Voice of Witness

Our video The Words of Kyaw Zwar, made in collaboration with the Magnum Foundation, was featured today on Once magazine’s website. Once is a new iPad magazine that melds photography, journalism and media innovation. Join them in helping us share this video with your friends and communities.

This week, the Ms. Magazine blog featured a moving review of our latest title Inside This Place, Not of It, edited by Ayelet Waldman and Robin Levi and created in partnership with Justice Now. Read the review to learn about the book and why Ms. says of Voice of Witness: “This kind of publishing work is vital to record the lives of people who seldom have public platforms from which to tell their stories.”

Click here to read the review.

Watch this haunting video based on the experiences of Kyaw Zwar, a political prisoner whose story is featured in Nowhere to be Home. Using the images of acclaimed Chinese photographer Lu Nan and produced by Takaaki Okada, The Words of Kyaw Zwar is the result of a collaboration between Voice of Witness and the Magnum Foundation’s BE SEEN program. We thank the Panta Rhea Foundation for supporting this partnership.

To learn more about what you can do help the people of Burma, visit the website for the U.S. Campaign for Burma.

Earlier this month, Voice of Witness hosted ‘Voices from Burma,’ a reading event featuring Wallace Shawn, Kathryn Grody, Amitav Ghosh, Deborah Eisenberg and more. Hosted by the Asia Society’s Orville Schell, and presented in partnership with the Magnum Foundation, Open Society Foundations and the PEN American Center, the evening gave audiences a rare glimpse into life inside Burma. Listen to excerpts from the evening here.

Inside This Place, Not of It editors Ayelet Waldman and Robin Levi addressed this issue today in an interview on KALW’s Crosscurrents. Levi said, “The story of incarceration, particularly of incarceration of women in this country, is an artifact of the war on drugs. When we decided to increase the penalties for drug use, for drug sale, so astronomically – we began pouring hundreds of thousands of people in the prison system. We now in this country incarcerate more people than any other country in the world, certainly more than any other western country.”

Read the full interview here.

Listen to Underground America editors Peter Orner and Sandra Hernandez on San Francisco’s KALW public affairs program City Visions, tonight from 7:00 pm to 8:00 p.m. Peter and Sandra will be discussing how President Obama’s immigration policies are affecting the San Francisco Bay Area.

Join Justice Now and Voice of Witness to celebrate their new title, Inside This Place, Not of It: Narratives from Women’s Prisons, with a reading and reception featuring editors Ayelet Waldman and Robin Levi.

October 18th, 6:30 pm
826 Valencia St.
San Francisco, CA

And don’t forget– Ayelet Waldman is still donating $10 to Scholarmatch for each book pre-ordered. Don’t miss this incredible opportunity to support two great organizations at once. Order your copy today!

Join editors Ayelet Waldman and Robin Levi, and special guests Kelli Evans and Irma Rodriquez on Sunday, October 9th at the Contemporary Jewish Museum.

About the event: Best-selling author Ayelet Waldman; Robin Levi, Human Rights director for Justice Now; Kelli Evans, Deputy Director of the  ACLU Northern CA and first-account narrator Irma Rodriguez, discuss Inside This Place, Not Of It: Narratives from Women’s Prisons, which illustrates the stories of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women across the U.S. Discussion moderated by Dan Schifrin, CJM Writer in Residence, with book signing to follow. Co-sponsored by CJM’s StoryCorps StoryBooth, and presented in conjunction with Litquake.

For more information click here.

Join us in New York for ‘Voices from Burma’, a performance of narratives from Nowhere to Be Home: Narratives from Survivors of Burma’s Military Regime and photography from Magnum photographers Chien Chi Chang, Lu Nan and James Mackey.

For a limited time, your purchase of Inside This Place, Not of It: Narratives from Women’s Prisons can make an even greater impact on the lives of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women. Editor Ayelet Waldman will donate $1 for every pre-sale copy ordered on the McSweeney’s Store to help pay for narrator Sarah Chase’s college tuition.

Click here for an excerpt of Sarah’s story.

To pre-order a copy of Inside This Place, and help Sarah pay for college, click here.