Last week, an open letter addressed to PEN America was despatched. It contained the signatures of over 600 writers, together with Roxane Gay, Marie-Helene Bertino, Saeed Jones,Laura van den Berg, Myriam Gurba, and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah.
The letter calls on the nonprofit group to reply to the menace that “Israel’s genocide of Palestinians represents for the lives of writers in Palestine and to freedom of expression everywhere.”
“We demand PEN wake up from its own silent, tepid, neither-here-nor-there, self-congratulatory middle of the road and take an actual stand against an actual genocide. The bare minimum.”
Right earlier than the letter was despatched, two novelists — National Book Award nominee Angela Flournoy and O. Henry Prize winner Kathleen Alcott — lower ties with PEN America over the group’s choice to give a platform to Mayim Bialik, who has opposed a ceasefire. In addition to that, Palestinian American author Randa Jarrar was bodily faraway from the occasion the place Bialik spoke.
Click right here to learn the total letter, which you may as well signal.
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