International Parliament of Writers

Writers including Beryl Bainbridge, Toni Morrison, Jacques Derrida and Christopher Hitchens are involved in a new 'International Parliament of Writers'. 60 writers met in Strasbourg in November '94 to help elect a World Council and President.

The President for the next two years, is Salman Rushdie, and he has, as the press release says, 'prepared a text', called a declaration of independence, which is to act as the Parliament's founding charter:

'Writers are citizens of many countries: the finite and frontiered country of observable reality and everyday life, the boundless kingdom of the imagination, the half-lost land of memory, the federations of the heart which are both hot and cold, the united states of the mind (calm and turbulent, broad and narrow, ordered and deranged), the celestial and infernal nations of desire, and - perhaps the most important of all our habitations - the unfettered republic of the tongue', runs his impressive first sentence.

'Our Parliament of Writers exists to fight for oppressed writers and against all those who persecute them and their work, and to renew continually the declaration of independence without which writing is impossible; and not only writing, but dreaming; and not only dreaming, but thought; and not only thought, but liberty itself.'

The Parliament of Writers is seeking financial support. Address: Carrefour des littératures europénnes de Strasbourg, 13 rue du 22 Novembre, 67000 Strasbourg, France (tel 88 23 22 98).