and Freedom of Expression in Burma/Myanmar

Location: New York City
Event Date(s): September 23, 2008
Speaker(s): Kiran Desai, Venerable U Gawsita, Siri Hustvedt, Joseph Lelyveld, George Packer, Orhan Pamuk, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, Salman Rushdie
Multimedia:   SLIDESHOW    AUDIO

This event marked the first anniversary of the monks’ uprising, in which thousands of Buddhist monks protested against Burma’s military dictatorship, and the twentieth anniversary of the 1988 pro-democracy protests by millions of ordinary civilians.

PEN, the Burma Project of the Open Society Institute, and The New York Review of Books joined together to honor Burmese writers whose work has been suppressed by the military regime and to support the victims of the recent cyclone. The event also paid tribute to the thousands of monks who are missing or have lost their lives last year, and to those who have continued to speak out against injustice for the past twenty years.

All proceeds went to the International Burmese Monks Organization, a network of Burmese Buddhist monks collecting relief aid for the victims of Cyclone Nargis.

In addition to readings of Burmese writers’ work, some of which included unpublished accounts from the cyclone-affected areas of Burma, The New Yorker’s George Packer joined the Venerable U Gawsita, one of the leaders of the 2007 monks’ uprising, in conversation.

Featuring

• Nobel Prize Laureate Orhan Pamuk
• Booker Prize Winner Salman Rushdie
• Booker Prize Winner Kiran Desai
• The Venerable U Gawsita, one of the leading monks of the 2007 uprising
  
• Author Siri Hustvedt
• Journalist Joseph Lelyveld
• Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, UN Special Rapporteur on Myanmar
• Journalist George Packer

Event Summary

Read a summary of the event.

Slideshow

View a slideshow of the event.