The World Affairs Forum at Seton Hill University, in co-operation with the City of Asylum/Pittsburgh, will present “Art as Public Voice,” on Thursday, September 10, at 7 p.m. in the Greensburg Room, located on Seton Hill University’s main hilltop campus in Greensburg, Pa. “Art as Public Voice” will feature three international poets, Milos Djurdjevic, of Crotia, Meena Kandasamy of India, and Soheil Najm of Iraq. The event is open to the public. There is no charge to attend. For more information, call 724-830-1064.

Djurdjevic has published three volumes of poetry, with the fourth volume to be published in 2010. His poems have been included in anthologies of contemporary Croatian poetry, and translated into English, Hungarian and German. The editor of Croatian domain at the Poetry International Web, a recipient of a fellowship from the Ledig House in New York and Civitiella Raniery Center in Italy, Djurdjevic has also translated the work of Raymond Carver, Leonard Cohen, Charles Wright, Lou Reed, John Fante, Annie Proulx and Don Paterson. He participates in this event courtesy of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Exchange at the United States Department of State.

Kandasamy debuted with the poetry collection “Touch” in 2006 and has since published in The Little Magazine, the Quarterly Literary Review, and Singapore. A former editor of The Dalit, which reflects the voice of India's “ex-untouchables,” she has also translated the writings of the Tamil Eelam leaders. In 2007 she was selected for “21 under 40: New Fiction for a New Generation, the Zubaan Anthology of Young Women Writing in South Asia.”. Her collection of short-stories, “Black Magic,” will be published later this year. She is a contributing editor to Muse India and writes for the feminist blog Ultra Violet. She participates in this courtesy of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Exchange at the United States Department of State.

Najm has published four books of poetry, “Breaking the Phrase,” “Your Carpenter O Light,” “No Window Outside the Window,” and the anthology “Flowers in Flame.” In addition, he has translated selections of work by Nikos Kazantzakis, Alasdair Gray, Ted Hughes, and Jose Saramago. Najm is currently the editor of the Althaqafa Alajnabia "Foreign Culture" journal in Baghdad. He participates in this courtesy of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Exchange at the United States Department of State.

City of Asylum/Pittsburgh provides sanctuary to writers exiled under threat of death, imprisonment or persecution in their native countries. For more information, please visit www.cityofasylumpittsburgh.org.

The mission of the World Affairs Forum at Seton Hill University is to help develop a community of informed citizens by bringing together people of diverse and independent voice, politic, belief, idea, ability, vocation, learning, philosophy, and action. The goal is to initiate, foster, and sustain a greater understanding of social, geopolitical, and cultural issues affecting our human condition, while encouraging individual and group action at all levels.