On August 7, at 6: 30 p.m., on the eve of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, PEN American Center and The New School Graduate Writing Program are co-sponsoring, “Bringing Down the Great Firewall of China: Silenced Writers Speak on the Eve of the Olympics,” an event where PEN members will give voice to the more than 40 writers and journalists currently in prison in China for exercising their right to freedom of expression.

Acclaimed American writers will come together on stage to break the silence—or what has been called the Great Firewall—that threatens the work and lives of Chinese writers. “Our urgent and intense concern for our colleagues, locked up in Chinese jails for the crime of writing honestly, has made us want to mark the opening of the Beijing Olympics by honoring their courage and by asking, again, that they be set free,” said Francine Prose, president of PEN American Center.

Edward Albee, Russell Banks, Barbara Goldsmith, Jessica Hagedorn, Rick Moody, Martha Southgate, Francine Prose, and others will read statements written by leading Chinese writers including Ma Jian and Xiaolu Guo, along with new and previously untranslated statements and writings by several of the jailed writers.