The Many Voices podcast by Scottish PEN brings into focus voices that are often marginalised or silenced. In each podcast, we’ll hear discussions between writers involved in our Many Voices outreach project, readings, and a featured interview with a Scottish PEN member about the year-round work we do.
In this episode we catch up with Sarah Short and Alicia Quiñones at Dundee Literary festival, where the writers talked about their experience working with Apex Scotland and HMP YOI Grampian, the unique challenges women in the criminal justice system face both in Scotland in Mexico - and why building trust in the prison setting can be a huge task. We also hear from exiled journalist Abdulrahman Ezz, who shares his first-hand experiences on censorship, persecution and imprisonment in Egypt, following his coverage of the Tahrir Square protests in 2011.
Sarah Short is a Glasgow based artist, specializing in writing for performance. Sarah has previously worked with the Scottish Prison Arts network and, as part of Many Voices, led writing workshops with a group of women based at HMP YOI Grampian.
Alicia Quiñones is a Mexican journalist who has written widely on Mexican prisons and taught literary journalism in prisons.
Abdulrahman Ezz is an Egyptian political activist and journalist who has worked as a photographer, TV presenter and news reporter at Sasapost and Al Jazeera.
The podcast is hosted by Sasha De-Buyl Pisco and produced by Colin Fraser. Many Voices is funded by Creative Scotland.