Adam Michnik at the 10th Annual PEN World Voices Festival in New York

In 1989 the fall of the Berlin Wall brought in a chaotic new era. Europe and the countries of the former Soviet Union have faced ongoing challenges lasting up to the present day in their effort to rebuild. To commemorate the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Wall, some of the world\'s leading scholars, writers and journalists will discuss what happened, what could have been different, and what there still remains to be done.

Introduced by Timothy Garton Ash, Professor of European Studies at Oxford University and author of numerous books on the last 30 years of European history, the panel will debate the issues facing Eastern Europe today.

Featured will be the famed Polish journalist, writer and publisher Adam Michnik. Michnik was a prominent Solidarity activist who was imprisoned for six years in the Eighties for activity opposing the Communist regime. He was a participant in the Round Table talks of 1989 that led to the end of single-party rule, and served in the first non-Communist parliament from 1989-91. He also founded the first independent Polish newspaper  Gazeta Wyborcza  and his Agora media empire is now the largest in Poland. He has written many books and has been awarded numerous international prizes and honors, including the French Legion dHonneur and the Polish Order of the White Eagle  Poland\'s highest civilian honor.

Joining him will be the Czech writer Ivan Klima. A concentration camp survivor and opposition activist in Czechoslovakia, Klima\'s books were blacklisted after 1968, and not published again in his homeland until 1989. He has written over 20 novels and essay collections, and his autobiography My Crazy Century was published by Grove Atlantic in 2013.

As a child György Konrád narrowly escaped the Holocaust in Hungary by hiding out in a safe house in Switzerland. Persecuted under Communism because of his bourgeois background, he eventually became one of Hungary\'s most prominent opposition writers, suffering a publication ban in his native country. After democratization, he served as the president of International PEN from 1991-1993. His book of autobiographical essays A Guest in My Own Country was published by Dalkey Archive in 2007.

Geert Mak is a Dutch journalist and historian. A former editor and broadcaster, he is the author of numerous books on Dutch and European history, his best-known being In Europe: Travels Through the Twentieth Century (Pantheon, 2007).

Elzbieta Matynia is Associate Professor of Sociology and Liberal Studies at the New School, and director of the Transregional Center for Democratic Studies. Her research focuses on democratic transformations, gender and democracy, the borderlands of a shared Europe and the challenges faced by democracies emerging with a legacy of violence. Her forthcoming book is Havel-Michnik: The Uncanny Era of Post-Revolution, Conversations over a Quarter of a Century.

PEN World Voices is a gathering of more than 150 writers from 30 countries in New York City, hosted by the PEN American Center. The 10th annual festival celebrates people who have stood "on the edge", risking their careers and sometimes their lives to speak out for their art and beliefs.

For more information and to purchase tickets, please click here.

Saturday, May 3, 2014, 3:00pm - 4:30pm

The Frederick P. Rose Auditorium
The Cooper Union
41 Cooper Square, New York, NY

Admission: $20/$15
for PEN Members and students with a valid ID
Available at 866-811-4111