In his memorable autobiography, Timebends, Arthur Miller wrote, "From the beginning, writing meant freedom." Few other writers of the last century were as steadfast as Miller in fighting for the right to such freedom, either for himself during the benighted McCarthyite era or for his fellow writers during his tenure as the president of PEN International.

A year after his death, the Prague Writers' Festival is honoring Miller's memory by dedicating the four-day event to the great American playwright. Among the well-known writers who will be in attendance, one, Nigerian playwright and Nobel Prize–winner Wole Soyinka, actually has Miller to thank for his life. Facing execution in Nigeria on trumped-up charges, Soyinka was the beneficiary of an urgent plea for clemency sent to the country's military leader by Miller. When the Nigerian president realized that Miller had once been married to Marilyn Monroe, he ordered Soyinka to be freed.

The festival will be a feast of panel discussions, readings, book-signings and films, with each of the days dedicated to one of Miller's works. Plus, there's an open invitation to track down your favorite writers at the bar of the Hotel Josef to extend the conversation (one of the sponsors, Becherovka, should be flowing in sticky fashion).

The opening gala event at 7 p.m. on Sunday, June 4, will be a discussion led by Czech actor/writer Marek Eben and the festival organizer Michael March with Soyinka. As the day is dedicated to Miller's Death of a Salesman, the evening will close with Volker Schlöndorff's overrated film version from 1985 with the miscast Dustin Hoffman.

Monday is A View From the Bridge day, and you can view four important novelists — Michael Cunningham, Jorge Semprun, Vassilis Vassilikos and Jorge Volpi — signing their books at the Big Ben Bookshop (Malá Štupartská 5) at noon. At 3 p.m. Miller's former wife, Monroe, is the topic of a roundtable discussion sponsored by The Guardian. The subject: whether Monroe was actually murdered. Sarah Churchwell, author of the critically acclaimed Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe, is joined by Czech novelist Hana Androniková and The Guardian's own Gary Younge, who has just completed his assignment as the paper's U.S. correspondent.

Younge returns to the table at 5 p.m. with Semprun, Vassilikos, famed American poet Jorie Graham and Austrian novelist Robert Menasse. The evening ends with a viewing of The Hours, the film based on Michael Cunningham's novel.


The Misfits, the film Miller wrote for Monroe, is Tuesday's designation. Churchwell, Graham and Younge will appear at the Big Ben Bookshop at noon to sign their books, along with British playwright Howard Brenton and Israeli poet and translator Aharon Shabtai. The latter two writers will talk about drama at The Guardian lecture at 5 p.m. with Cunningham and Czech playwright Arnošt Goldflam. At 10:30 p.m. Churchwell leads a late-night reading dedicated to "Marilyn at 80."

There's still much to savor on the festival's last day. At 3 p.m. Shabtai and Goldflam join forces for a joint reading, then at 5 p.m., the final Guardian conversation is a must, with Soyinka, Graham, Volpi and Brenton talking about whether "Language is a War by Other Means." The festival closes with a Central European gathering, when Menasse and Androniková are joined by Czech poet Jáchym Topol.

As Wednesday follows Tuesday, so After the Fall follows The Misfits. It seems odd, though, to assign one of Miller's less artistically successful plays (dealing with his painful breakup with Monroe) to the final festival day, rather than something more resounding, such as The Creation of the World and Other Business or the more capping Finishing the Picture. Better yet, there's The Archbishop's Ceiling, the play Miller wrote in the wake of what he experienced in Prague after the '68 Soviet invasion. On a bleak journey into a defeated city to see Václav Havel, Miller found mounds of material for one of his most searing dramas.

Now that Prague is again a city of free writers and discourse, it's only fitting that Miller should be the patron saint of this year's writers' festival.

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