Finding Light in a Dark Time
Dear Friends,
Welcome to October’s Substack.
This month’s blog Finding Light in a Dark Time focuses on the gathering of writers from around the world to celebrate the power of words and literature to connect.
The audio version is available by clicking the link in the blog itself or clicking the link below for all podcasts. https://joanneleedomackerman.substack.com/podcast
The Writers at Risk section this month focuses on the cases of Nobel Laureate Ales Bialiatski and writer/philosopher Uladzimir Mackievič, both imprisoned in Belarus after the flawed 2020 election.
The Books to Check Out section features four stories, published as small paperbacks by the elegant Thornwillow Press: The Magic Shop by H.G. Wells, Journalist at War by Brooke Kroeger, The Bootlegger by Amor Towles, and Paul’s Case by Willa Cather, along with smaller foldouts that include “Gratitude” by Frances Hodgson Burnett, “The Price of Greatness” by Winston Churchill, and “Tomorrow is the Child of Today” by Octavia E. Butler.
In the Scene section you’ll find a photo along with text from The Far Side of the Desert.
Thank you to friends and new readers who’ve come to bookstores, libraries, book clubs and online to share my new novels The Far Side of the Desert and Burning Distance. If you’re interested in having me speak at a venue or with a book club, you can click here. I look forward to staying in touch and meeting readers at future events, some listed below. If you’re engaged by the novels, thank you for telling friends and also for leaving reviews with online booksellers.
I hope you’ll enjoy these and other features in this free monthly Substack On the Yellow Brick Road and share it with friends!
Finding Light in a Dark Time
I’ve just returned from PEN International’s 90th World Congress in Oxford, England whose theme was “Writers in a World at War.” PEN originally planned to celebrate its Centenary in Oxford in 2021, but the global pandemic disrupted that gathering. This 90th Congress was co-hosted by English PEN, and while it was smaller than the planned Centenary, there were delegates from 80 PEN centers around the world and 20 more centers represented on Zoom. More than 200 writers participated.
PEN International’s congresses have occurred annually except during World War II. The congress is a time when the conversation is live among writers from almost 100 nations in the more than 130 PEN centers. Literature is shared. Formal discussions focus on the challenges for writers at risk, in prison and threatened by authoritarian governments, the challenges of peace and displacement for those in conflict areas, the challenges of linguistic rights and translations and the ongoing challenges for women around the globe. These are addressed through PEN’s four standing committees—the Writers in Prison Committee, the Peace Committee, the Translation and Linguistic Rights Committee, and the Women Writers Committee. At this 90th Congress a new standing committee of PEN International was formed for the first time in 33 years. The committee will develop and give voice to younger writers and is based on the original premise of PEN’s founders for a Tomorrow Club.
PEN operates at both an individual and a global level. The work focuses on the individual writers in prison and at risk in countries such as China, Turkey, Vietnam, Myanmar, Cuba, Guatemala, Belarus, Russia, Egypt, Iran and others. Members write to their fellow writers in prison, to their governments, to the members’ own governments; they lobby on the writers’ behalf, celebrate their writing which the government has suppressed. At a global level PEN International speaks out at the United Nations Human Rights Commission and other forums seeking and urging pathways to free expression and to peace.
This later action via the Peace Committee is often more challenging and taxing to PEN’s mandate. PEN International President Burhan Sönmez noted, “War is the darkest word in every language. While peace is the longest word. Because it never comes to an end in any language.”
At the 90th Congress the lines of tension heightened as the issues of peace in Israel and Palestine and Gaza arose. The challenges in the Middle East have tested PEN and its Charter before. PEN’s Charter urges members to “use what influence they have in favor of good understanding and mutual respect between nations and people” and to “do their utmost to dispel all hatreds and to champion the ideal of one humanity living in peace and equality in one world.” At the same time “PEN stands for the principle of unhampered transmission of thought within each nation and between all nations, and members pledge themselves to oppose any form of suppression of freedom of expression….”
One of the panels at the Congress was devoted to PEN’s Charter, which novelist and poet Ben Okri described as “one of the great documents of the century, a foundational document.” Linked here, the PEN Charter was one of the documents studied in the development of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Drafted in the wake of World War I and World War II, the governing principle of PEN’s Charter is that “Literature knows no frontiers and must remain common currency among people in spite of political or international upheavals. In all circumstances and particularly in time of war, works of art, the patrimony of humanity at large should be left untouched by national or political passion.”
