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A group of prominent authors have announced they have withdrawn from this year’s PEN World Voices Festival, citing the inadequate response by PEN America to the war and humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
In an open letter dated Wednesday and signed by more than a dozen people, the authors called on PEN America, the free speech organization organizing the event, to report civilian casualties and deaths of journalists and writers in Gaza. asked them to do more.
“Participation in this year’s festival furthers the illusion that PEN America is truly dedicated to ‘defending free speech, which is central to humanity’s struggle against oppression,’ as PEN America claims,” the letter said. “We concluded that there was only one,” the letter states. “In the context of Israel’s continued war on Gaza, we believe PEN America has betrayed the organization’s professed commitment to peace and equality for all, and to the freedom and security of writers around the world.”
The letter was signed by a group that included novelists, poets, and nonfiction writers, including Laurie Moore, Naomi Klein, Michelle Alexander, Hisham Matar, Isabella Hamad, Marza Mengiste, and Zaina Arafat. This is the latest example of growing divisions. In the wake of the war in Gaza, literary magazines, book fairs, and festivals have grappled with how to navigate the tensions surrounding the conflict.
The PEN World Voices Festival, scheduled for May in New York City and Los Angeles, typically draws hundreds of U.S. and international writers. The event was started nearly 20 years ago with the aim of creating a dialogue between writers from around the world to counter isolationism and xenophobia in the United States after the September 11 attacks. . In past years, the festival has hosted panel discussions on issues such as gender and power, political unrest and resistance, online harassment, and threats to privacy and free speech.
The authors who decided not to participate this year said in the letter that they were not doing enough to highlight “the scale and scope of attacks on writers in Gaza, or Palestinian speech and culture more broadly.” He criticized PEN America and drew contrasts. This is due to the organization’s forced condemnation of the war in Ukraine. In 2022, in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, PEN will add an “Emergency World Voices Writers Conference” to the World Voices Festival to address conflicts and explore how writers can promote dialogue and free speech in times of war. We discussed whether it is possible to protect the
In a statement addressing its withdrawal from the festival, PEN America said its members were “appalled to witness the brutal toll of human suffering” and the challenges faced by literary and cultural institutions in their efforts to address the conflict. acknowledged the challenges faced.
“As an organization with a mission to unite writers across divisions, we are enduring the same shockwaves that travel through so many of our fellow institutions,” it said in a statement. “We are talking with a number of writers about how we can stay true to our various constituencies and to our principles and mission. We are deeply focused on how we can fulfill the promise of an organization whose mission for more than a century has been to elevate writers and literature as bridges across deep divides.”
Penn said the schedule for this year’s festival has not yet been finalized and he could not provide details about whether and how the crisis in Gaza would be addressed at the event.
The conflict between Israel and Gaza has become a polarizing issue in the literary world.
In the fall, organizers of the Frankfurt Book Fair faced a backlash after an event honoring Palestinian authors was canceled. 92NY, one of New York’s leading cultural institutions, has been mired in controversy over its decision to cancel an appearance by novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen, who signed an open letter criticizing Israel’s military operations in Gaza. I realized that.
Most recently, the online literary magazine Guernica published and then retracted a personal essay about coexistence and war in the Middle East by Joanna Chen, an Israeli writer and translator of Hebrew and Arabic poetry. After that, he faced external criticism and staff revolt. And prose. After the essay was published, multiple members of the magazine’s volunteer staff resigned in protest. After the deletion, the magazine faced new criticism for its deletion.
PEN America, which takes a stand against book banning, censorship and cancel culture, has already drawn criticism from writers who want the organization to do more to support Palestinian writers and civilians. In February, hundreds of writers signed a letter calling on Penn to “respond to the extraordinary threat that Israel’s genocide of Palestinians represents to the lives of Palestinian writers and to freedom of expression everywhere.”
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