SEVERAL WRITERS DECLINE RECOGNITION FROM PEN AMERICA IN PROTEST OVER ITS ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR STANCE

NEW York—several authors have turned down awards and awards nominations from PEN America, citing unhappiness with the literary and free expression organization’s stance on the war in Gaza.

This week, PEN announced its long lists in categories ranging from the $75,000 Jean Stein Award for best book to the $10,000 Pen/hemingway award for first novel. Authors who have asked for their names to be withdrawn include Jean Stein nominee Camonghne Felix, poetry finalist Eugenia Leigh and short story nominee Ghassan Zeineddine.

“I decided to decline this recognition and asked to be removed from the long list in solidarity with the ongoing protest of PEN’S continued normalization and denial of genocide,” Felix, author of the memoir Dyscalculia, wrote on X.

The awards are scheduled to be handed out during an April 29 ceremony in Manhattan, hosted by writer-comedian Jena Friedman. A PEN spokesman said that nine out of 60 nominated authors had asked for their names to be withdrawn. PEN also confirmed that Esther Allen had declined the Pen/ralph Manheim Award for translation and added that it would soon announce a new winner.

“We respect their decision and we will celebrate these writers in other ways,” said Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf, who oversees PEN’S literary programming.

PEN’S response to Israel’s invasion of Gaza, following the deadly October 7 attack by Hamas, has been widely criticized by writers who believe the organization has failed to fully condemn the war that has left tens of thousands of Palestinians dead, including hundreds of writers, academics and journalists.

An open letter published in March and signed by Naomi Klein, Lorrie Moore and dozens of others contends that PEN had not “launched any substantial coordinated support” for Palestinians and was not upholding its mission to “dispel all hatreds and to champion the ideal of one humanity living in peace and equality in one world.” The letter’s endorsers contrasted PEN’S forceful protests against the Russian invasion of Ukraine and alleged that PEN had done little to “mobilize” members against the Gaza war.

“Palestine’s poets, scholars, novelists and journalists and essayists have risked everything, including their lives and the lives of their families, to share their words with the world,” the letter reads in part. “Yet PEN America appears unwilling to stand with them firmly against the powers that have oppressed and dispossessed them for the last 75 years.”

A PEN spokesman noted that the organization has issued numerous statements calling for a ceasefire and mourning the destruction of museums, libraries and mosques in Gaza, and has helped set up a $100,000 emergency fund for Palestinian writers.

PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel said in a statement that PEN shared with many the “sorrow and anguish at the horrific costs of the Israel-hamas war, including for writers, poets, artists and journalists.