How this mandate is fulfilled through resolutions and statements in a time of war as is occurring in the Middle East can challenge members. There are those who resist PEN stepping into geopolitical strategies and those who think PEN must not remain silent on these specific issues. Is peace just the cessation of hostilities or the resistance to those who would oppress? A resolution was finally voted on and passed, though not unanimously but with an understanding that the principles of PEN keep us together.
I quote here the words of former PEN International President, playwright Ronald Harwood, who I had the privilege of serving closely with during our shared terms at the Secretariat and with whom I agreed at the time and still in this more activist era. At a fraught Congress during the war in the Balkans in 1993, Ronny noted to the Congress:
“The world seems to be fragmenting; PEN must never fragment. We have to do what we can do for our fellow-writers and for literature as a united body; otherwise we perish. And our differences are our strength: our different languages, cultures and literatures are our strength. Nothing gives me more pride than to be part of this organization when I come to a congress and see the diversity of human beings here and know that we all have at least one thing in common. We write...We are not the United Nations...We cannot solve the world’s problems...Each time we go beyond our remit, which is literature and language and the freedom of expression of writers, we diminish our integrity and damage our credibility...We don’t represent governments; we represent ourselves and our centers...We are here to serve writers and writing and literature, and that is enough... And let us remember and take pleasure in this: that when the words International PEN are uttered, they become synonymous with the freedom from fear.”
I enjoyed this past month PEN International’s 90th Congress in Oxford, England where I was honored to be a featured speaker for PEN International’s Women Writers Committee celebrating almost four decades, and I enjoyed a book luncheon featuring The Far Side of the Desert at Norwalk CT Library.
In October I’m looking forward to speaking at a Rotary Club event and others. Details of events past and future can be found on the Speaking page of my website.
Thank you to all who have come together and shared readings and conversations around my novels.
Selected recordings of events and interviews:
Why Baldwin Matters Series, The Alan Cheuse International Writers Center
Malaprop’s Bookstore and Café in Asheville, NC
Kinokuniya Bookstore in New York City with Salil Tripathi
Baum on Books on WSHU Public Radio
Interview with Anna Roins of Authorlink
Interview with Deborah Kalb
For more podcasts, videos and interviews, click here
“I came home and started reading your book, except for dinner and a few words… I just read until I finished it in the middle of the night. It’s a wonderful book and many will like it."
—Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita In Tehran and Read Dangerously
“Alliances—familial, situational, political—gird this engrossing thriller from novelist Joanne Leedom-Ackerman. U.S. foreign service officer Monte disappears during a visit to Spain; the search to find her, spearheaded by older sister Samantha, ricochets from Morocco and Egypt to Washington. Monty’s captivity is brutal, but there’s resilience, too, as both sisters slay old demons and chart new paths.”
—The Christian Science Monitor (highlighted as one of 10 best books of March 2024)
Burning Distance (Oceanview Publishing, 2023 and recent paperback in 2024) was honored by the 2024 American Book Fest International Book Awards as a Finalist in the Best Mystery/Suspense and Thriller/Adventure categories.
“Politics abound in Joanne Leedom-Ackerman’s superb historical thriller Burning Distance (Oceanview).
The book is steeped in tragedy too, as young Elizabeth West’s life is further uprooted in the wake of her father’s death when the family relocates from Washington, D.C. to London. Elizabeth ends up with a stepfather and pair of stepsisters and is thriving at her school when her boyfriend’s Muslim father is deported. Being an arms dealer suggests a connection with a nefarious German industrialist, leaving young Elizabeth to sort through the morass at the risk of her own life.
At its heart, Burning Distance is a love story, but it has the soul of a political thriller as it weaves in the events leading up to the Gulf War of the 1990-91 Gulf war. Ambitious in scope and beautifully realized.”
—John Land in Book Trib
Ales Bialiatski & Uladzimir Mackievič (Belarus)
(Sources include PEN International, PEN America, PEN Belarus, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch)
Elections do not guarantee a free and fair democracy with a peaceful transfer of power as was seen this summer in Venezuela where the government of incumbent Nicolás Maduro refused to cede the election to the widely acclaimed winner diplomat Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia. In spite of evidence of a Gonzalez victory and widespread protests in the country and abroad, Maduro clung to his office and threatened Gonzalez, who finally took asylum in Spain to avoid arrest. Maduro’s “official” results and insistence on victory has been called “one of the most egregious electoral frauds in modern Latin American history.”
