This event, organised with Pluto Press, marks the launch for Sara: Prison Memoir of a Kurdish Revolutionary the second instalment of the memoir of Sakine Cansiz (1958-2013), which chronicles the Kurdish revolutionary’s harrowing years in a Turkish prison, following her arrest in 1979 at the age of 21.

Jailed for more than a decade for her activities as a founding member of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and leader of its women’s movement, she faced brutal conditions and was subjected to interrogation and torture. The story she tells here is foremost one of resistance, recounting episodes of collective struggle behind bars including hunger strikes and attempts at escape.

Janet Biehl, the book’s translator and editor will be joined by Deniz Bilgin as well as Elif Sarican via skype.

Janet Biehl is a writer, editor and translator. She was Murray Bookchin’s collaborator for the last two decades of his professional life. Her most recent work is Ecology or Catastrophe: The Life of Murray Bookchin (2015, Oxford University Press) and she recently translated Revolution in Rojava (Pluto, 2016).

Elif Sarican is an activist of the Kurdish Women’s Movement and former UK Coordinator of the Kurdistan Students Union. She an adviser to the Freedom for Ocalan UK Trade Union Campaign. Elif is an anthropologist at the London School of Economics.

Deniz Bilgin is a journalist and women’s rights activist. She was a journalist in Turkey but state oppression forced her to migrate. She continues her journalism with various Kurdish TV and media outlets and also wrote a book on the historic resistance of Kobane.