Foreword

For exiled writers arriving in Canada, the first feeling of relief is often followed by a sense of exclusion, not just from their old country, but from their new. As an organization working on behalf of freedom of expression, PEN Canada has helped bring many writers to this country after they've been subjected to harassment, imprisonment, and even torture for doing something that we take for granted: expressing their beliefs non- violently. After their arrival, we work to include them in the Canadian literary community, refusing to allow the regimes they've fled to silence them in exile as they silenced them at home.

Making Meaning is a unique collaboration between PEN Canada and the Art Gallery of Ontario that broadens this welcome, introducing four exiled writers into the Canadian visual arts community. It's a two-way street. As the writing gathered here shows, the exiled writers have an enormous amount to offer this country - new perspectives, new contexts, and stunning insights into the human condition.

They are joined in this collaboration by two outstanding novelists born outside Canada, M.G. Vassanji and Cecil Foster. Together, the six writers have built bridges from the international to the domestic, the literary to the visual, the word to the image. Making Meaning is a celebration of the process of creation in all its resilience and mutability. We at PEN Canada are proud to be part of it.

Sandra Martin President, PEN Canada