Without the institutions and means to assure a free election and its outcome, results can be ignored as was the case in Belarus in 2020 when five-term President Alexander Lukashenko insisted he won a sixth term in spite of evidence that opposition candidate Sviattlan Tsikhanouskaya won a decisive victory. Despite the widespread protests Lukashenko remains in power to this day and is preparing to run for a seventh term. Outspoken critics sit in jail, notably writer Ales Bialiatski, chairperson of Human Rights Centre Viasna and writer/philosopher Uladzimir Mackievič.
Given a ten-year sentence for “smuggling and financing actions grossly violating public order,” Bialiatski and colleagues from Viasna (meaning “Spring”) were arrested following peaceful protests in 2020 and Viasna’s documenting of the government’s crackdown, arbitrary arrests, torture and unfair trials. Bialiatski’s relatives have recently expressed concern about his health since he has been transferred to a different penal colony and packages containing medical supplies for him have been refused.
In 2022, Bialiatski was awarded the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize along with the Ukrainian and Russian human rights organizations Centre for Civil Liberties and Memorial.
The Nobel citation reads: “The Peace Prize laureates represent civil society in their home countries. They have for many years promoted the right to criticize power and protect the fundamental rights of citizens. They have made an outstanding effort to document war crimes, human right abuses and the abuse of power. Together they demonstrate the significance of civil society for peace and democracy.”
Though Bialiatski, who remains in prison, was unable to attend the Nobel ceremony, members of the Belarusian opposition celebrated with Sviatlan Tsikhanouskaya saying, "The prize is an important recognition for all Belarusians fighting for freedom & democracy. All political prisoners must be released without delay."
There are 1,458 political prisoners in Belarus, according to Viasna, including prominent Belarusian philosopher, essayist, and broadcaster Uladzimir Mackievič, detained in August 2021 after the protests surrounding the disputed 2020 election. Longtime critic of Lukashenko, PEN member Mackievič was charged with “organizing and preparing actions that grossly violate public order” and was sentenced to five years. In the regime’s “purge” of civil society, Belarusian authorities also dissolved the Belarusian PEN Centre.
Mackieviç has said: “I understand that I was arrested because of my articles, statements, ideas, and thoughts, that is, I’m going to be tried for ‘malice’ according to Orwell. This is what best characterizes the current regime in Belarus.”
Ma Thida, Chair of PEN International’s Writers in Prison Committee, noted, “Uladzimir Mackievič is guilty of nothing but peacefully expressing his views. His plight is a stark reminder of the relentless repression faced by dissenting voices in Belarus, where the Lukashenko regime will seemingly stop at nothing to crush any forms of criticism. The Belarusian authorities must urgently end their crackdown on independent voices. All others already behind bars simply for exercising their right to freedom of expression – including writer and human rights defender Ales Bialiatski – must be released.”
To Take Action for Ales Bialiatski and Uladzimir Mackievič:
Please send appeals to the authorities of Belarus, urging them to:
Release Ales Bialiatski and Uladzimir Mackievič immediately and unconditionally;
Abide by their international human rights obligations and uphold the rights to freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly.
Send appeals to:
Andrei Shved
Role: Prosecutor General of the Republic of Belarus
Address: Vul. Internatsianalnaya 22, 220030 Minsk, Belarus
Email: info@prokuratura.gov.by
Maxim Ryzhenkov
Minister of Foreign Affairs
Vul Lienina 19|
Minsk 220030, Belarus
Email: mail@mfa.gov.by
Send appeals to the Embassy of Belarus in your own country. Embassy addresses may be found here: https://mfa.gov.by/en/bilateral/belarus/?asd50
Please send messages of solidarity to:
Ales Bialiatski
Penal colony No. 9.
213410, Horki
vulica Dabraliubava 16
Belarus
Uladzimir Mackievič
Prison No. 4.
212011 Mahilioŭ
vulica Krupskaj 99A
Belarus
An attack on a writer, the shutting down of a publishing house, the torching of a newspaper reduce the space in the world where ideas can flow. Freedom of expression is vital to writers and to readers but is challenged daily around the world. Listed here are organizations whose work on human rights and in particular issues of freedom of expression I’ve been engaged with directly and indirectly over the years. Some of the organizations have broader agendas, but all have contributed to keeping space open for the individual voice.
