Celebrating Burmese Writers

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In addition to readings of Burmese writers’ work, some of which included unpublished accounts from the cyclone-affected areas of Burma, the New Yorker’s George Packer joined the Venerable U Gawsita, one of the leaders of the 2007 monks’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

Listen above.