**By Kelie Montalvo**
After imprisoned writer and activist Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last week, China remains under international scrutiny for its continued censoring of free speech. Subsequently, Two Dollar Radio has made two short stories by Guernica-featured author and artist Xiaoda Xiao available for free download in Chinese. Like Liu Xiaobo, Xiao was imprisoned for exercising his freedom of speech in China: when he was a twenty-year-old college student, Xiao tore a poster of Chairman Mao and was sentenced to seven years of forced labor without trial. The selected stories for download are from Xiao’s anticipated forthcoming collection, The Visiting Suit: Stories of My Prison Life, which will see a release in November by Two Dollar Radio. The Visiting Suit, as the title suggests, is a memoir-in-stories about Xiao’s time in prison. By making part of Xiao’s work readily available in Chinese, Two Dollar Radio hopes to expose those living under the censorship of Beijing’s heavy hand to Xiao’s story.
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Xiaoda Xiao is the author of the novel The Cave Man. An excerpt from his book The Visiting Suit: Stories From My Prison Life was featured in Guernica in June.
To read more blog entries about Xiaoda Xiao and others at GUERNICA click HERE .