Maaza Mengiste, Michelle Alexander, and other writers have withdrawn from the PEN World Voices Festival scheduled for New York, USA from May 10 – 13, 2024.
PEN America’s World Voices Festival is a celebration of international literature and writers, founded by Salman Rushdie, Michael Roberts, and Esther Allen in 2004 with the inaugural event running in 2005. It hosts events, readings, conversations, and debates showcasing international literature and new writers. Some of the most important names in world literature have attended since its first edition.
The 2024 edition is set to run in May with over 100 writers invited to take part in the program. It is emerging that several writers have withdrawn their participation over the ongoing genocide in Palestine and how PEN America has failed Palestinian writers and journalists—as well as their allies in the United States. They have sent a letter to the festival organisation announcing their withdrawal.
“In the context of Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza,” the letter reads, “we believe that PEN America has betrayed the organization’s professed commitment to peace and equality for all, and to freedom and security for writers everywhere.”
The letter continues, “PEN America has not launched any substantial coordinated support or issued any reports highlighting the scale and scope of the attacks on writers in Gaza, or on Palestinian speech and culture more broadly. PEN America has done very little to mobilize or inspire its many members—quite unlike recent PEN America campaigns opposing the war in Ukraine and its impact on culture, or PEN International’s “Day of the Dead” honouring journalists killed in Latin America.”
Some of those who have signed this letter are;
- Maaza Mengiste, author The Shadow King
- Michelle Alexander, author The New Jim Crow
- Zaina Arafat, author You Exist Too Much
- Kristen Arnett, author With Teeth
- Kay Gabriel, editorial director The Poetry Project
- Isabella Hammad, author Enter Ghost
- Dima Khalidi, director Palestine Legal
- Naomi Klein, author Doppelganger
- Hisham Matar, author My Friends
- Lorrie Moore, author I Am Homeless if This Is Not My Home
- Susan Muaddi Darraj, author A Curious Land
- Neel Mukherjee, author The Lives of Others
- Anonymous (due to concerns of being persecuted by the Israeli authorities)
Please read the letter from our friends at LitHub by clicking here.
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