NEW YORK—For the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, the PEN/World Voices Festival will host an evening titled, “Armenian Genocide: A Dark Paradigm,” to commemorate the 82 Armenian writers killed by the Turkish government in 1915. The mass killing of Armenian cultural leaders became a paradigm for silencing writers in the ensuing decades of the 20th century: The purges of writers and intellectuals by the regimes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot, in various ways, have their origins in the Ottoman state’s use of bureaucracy in the killing of Armenian writers in 1915.
The program will feature Peter Balakian, Eric Bogosian, Maureen Freeley, Robert Jay Lifton, Nancy Kricorian, Ronald Suny, and Ragip Zarakolu. The panel will commemorate the Armenian writers by exploring issues surrounding genocide and political oppression, intellectual freedom, and cultural legacies. There will be readings from the Armenian writers who were killed, including Siamanto and Daniel Varoujan, and those who survived, such as Vahan Tekeyan and Zabelle Yessayan.
The program will feature Peter Balakian, Eric Bogosian, Maureen Freeley, Robert Jay Lifton, Nancy Kricorian, Ronald Suny, and Ragip Zarakolu.
Raphael Lemkin considered the destruction of culture and the killing of writers as a crucial dimension of genocide. “In terms of the larger issues involved, the losses in culture through the genocide of the Armenian people in Turkey were staggering,” he wrote. “The Armenians, as the intellectual core of Turkey, were in possession of valuable personal libraries, archives, and historical manuscripts, which were dispersed and lost. Churches, convents, and monuments of artistic and historical value were destroyed.”
In an interview, Peter Balakian, the organizer and moderator of the panel, noted, “this is the most distinguished literary festival in the English-speaking world, and it’s a great honor to have PEN giving such a forum to remember the writers of the Armenian Genocide and to ponder the issues of political oppression and intellectual freedom, and the value of writers to any culture.”
The event will take place on Wed., May 6 at 7:30 p.m. in the SVA Theatre at 333 West 23rd St. in New York. Tickets can be bought by visiting penworldvoices.org or by calling (866) 811-4111. Sponsors include the Armenian Genocide Centennial Committee of America, PEN America, and SVA Theatre.
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