Hundreds of Authors Pledge to Boycott Israeli Cultural Institutions
Percival Everett, Sally Rooney, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Kaveh Akbar, Michelle Alexander, Naomi Klein, Téa Obreht, Peter Carey, Jericho Brown, Natalie Diaz, Mary Gaitskill, Hari Kunzru, Rachel Kushner, Jhumpa Lahiri, Justin Torres, Raven Leilani, Susan Abulhawa, Valeria Luiselli, Jia Tolentino, Ben Lerner, Jonathan Lethem, Hisham Matar, Maaza Mengiste, China Miéville, Torrey Peters, Max Porter, Miriam Toews, Leslie Jamison, Layli Long Soldier, and Ocean Vuong are among the hundreds of prominent authors who have signed an open letter pledging not to work with “Israeli cultural institutions that are complicit or have remained silent observers of the overwhelming oppression of Palestinians.”
The letter (published in its entirety below) represents perhaps the most forceful statement of condemnation—and largest commitment to cultural boycott—ever made by the American literary community with regard to the Israeli cultural sector:
This is a genocide, as leading expert scholars and institutions have been saying for months. Israeli officials speak plainly of their motivations to eliminate the population of Gaza, to make Palestinian statehood impossible, and to seize Palestinian land. This follows 75 years of displacement, ethnic cleansing and apartheid.
Culture has played an integral role in normalizing these injustices. Israeli cultural institutions, often working directly with the state, have been crucial in obfuscating, disguising and artwashing the dispossession and oppression of millions of Palestinians for decades.
We have a role to play. We cannot in good conscience engage with Israeli institutions without interrogating their relationship to apartheid and displacement. This was the position taken by countless authors against South Africa; it was their contribution to the struggle against apartheid there.
Therefore: we will not work with Israeli cultural institutions that are complicit or have remained silent observers of the overwhelming oppression of Palestinians.
The letter has been signed by multiple winners of, and finalists for, almost every major literary award in the world—from the Booker to the Pulitzer, the National Book Award to the Women’s Prize for Fiction—and closes with a call to action for all in the book world:
To work with these institutions is to harm Palestinians, and so we call on our fellow writers, translators, illustrators and book workers to join us in this pledge. We call on our publishers, editors and agents to join us in taking a stand, in recognising our own involvement, our own moral responsibility and to stop engaging with the Israeli state and with complicit Israeli institutions.
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Here is the letter in full:
We, as writers, publishers, literary festival workers, and other book workers, publish this letter as we face the most profound moral, political and cultural crisis of the 21st century. The overwhelming injustice faced by the Palestinians cannot be denied. The current war has entered our homes and pierced our hearts.
The emergency is here: Israel has made Gaza unlivable. It is not possible to know exactly how many Palestinians Israel has killed since October, because Israel has destroyed all infrastructure, including the ability to count and bury the dead. We do know that Israel has killed, at the very least, 43,362 Palestinians in Gaza since October and that this is the biggest war on children this century.
This is a genocide, as leading expert scholars and institutions have been saying for months. Israeli officials speak plainly of their motivations to eliminate the population of Gaza, to make Palestinian statehood impossible, and to seize Palestinian land. This follows 75 years of displacement, ethnic cleansing and apartheid.
Culture has played an integral role in normalizing these injustices. Israeli cultural institutions, often working directly with the state, have been crucial in obfuscating, disguising and artwashing the dispossession and oppression of millions of Palestinians for decades.
We have a role to play. We cannot in good conscience engage with Israeli institutions without interrogating their relationship to apartheid and displacement. This was the position taken by countless authors against South Africa; it was their contribution to the struggle against apartheid there.
Therefore: we will not work with Israeli cultural institutions that are complicit or have remained silent observers of the overwhelming oppression of Palestinians. We will not cooperate with Israeli institutions including publishers, festivals, literary agencies and publications that:
A) Are complicit in violating Palestinian rights, including through discriminatory policies and practices or by whitewashing and justifying Israel’s occupation, apartheid or genocide, or
B) Have never publicly recognized the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people as enshrined in international law.
To work with these institutions is to harm Palestinians, and so we call on our fellow writers, translators, illustrators and book workers to join us in this pledge. We call on our publishers, editors and agents to join us in taking a stand, in recognising our own involvement, our own moral responsibility and to stop engaging with the Israeli state and with complicit Israeli institutions.
