"In the anniversary year of the last century's complicated romance with revolution that includes not just the Hungarian uprising of 1956, but the Spanish Civil War (1936), Spain's transition to democracy (1976), and the birth of Solidarity (1981) - activist intellectuals reflect on the status of our faith in revolution."   NYPL

Adam Michnik was born in Warsaw, Poland, on October 17, 1946. Historian, writer, lecturer, and former dissident, he has been the editor in chief of Gazeta Wyborcza, the first independent Polish daily newspaper, since its inception in 1989.

Gioconda Belli was born in Managua, Nicaragua, in 1948. She won the Casa de las Americas Prize in 1978 for Line of Fire and was a finalist for Los Angeles Times Book Prize in 2003 for The Country Under My Skin. Her novel The Scroll of Seduction will be published in 2006.

Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair, a book critic for The Atlantic, and teaches at the New School. The author of more than a dozen books, his most recent publications are Thomas Jefferson: Author of America (Eminent Lives) and Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays.

G. M. Tamás was born in Romania in 1948 and forced into exile in 1978, when he began to teach at the University of Budapest and was published only abroad. Recently, he was granted the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Soros Foundation in Hungary.

Baltasar Garzón was born in Villa de Torres, Spain, in 1955. Garzón sits on Spain’s highest criminal court, the Audiencia Nacional. He has indicted Pinochet and Osama bin Laden and recently brought charges against those allegedly involved in 9/11.

Bori Rutkai, singer, songwriter

János Bujdosó, composer, gitarist

Kristóf Darvas, pianist

János Vozár, cajonist

Related links:

Hungarian Cultural Center, NY

New York Public Library

PEN American Center

Specko Jedno

Hungarian Cultural Center - gimagine photo reports