PEN International (with its 147 centers in over 100 countries)
PEN American Center
English PEN
PEN/Faulkner Foundation
Human Rights Watch
Amnesty International
Amnesty International USA
International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX)
Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)
Article 19
Index on Censorship
Poets and Writers
Authors Guild
International Center for Journalists
Every month I receive a small box with at least one elegantly published paperback, bubble-wrapped, accompanied by an equally elegant foldout of wise sayings from another author and a coordinated bookmark, greeting card and assorted thumbnail-sized cards with quotations, again elegantly printed. This subscription from Thornwillow Press is a gift from my daughter-in-law, also a writer. Each month it reminds me of gems of literature past and present. Some are revived essays or original stories or reprints of stories which have been selected for eclectic reasons explained in a personalized letter from the publisher Luke Ives Pontifell that accompanies the box.
Thornwillow Press has been printers and publishers of handmade books for over 35 years, “committed to advancing a modern-day arts and crafts movement that celebrates the written word.” Thornwillow has published over 100 unique editions including Dante’s Inferno, Pride and Prejudice, The Great Gatsby and the many smaller editions of essays and stories by modern and classic writers.
In the Books to Check Out section this month I focus on four of Thornwillow’s recent titles, chosen among the rich assortment of small paperbacks, along with three foldouts full of wisdom. The paperback stories are The Magic Shop by H.G. Wells, A Journalist at War by Brooke Kroeger, Paul’s Case by Willa Cather, and The Bootlegger by Amor Towles. The small foldouts include “Gratitude” by Frances Hodgson Burnett, “The Price of Greatness” by Winston Churchill, and “Tomorrow is the Child of Today” by Octavia E. Butler.
My own eclectic choices among so many fine possibilities were made as I headed to England and PEN International’s 90th Congress where H.G. Wells, author of The Magic Shop, had been PEN International’s second President. The Magic Shop resonated. It evoked the mystery and magic of storytelling and also the shrouded menace when a story lands with a skeptical audience and magic threatens to turn into malice. But then the innocent heart prevails. Different perceptions, the line between truth and fiction, a child’s willingness to believe and an adult’s skepticism…genuine magic versus dangerous and crass falsehood all play in the themes of The Magic Shop.
From The Magic Shop:
And before I could do anything to prevent it, the shopman had clapped a big drum over him. I saw what was up directly. “Take that off,” I cried, “This instant! You’ll frighten the boy. Take it off!”
The shop man with the unequal ears did so without a word, and he held the big cylinder towards me to show its emptiness. And the little stool was vacant! In that instant my boy had utterly disappeared?...
I put out my hand to grip him, and he eluded me by a dexterous movement. I snatched again, and he turned from me and pushed open a door to escape. “Stop!” I said, and he laughed, receding. I leapt after him—in outer darkness.
THUD!
My choice of A Journalist at War by Brooke Kroeger also linked to the PEN Congress I was attending with its theme this year “Writers in a World at War.” The author of this excerpt of a larger book is a friend of the publisher and also a friend of one of my good journalist friends. Kroeger narrates the journey of Ann Stringer, one of the early women war correspondents in World War II and afterwards. A reporter for the less affluent United Press International wire service, Stringer used her wit, her skills and her ambition to scoop everyone, especially on the link-up between American and Russian forces after World War II.
From A Journalist at War:
“She knew she had a great story, perhaps the greatest since the D-Day landings,” she later wrote, but that would only matter if she could file first….
Jack Thompson remained unconcerned about the possibility of being scooped by Stringer. Even though she was traveling by plane, he assumed that she would need to file through First Army censors, just as he had to do, since the military was tightly controlling any release of information. Stringer, though, asked her pilot to fly her straight to Paris.
The next two narratives tell stories set over a century apart, both in New York City’s cultural epicenter. Paul’s Case by Willa Cather explores the world of Paul who has dreams and aspirations to live in the glamorous theater world where he is “a model usher, gracious and smiling…nothing was too much trouble for him…and all the people in his section thought him a charming boy.” But as he navigates his lower middle-class home and the diminished expectations there and the glamorous world he aspires towards, illusion and reality collide and catch up with him hard.
