Author Archives: Larry Siems

About Larry Siems

Larry Siems is a writer and human rights activist who currently serves as Chief of Staff of the Knight First Amendment Institute, and previously served as director of Freedom to Write Programs for the writers advocacy organization PEN, first at PEN USA in Los Angeles and then at PEN America in New York. His work has appeared in a wide range of publications, including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Slate, The Guardian, The Nation, Ironwood, Epoch, and Southern Poetry Review. His books include Between the Lines: Letters Between Undocumented Mexican and Central American Immigrants and Their Families and Friends and The Torture Report: What the Documents Say About America's Post 9/11 Torture Program, and he edited and introduced Mohamedou Ould Slahi's Guantánamo Diary.

A Lens on Mohamedou Slahi at Guantánamo: A Conversation with Debi Cornwall and Larry Siems

Beginnings Jean-Philippe Dedieu: How did you first become interested in Guantánamo? Larry Siems: I came to this through my human rights work, and I came to human rights work through literature. I have a master’s degree in fine arts in poetry from Columbia. I’ve always been challenged by the idea of how writing and activism intersect and by poetry that makes action urgent and its nature clear. When I moved to California not long after graduate school, I was deeply interested in the American political Continue reading → Continue reading →