Amiri Baraka reads “Rhythm Travel” at the 2008 Beyond Margins Celebration.


Amiri Baraka Reads “Rhythm Travel”

In May 2009, President Barack Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court; she assumed her role as Associate Justice on August 8, 2009. Her memoir, My Beloved World, was published this year. In past years, the Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture has been delivered by Orhan Pamuk, David Grossman, Umberto Eco, Nawal el Saadawi, Christopher Hitchens, Wole Soyinka, and Salman Rushdie. This year, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States Sonia Sotomayor will add her voice to the storied chorus, delivering an address from the same Great Hall where Lincoln gave his historic anti-slavery speech.

A conversation between Justice Sotomayor and award-winning writer, scholar, and public intellectual Henry Louis Gates, Jr. follows the lecture.  

Conversation: Sonia Sotomayor and Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

The celebrated poet reads the seminal letter of political protest, in which she became the first and only person to date to refuse the highest honor bestowed upon an artist on behalf of the people. Background and discussion: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/05/16/adrienne-rich-national-medal-of-arts-letter/

Adrienne Rich declines the National Medal of Arts, 1997

PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect open expression in the United States and worldwide. We champion the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world.  Our mission is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible.


Conversation: Sonia Sotomayor and Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

PEN America

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