"State of Emergency - Unconventional Readings"
PEN Writers Against the War

will first air on the Pacifica Network week of October 11, 2004
Hosted by WBAI-Pacifica in New York, NY

"State of Emergency: Unconventional Readings" was a distinguished literary forum sponsored by the PEN American Center on August 4, 2004 at The Great Hall of New York's Cooper Union to anticipate the Republican convention, protest the Patrio Act, and to re-affirm our core freedoms. PEN is an international fellowship of writers working to promote literature and a culture of reading and to defend free expression.

Participating in the program that was broadcast live that night on WBAI were PEN President Salman Rushdie, Laurie Anderson, Paul Auster, Russell Banks Don Di Lillo, Ariel Dorfman, Eve Ensler, Jonathan Saffran Foer, Barbara Goldsmith, A.M. Homes, Margo Jefferson, Edward P. Jones, Walter Dean Myers, Francine Prose, Monique Truang, with contributions sent in by Francisco Goldman and Norman Mailer.