Human rights advocate to lead PEN writer protection work

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NEW YORK (AP) — Literary writing organization PEN America is expanding its support to writers around the world facing prison sentences for their work by hiring human rights advocate Liesl Gerntholtz to head the new PEN/Barbey Freedom of Writing Center.

The new center will build on PEN America’s work advocating for imprisoned writers such as Ukrainian freelance journalist Vladyslav Yesypenko, who was first arrested in 2021 in Crimea and remains imprisoned. PEN America awarded him the PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write award in 2022 to draw attention to his case in the hope that he will be acquitted, like many previous recipients of the prize, thanks to the award profile and advocacy of other major international writers.

Yesypenko’s wife will receive the award in her stead later this month in New York and PEN America highlighted her case at demonstrations outside the Russian embassy last year and in press releases following her arrest and six-year prison sentence in February.

Under Gerntholtz’s leadership, the new center will help PEN America monitor more cases of imprisoned writers in real time and try to help them leave their country or protect themselves. This work is often done out of public view due to the hostile environment that writers from countries such as Egypt, China, and Myanmar face.

Gerntholtz, who previously headed the women’s rights division at Human Rights Watch among other roles, said the center already had a database of about 700 “writers, intellectuals, visual artists, journalists under threat,” adding that the list would be updated and expanded. .

Men are disproportionately represented among the imprisoned writers, “which means that we are clearly missing out on the ways in which women are silenced,” said Gerntholtz, who is a native of South Africa.

The PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Center was created with a $10 million prize in October and is the first donation in a fundraising campaign marking the 100th year of America’s PEN. It builds on the organization’s relationship with retired media executive Peter Barbey and his family, said PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel.

“We’ve been increasing our budget again every year, so this is a big step forward for us to scale up more multi-year support,” said Nossel. “PEN wasn’t built to last, but we have survived 100 years and we are trying to get it right and support the organization with the foundations it deserves.”

He called the prize a “catalytic” contribution because PEN America wants to initiate donations for better financial stability, as well as support for its program.

Since 2016, donations from the Edwin Barbey Charitable Trust have supported the PEN America award for incarcerated writers. Barbey, his wife, Pamela, and son, Matt, suggested the fund, which is managed by the Arizona Community Foundation.

Barbey joins PEN America’s board in 2021, and as the organization plans for a second century, Nossel says he’s reaching out to Barbeys.

“I felt comfortable enough to put forward what I felt we really needed to make a transformational change in our work and I was so touched, I think I shed tears when they said they would be willing to consider participating at that level,” Nosel said. .

The Barbey Prize represents a large part of what PEN America has collected each year through donations in recent years. In 2019, it reported $11.4 million in donations and $14.3 million in 2020, PEN America said.

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Barbey served as president for several years at a media company in eastern Pennsylvania, the Reading Eagle Company, whose family members had operated for generations until it was sold in 2019. He also purchased a leftist weekly chronicle of New York life, Village Voice, in 2015 but couldn’t save him. The paper closed in 2018 but has since been re-published under new management.

“What I find unique about publishing is that you become a proponent of freedom of expression simply by the nature of the business,” said Barbey, adding that she has taken that into account in philanthropy supporting PEN America and other journalism organizations.

The charitable trust, which is a donor-advised fund, has also awarded $1 million to The Markup, a non-profit investigative digital news organization, Barbey said.

Barbey’s father, Edwin Barbey, founded the fund before he died in 2015.

The family fortune also came from the textile business, now known as VF Corp, which was founded in Pennsylvania in 1899. The company, now publicly owned, owns clothing brands such as Timberland, Vans, Jansport, and Supreme.

In another measure of the state of freedom of expression worldwide, the Committee to Protect Journalists documented the imprisonment of 293 journalists on December 1, the sixth year in a row that more than 250 journalists have been detained. In the US, CPJ found that 59 journalists were arrested in 2021, usually while they were covering protests.

Barbey said she thought PEN America’s advocacy for imprisoned writers “reaffirmed to the American public and the press that it matters.”

“PEN America who represents our country is truly a staunch defender of freedom of writing and freedom of expression,” he said.