A number of writers decline recognition from PEN America in protest over its Israel-Hamas conflict stance

NEW YORK — A number of authors have turned down awards and awards nominations from PEN America, citing unhappiness with the literary and free expression group’s stance on the conflict in Gaza.

This week, PEN introduced its lengthy lists in classes starting from the $75,000 Jean Stein Award for finest e book to the $10,000 PEN/Hemingway award for first novel. Authors who’ve requested for his or her names to be withdrawn embody Jean Stein nominee Camonghne Felix, poetry finalist Eugenia Leigh and brief story nominee Ghassan Zeineddine.

“I made a decision to say no this recognition and requested to be faraway from the lengthy record in solidarity with the continuing protest of PEN’s continued normalization and denial of genocide,” Felix, creator of the memoir “Dyscalculia,” wrote on X.

The awards are scheduled to be handed out throughout an April 29 ceremony in Manhattan, hosted by writer-comedian Jena Friedman. A PEN spokesperson stated that 9 out of 60 nominated authors had requested for his or her names to be withdrawn. PEN additionally confirmed that Esther Allen had declined the PEN/Ralph Manheim Award for translation and added that it might quickly announce a brand new winner.

“We respect their determination and we’ll have a good time these writers in different methods,” stated Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf, who oversees PEN’s literary programming.

PEN’s response to Israel’s invasion of Gaza, following the lethal Oct. 7 assault by Hamas, has been broadly criticized by writers who consider the group has failed to totally condemn the conflict that has left tens of 1000’s of Palestinians lifeless, together with lots of of writers, teachers and journalists.

An open letter printed in March and signed by Naomi Klein, Lorrie Moore and dozens of others contends that PEN had not “launched any substantial coordinated assist” for Palestinians and was not upholding its mission to “dispel all hatreds and to champion the best of 1 humanity residing in peace and equality in a single world.” The letter’s endorsers contrasted PEN’s forceful protests towards the Russian invasion of Ukraine and alleged that PEN had achieved little to “mobilize” members towards the Gaza conflict.

“Palestine’s poets, students, novelists and journalists and essayists have risked every part, together with their lives and the lives of their households, to share their phrases with the world,” the letter reads partly. “But PEN America seems unwilling to face with them firmly towards the powers which have oppressed and dispossessed them for the final 75 years.”

A PEN spokesperson famous that the group has issued quite a few statements calling for a ceasefire and mourning the destruction of museums, libraries and mosques in Gaza, and has helped arrange a $100,000 emergency fund for Palestinian writers. PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel stated in a press release that PEN shared with many the “sorrow and anguish on the horrific prices of the Israel-Hamas conflict, together with for writers, poets, artists and journalists.

“We method each battle — Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Gaza — by itself phrases, aware of complexities, what we will contribute, our constituencies, our companions and our rules,” she added. “After we take positions, we don’t align with states, armies or political teams however with freedom of expression and the preconditions to allow it.”

The criticisms come earlier than PEN’s high-profile spring occasions, together with the PEN literary awards and a key Might 16 fund-raising gala on the American Museum of Pure Historical past in Manhattan. Klein and the letter’s different signers have stated they are going to be boycotting PEN’s “World Voices” pageant subsequent month in Los Angeles and New York, a global gathering that includes panel discussions and lectures.

PEN does proceed to draw high-profile visitors, together with opponents of the conflict,

On Friday, PEN introduced that playwright-screenwriter Tony Kushner was this yr’s winner of the PEN/Mike Nichols Writing for Efficiency Award, beforehand given to Tina Fey, Kenneth Lonergan and Elaine Might amongst others. Marcia Homosexual Harden, who starred within the 1993-94 Broadway manufacturing of Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Angels in America,” and Rachel Zegler, a Golden Globe winner for her efficiency as Maria within the 2021 Kushner-Steven Spielberg adaptation of “West Facet Story,” will current the Nichols award in the course of the April 29 occasion.

Nichols, who died in 2014, directed the acclaimed HBO “Angels in America” miniseries that was launched in 2003.

“It’s intimidating sufficient that this honor is known as after Mike Nichols, nobody ever understood higher than him the methods phrases will be made to carry out. However then there’s the record of previous recipients, every one a author I like,” Kushner stated in a press release. “To say I really feel unworthy is to not say I’m not gleefully accepting! I beloved working with Mike; he was an impressive artist and a pricey buddy.

“I’m all the time happy to be related to PEN, whose work selling and defending writers is much more vitally vital in turbulent, troubled occasions like ours.”

Kushner, who’s Jewish, has lengthy criticized Israel’s therapy of the Palestinians and not too long ago informed the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that the nation’s invasion of Gaza “appears like ethnic cleaning to me.” He added that the historical past of Jewish struggling shouldn’t be used “as an excuse for a mission of dehumanizing or slaughtering different folks.”

Tensions over the Gaza conflict have prolonged all through the humanities neighborhood. Kushner was among the many defenders of final month’s Oscar acceptance speech by “Zone of Curiosity” director Jonathan Glazer, who warned towards “dehumanization” — as depicted in his Holocaust drama, winner for finest worldwide movie — and acknowledged, “Whether or not the victims of October the seventh in Israel, or the continuing assault on Gaza, all of the victims, this dehumanization, how can we resist?”

A whole bunch of Jews working in Hollywood condemned Glazer, writing in an open letter that “We refute our Jewishness being hijacked for the aim of drawing an ethical equivalence between a Nazi regime that sought to exterminate a race of individuals, and an Israeli nation that seeks to avert its personal extermination.”

Kushner won’t be the one conflict critic on the awards ceremony. PEN/Jean Stein finalist Aaliyah Bilal, who final fall as a Nationwide E-book Awards nominee learn a letter from the stage calling for an finish to the conflict, stated she can be attending the PEN occasion. The creator of the debut story assortment “Temple Folks” informed The Related Press that whereas she revered the choices of those that dropped out, she was at odds with the central PEN America management and never these managing the awards.

“They’re two separate issues,” she stated.