From Paul’s Case:
He had a feeling of not being able to let down, of its being impossible to give up this delicious excitement which was the only thing that could be called living at all…. Paul had often hung about the hotel, watching the people go in and out, longing to enter and to leave schoolmasters and dull care behind him forever…
Perhaps it was because, in Paul’s world, the natural nearly always wore the guise of ugliness, that a certain element of artificiality seemed to him necessary in beauty. Perhaps it was because his experience of life elsewhere was so full of Sabbath-school picnics, petty economies, wholesome advice as to how to succeed in life, and the inescapable odors of cooking, that he found this existence so alluring, these smartly clad men and women so attractive that he was so moved by these starry apple orchards that bloomed perennially under the limelight.
In Amor Towles’ The Bootlegger Tommy and his wife, the narrator, live the charmed life of young wealthy New Yorkers. For their arranged “date night” away from the children Tommy has bought expensive concert tickets in a series at Carnegie Hall and arranged dinner beforehand at the proximate Russian Tea Room. The wife’s observation that her husband took on the series because he was told they could get rare and special seats just come available but had to buy the whole series brings the reader into the emotional life and vulnerabilities of the characters. The date nights and the enjoyment of the music, however, are disrupted for Tommy when he spies his other seatmate, an 80-year-old man in an overcoat, taping the concerts. Tommy can’t get over his self-righteous indignation at this injustice to artists, to the concert hall and to the artistic world in general, and he take steps to bring justice. But his reaction leads to unexpected consequence and justice is more complicated. Towles unwinds the story with masterful and gentle wit and with compassion for all.
From The Bootlegger:
“I want to report a bootlegger,” he said.
“A bootlegger?” the usher asked in surprise. “You mean a maker of moonshine?”
“No! A musical bootlegger.” Tommy pointed at the door. “The man sitting next to me is recording the concert. And it’s not the first time I’ve seen him do it. In fact, I suspect he’s a serial offender.”
The usher rolled her eyes.
“Did you just roll your eyes at me?” said Tommy in shock. “I thought it was against Carnegie Hall’s policy for members of the audience to record performances.”
From “Gratitude” by Frances Hodgson Barnett:
Then sometimes the immense quiet of the dark blue at night with the millions of stars waiting and watching makes one sure; and sometimes a sound of far-off music makes it true; and sometimes a look in some one’s eyes.
From “Tomorrow is the Child of Today” by Octavia E. Butler:
So why try to predict the future at all if it’s so difficult, so nearly impossible? Because making predictions is one way to give warning when we see ourselves drifting in dangerous directions. Because prediction is a useful way of pointing out safer, wiser courses. Because most of all, our tomorrow is the child of our today. Through thought and deed, we exert a great deal of influence over this child, even though we can’t control it absolutely. Best to think about it, though. Best to try to shape it into something good. Best to do that for any child.
From “The Price of Greatness” by Winston Churchill:
Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace, and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war.
The price of greatness is responsibility….
Sharing here an image and passage of text from The Far Side of the Desert:
She was strapped into the rear of an old Land Rover, the seatbelt cinched tightly across her shoulders, her hands bound by hard plastic cuffs in front of her. She was barefoot. Where were her shoes? The floor was hot. The metal on the floorboards burned her feet; even the floor mats were baked in the sun. She lifted her feet slightly to cool them. What had they done with her sandals? At least they hadn’t bound her feet. She might still be able to run . . . but where? Over hot pavement and sand without shoes?
(Over the years I’ve accumulated a running list of words I haven’t known from two main sources: WordDaily and WordGenius)
Dishabille
/disəˈbē(ə)l/
Part of speech: noun
The state of being only partly or scantily clothed.
Examples:
“My favorite portrait shows the ballet dancer in dishabille."
"I was surprised by the doorbell and couldn't answer while in dishabille."
"The actress is in dishabille for the third act, but it's a beautifully vulnerable performance."
Viator
/vī-ˈāt-ər /
Part of speech: Noun
1. A wayfarer, traveler.
Examples:
"I met another viator on the train and we joined up for lunch in Barcelona."
"The viator next to me at the café had a huge backpack covered with pins from his travels."
"I wore through two pairs of hiking boots during my year as a viator in Europe."
I’ve spoken at bookstores, university classes, book luncheons and in-person and zoom book clubs and look forward to more ahead. I enjoy giving readings and addressing audiences in many venues and moderating discussions on a wide range of topics and most of all meeting readers.
Click here for a list of future and past public events.
Or fill out the speaking request form to schedule an event.
I like engaging with readers so if you are in a Reading Group or Book Club and read one of my books, I’m glad to be in touch by email, zoom, or when possible in person. I can also suggest discussion topics.
Fill out the reading group form here to schedule a meeting.