Scottish Writers Centre hosts PENning Courage at the CCA Thursday 23 June 7pm, Free Admission
Acclaimed novelists Louise Welsh and Zoe Strachan are hosting an evening of readings by immigrant writers, many of them refugees, alongside members of writer’s association Scottish PEN.
The latest issue of Scottish PEN’s online magazine, New Writing will be launched at the event. Poems and stories on the theme of Courage – and reading the often poignant stories of refugee women from the Sighthill International Women’s Group, whose booklet, The Same Story, will be launched at the KATS Centre Sighthill at 11am the same day.
Honest and open writing
To give you a flavour, below is the opening to Lamees Tayyem’s description of life in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, which inspired the title to the International Women’s Group (IWG) women’s collection
The Same Story by Lamees Tayyem
Last night memory touched my heart and took me back forty years to where a small girl is watching all the many children born in the refugee camp walk in the early morning to the UN primary and secondary schools which were built at the entrance of the camp to include all the Palestinian children who were living in it after the ’48 catastrophe.
In memory I am a seven year old child joining the morning queue for a glass of milk and for cod liver oil, which had a horrible smell
