Hell on Earth

A writer's role in a conflicting world, whether it is real or imagined, can take unheard and untold stories and experiences, and re-tell them with a powerful honesty so that there is no choice but to listen.

Yet it can literally be hell on earth. Mexican author Lydia Cacho, recipient of the 2007 Amnesty International Ginetta Sagan Award for Women and Children's Rights and the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize 2008, was arrested, extradited and jailed for her book Los Demonios del Edn (Demons of Eden) in which she accuses high profile politicians of being involved in a ring of child pornography and prostitution.

As an editor and war correspondent for German newspaper Der Spiegel, Carolin Emcke has reported on human-rights violations and war crimes in places such as Lebanon, Colombia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Christian Jungersen is a Danish author of two prize-winning and bestselling novels, his latest being The Exception, a work which takes place in a small fictitious organisation, The Danish Centre for Genocide Information.

This event is chaired by Peter Beaumont, Foreign Affairs Editor at the Observer whose new book The Secret Life of War is available in May.