May 1, 2008 | Joe's Pub | NYC

With György Dragomán, Hasan Elahi, Asli Erdogan, Péter Esterházy, Chenjerai Hove, Irakli Kakabadze, Jenny Marketou, Ivy Meeropol, Francine Prose, and Ingo Schulze

Cosponsored by the American Civil Liberties Union

Prominent international and local writers and artists gather for a special reading to provoke reflection on controversial post-9/11 government surveillance programs in the United States.

PEN’s Campaign for Core Freedoms has joined with the American Civil Liberties Union and other leading human-rights organizations to challenge some of the government’s most pernicious infringements on basic human rights, working to restore privacy protections for bookstore and library records, fighting to end the FBI’s unchecked use of National Security Letters, and challenging warrantless telephone and Internet surveillance by the N.S.A. Writers will read from works that illuminate the ways government surveillance threatens artistic and intellectual freedom.

PHOTO GALLERY: Flickr photostream

LISTEN
• Entire event (1:13:09)

• Francine Prose gives welcoming remarks (5:03)
• Anthony Romero introduces Something to Hide (4:38)
• Wallace Shawn reads from James Comey's testimony before Senate Judiciary Committee (9:23)
• György Dragomán reads from "The Wolf" by Adam Bodor (5:37)
• Chenjerai Hove reads from Skipping Without Ropes by Jack Mapanje (6:45)
• Jenny Marketou reads from the Andy Warhol FBI files (9:54)
• Irakli Kakabadze reads "Information Highway Song" by Guram Urtkmelidze (5:08)
• Ingo Schulze reads from Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll (4:04)
• Péter Esterházy reads from Total Fears: Letters to Dubenka by Bohumi Hrabal (7:15)
• Hasan Elahi reads from Citizen Suarez by Guillermo Verdecchia (5:58)
• Deborah Eisenberg reads from The Long Night of Francisco Sanctis by Humberto Constantini (8:10)