The first Freedom to Write Symposium, featuring internationally renowned novelists and poets, will take place Saturday and Sunday (April 7 and 8) at UNLV.

Co-sponsored by UNLV's Institute of Modern Letters and City of Asylum, Las Vegas, the event will include readings and discussions by writers Russell Banks, Wole Soyinka, Syl Cheney-Coker, Mark Strand, Bill Manhire, and Jane Smiley. Audience members will have the opportunity to ask questions following the presentations.

The symposium, which is free and open to the public, will take place in the ballroom of the Moyer Student Union.

On Saturday, the following series of readings will take place:

-- 1 p.m. Russell Banks, one of the most respected novelists in America today, and Wole Soyinka, the Nobel Laureate in Literature who now is a writer in residence at UNLV as the first holder of the university's newly established Endowed Chair of Creative Writing.

-- 2:15 p.m. Syl Cheney-Coker, a writer from Sierra Leone who is the first recipient of a grant from City of Asylum, Las Vegas, and Pulitzer-Prize-winning poet Mark Strand.

-- 3:45 p.m. Bill Manhire, the first poet laureate of New Zealand, and Jane Smiley, who won the Pulitzer Prize for her novel A Thousand Acres.

On Sunday from 11 a.m. until 12:30 p.m. a panel discussion titled "Freedom to Write" will feature Soyinka, Banks, Cheney-Coker, Manhire, and Smiley. UNLV English professor and novelist Douglas Unger will serve as panel moderator.

For additional information on the symposium, call Unger at 895-3558 or UNLV English professor and novelist Richard Wiley at 895-3471.