Where can we find hope in today’s seemingly hopeless world? The thoughts of Václav Havel and his legacy for the contemporary world through the eyes of foreign dissidents, writers, and artists.
This discussion on the eve of what would have been Havel’s ninetieth birthday will feature: Belarusian dissident Maxim Znak, Turkish composer and writer Zülfü Livaneli, Ukrainian writer Oksana Zabuzhko, and Irish human rights activist and barrister Bill Shipsey. The discussion will be hosted by Iranian artist Azadeh Kangarani.

Azadeh Kangarani is an Iranian theatre director, performer, and dramaturge. She was born and raised in Iran, where she also studied dramaturgy. After leaving Tehran, she eventually ended up in Prague, where she studied film and theatre directing before becoming an associate lecturer at Charles University. Her original work intertwines personal experience with themes of identity, migration, gender, silence, and intercultural understanding. She has written several autobiographical one-woman shows, including My Pink Labyrinth (2016) and Strung Up at the Airport (2017), which touch on topics such as female sexuality, ancestry, and prejudice. In recent years she has been organising discussions in the US and Europe about the ideas and legacy of former Czech president and playwright Václav Havel. Most recently, she directed Havel’s play The Unveiling (1975) as part of the Samizdat project by the Bricolage Production Company in Pittsburgh.

Zülfü Livaneli is a Turkish writer, musician, film director, and public intellectual. He is one of the most widely read contemporary Turkish authors, and his novels have been translated into dozens of languages. His narratives often intertwine the lives of his characters with the political and historical turning points of modern Turkey. Books of his published in English include Memory of Snow (2001), Bliss (2002), The Last Island (2008), and Serenade for Nadia (2011). He has received numerous awards for his literary work, including the Yunus Nadi Literary Award and the Orhan Kemal Novel Prize. He is also highly regarded in Turkey as a singer-songwriter. He has written over two hundred songs, many of which have become folk classics, and his compositions have been performed by the likes of Joan Baez, Maria Farantouri, and Udo Lindenberg. His songs often express solidarity with people affected by political upheavals and repression in Turkey. His work has long been associated with the defence of human rights, secular democracy, and criticism of authoritarianism. Because of his political views, he was imprisoned in the 1970s and subsequently spent twelve years in exile.

Bill Shipsey is an Irish human rights activist, art event promoter, and former barrister. He is the founder and executive director of Art for Human Rights (originally Art for Amnesty). For nearly a quarter of a century Shipsey has been planning and realising international fundraising and advocacy events and projects involving prominent artists from countries all over the world. The goal of these activities is to secure financial resources to support humanitarian organisations and defend human rights around the globe. He lives in Paris.

Oksana Zabuzhko is a Ukrainian writer and one of the most prominent figures of contemporary Ukrainian culture. She studied philosophy at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. She garnered international acclaim for her novel Fieldwork in Ukrainian Sex (1996), which sparked an unprecedented public debate and became one of the most influential books of the early years of Ukrainian independence. Her novel The Museum of Abandoned Secrets (2009) is considered the pinnacle of her prose work; this sweeping generational fresco was one of the first contemporary Ukrainian novels to intertwine personal and family memory with the repressed history of the twentieth century. Other works of hers published in English include A Kingdom of Fallen Statues: Poems and Essays (1996) and the collection of short stories Your Ad Could Go Here (2014). Her books have been translated into more than twenty languages and have won numerous international awards, including the Angelus Central European Literature Award (2013), the Taras Shevchenko National Prize (2019), and the French Legion of Honour (2023).

Maxim Znak is a Belarusian lawyer, writer, and former political prisoner. He studied law at the Belarusian State University, where he later became a professor. As a lawyer, he represented opposition presidential candidates Viktar Babaryka and Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya and was a member of the committee of the opposition platform. In September 2020 he was arrested and sentenced to ten years in prison, of which he served more than five. During his time in prison he wrote eighteen books, although only one of them ever saw the light of day: The Zekameron (2023), a collection of short stories depicting everyday life behind bars. He sent the first seven stories to his family as part of their correspondence. The remaining texts were smuggled out by fellow inmates who were on their way to court or were being released on house arrest. The Zekameron has been published in several languages, and its English translation won the 2023 English PEN Award. After his release in 2025, Maxim Znak was expelled from Belarus.