Free and open to the Public | Co-Sponsored by The Cooper Union

Participants:  Wojciech Jagielski, Arn Chorn-Pond, Patricia McCormick, Janne Teller

What are the rights of children and our responsibilities to defend them? A uniquely qualified panel of authors and activists, including Khmer Rouge Genocide survivor Arn Chorn-Pond, discuss the global state of children’s rights. Drawing on both scholarship and personal experience, in this “Year of Janusz Korczak,” commemorating 70 years since the children’s rights pioneer perished at Treblinka with his charges from the Warsaw Ghetto orphanage, the panel will explore the history of the Children’s Rights Movement and how past atrocities can inform contemporary advocacy on local, national, and global scales, paying particular attention to ongoing violations in Uganda by the Lord’s Resistance Army.  For more information: http://www.pen.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/6442/prmID/2206

The Eighth Annual PEN World Voices of International Literature
New York City, April 30-May 6, 2012

*Martin Amis, Margaret Atwood, Paul Auster, Michael Cunningham, E. L. Doctorow, Jennifer Egan, Aleksandar Hemon, Etgar Keret, Tony Kushner, Philipe Levine, Claire Messud, Herta Müller, Francine Prose, Salman Rushdie, Luc Sante, Marjane Satrapi, Sonia Sanchez, Ludmilla Ulitskaya, Kronos Quartet, Elevator Repair Service, *and many more -- 100 writers from 25 nations convene in New York to celebrate the power of the written word in action. Engage with literature in bold and unexpected ways and discover how words can be amplified through music, theater, puppetry, film, and much more. The program features performances, discussions, one-on-one conversations, and readings at venues crisscrossing the city, from Harlem to Wall Street, including the festival hubs -- The Standard, New York; The Standard, East Village; and the High Line.

www.pen.org/festival