page_title: Writer
section_title: Punishment
hierarchical_section_title: Writer / Controversial writing / Punishment
context_page_description: A writer is a person who uses written words in different styles and techniques to communicate ideas. Writers produce different forms of literary art and creative writing such as novels, short stories, books, poetry, plays, screenplays,
  teleplays, songs, and essays as well as other reports and news articles that may be of interest to the public. Writers' texts are published across a range of media. Skilled writers who are able to use language to express ideas well, often contribute significantly to the cultural content of a society.
  The term "writer" is also used elsewhere in the arts and music – such as songwriter or a screenwriter – but as a standalone "writer" normally refers to the creation of written language. Some writers work from an oral tradition.
  Writers can produce material across a number of genres, fictional or non-fictional. Other writers use multiple media – for example, graphics or illustration – to enhance the communication of their ideas. Another recent demand has been created by civil and government readers for the work of non-fictional technical writers, whose skills create understandable, interpretive documents of a practical or scientific kind.
context_section_description: The consequence of scandal for a writer may be censorship or discrediting of the work, or social ostracism of its creator. In some instances, punishment, persecution, or prison follow. The list of journalists killed in Europe, list of journalists killed in the United States and the list of journalists killed in Russia are examples. Others include:
  The Balibo Five, a group of Australian television journalists who were killed while attempting to report on Indonesian incursions into Portuguese Timor in 1975.
  Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945), an influential theologian who wrote The Cost of Discipleship and was hanged for his resistance to Nazism.
  Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937), who wrote political theory and criticism and was imprisoned for this by the Italian Fascist regime.
  Günter Grass (1927–2015), whose poem "What Must Be Said" led to his being declared persona non grata  in Israel.
  Peter Greste (born 1965), a journalist who was imprisoned in Egypt for news reporting which was "damaging to national security."
  Primo Levi (1919–1987) who, among many Jews imprisoned during World War II, wrote an account of his incarceration called If This Is a Man.
  Galileo Galilei (1564–1642), who was sentenced to imprisonment for heresy as a consequence of writing in support of the then controversial theory of heliocentrism, although the sentence was almost immediately commuted to house arrest.
  Sima Qian (145 or 135 BC – 86 BC) who "successfully defended a vilified master from defamatory charges" and was given "the choice between castration or execution." He "became a eunuch and had to bury his own book ... in order to protect it from the authorities."
  Salman Rushdie (born 1947), whose novel The Satanic Verses was banned and burned internationally after causing such a worldwide storm that a fatwā was issued against him. Though Rushdie survived, numerous others were killed in incidents connected to the novel.
  Roberto Saviano (born 1979), whose best-selling book Gomorrah provoked the Neapolitan Camorra, annoyed Silvio Berlusconi and led to him receiving permanent police protection.
  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008), who used his experience of imprisonment as the subject of his writing in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and Cancer Ward—the latter, while legally published in the Soviet Union, had to gain the approval of the USSR Union of Writers.
  William Tyndale (c. 1494 – 1536), who was executed because he translated the Bible into English.
  Simon Sheppard (born 1957) who was imprisoned in the UK for expressing controversial opinions on race and the Holocaust.
caption: Engraving depicting the death of William Tyndale
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