Initiating Signatories,
Taiba Abbas
Idil Abdillahi
Omar Abed
Jordan Abel
Aria Aber
Alex Abraham
George Abraham
Susan Abulhawa
Maan Abutaleb
Samuel Ace
Tendayi Emily Achiume
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
Zena Agha
Silvia Aguilera
Amna A. Akbar
Kaveh Akbar
Ammiel Alcalay
Michelle Alexander
Kazim Ali
Yassin Alsalman
Hanan Al-Shaykh
Hatem Aly
Suad Amiry
Tahmima Anam
Anthony Anaxagorou
Chris Andrews
Sinan Antoon
Raymond Antrobus
Gina Apostol
John Manuel Arias
Mirene Arsanios
Makram Ayache
Jennifer Baker
Nikkitha Bakshani
Ibtisam Barakat
J. Mae Barizo
Tim Barker
Lana Bastasic
Rim Battal
Alyssa Battistoni
Richard Beck
Laura van den Berg
Franco Berardi Bifo
Bennet Bergman
David Bergen
Chase Berggrun
Sarah Bernstein
Omar Berrada
Marie-Helene Bertino
Fatima Bhutto
Rose Biggin
Maya Binyam
Grace Blakeley
Nicholas Blincoe
Lindsey Boldt
Katie Bradshaw
Solomon Brager
Dionne Brand
Victoria Brittain
Jericho Brown
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown
Simone Browne
Natascha Bruce
Victoria Adukwei Bulley
Judith Butler
Anthony V. Capildeo
Tice Cin
Jo Blair Cipriano
Jade Chang
Jos Charles
Amit Chaudhury
Cathy Linh Che
Alexander Chee
Anelise Chen
Lisa Hsiao Chen
Selim-a Atallah Chettaoui
Anne Chisholm
Mona Chollet
Gina Chung
Susannah Clapp
Eliza Clark
Mark O’Connell
Rachel Connolly
Ingrid Rojas Contreras
Jonah Corne
Rio Cortez
Glen Coulthard
Molly Crabapple
Doreen Cunningham
Sarah Cypher
Selma Dabbagh
Alain Damasio
Danielle Davis
Siddhartha Deb
Michael DeForge
Junot Díaz
Natalie Diaz
Ted Dodson
Lisa Duggan
Cyrus Dunham
Natalie Dunn
Martin Edmond
Ben Ehrenreich
Tala El-fahmawi
Yara El-Ghadban
Mohammed El-Kurd
Inua Ellams
Yasmin El-Rifae
Mercedes Eng
Nick Estes
Diana Evans
Percival Everett
Eve L. Ewing
Shon Faye
Melissa Febos
Anita Felicelli
Camonghne Felix
Megan Fernandes
Angela Flournoy
Sesshu Foster
Yara Rodrigues Fowler
Ru Freeman
Sasha Frere-Jones
Temim Fruchter
Aja Gabel
Kay Gabriel
Mary Gaitskill
Shannon Galpin
Jay Gao
Suzanne Gardinier
Camryn Garrett
Harry Josephine Giles
Ruth Wilson Gilmore
Noam Gonick
Gia Gonzales
Elisa Gonzalez
Molly Gott
Marlowe Granados
Greg Grandin
Faïza Guène
Guy Gunaratne
Abdulrazak Gurnah
Marilyn Hacker
Subhi Hadidi
Jessica Hagedorn
Mashinka Firunts Hakopian
Omar Robert Hamilton
Isabella Hammad
Mohammed Hanif
Malcolm Harris
Alison B. Hart
Tobi Haslett
Owen Hatherley
Trevor Herriot
Afua Hirsch
Jean Chen Ho
Rachel Holmes
Cathy Park Hong
Claire Hong
Andrew Hsiao
Caoilinn Hughes
Kelly X. Hui
William Rayfet Hunter
Sabrina Imbler
Mie Inouye
Mira Jacob
Leslie Jamison
Randa Jarrar
Claire Jimenez
Ha Jin
Jessica Gaitán Johannesson
Daisy Johnson
Jenny Johnson
El Jones
Owen Jones
Kira Josefsson
Fady Joudah
Elaine Kahn
Megan Kamalei Kakimoto
Anjali Kamat
Meena Kandasamy
Ghada Karmi
Yumna Kassab
Karim Kattan
Rupi Kaur
Robin D.G. Kelley
Kaie Kellough
Porochista Khakpour
Hannah Khalil
Shamus Khan
Crystal Hana Kim
Alice Kinsella
Alyson Kissner
Naomi Klein
Lisa Ko
Jamil Jan Kochai
Claire Kohda
Michelle de Kretser
Mark Krotov
Hari Kunzru
Rachel Kushner
Abdellatif Laabi
Catherine Lacey
Daisy Lafarge
Jhumpa Lahiri
Léopold Lambert
Andrea Lawlor
Kiese Laymon
Soje Lee
Raven Leilani
Ben Lerner
Jonathan Lethem
Anna Leventhal
Sophie Lewis
Daryl Li
Ursula Lindsey
Layli Long Soldier
Kyle Carrero Lopez
Roberto Lovato
Emily Lee Luan
Canisia Lubrin
Melissa Lucashenko
Valeria Luiselli
Tariq Luthun
Rosa Lyster
Carmen Maria Machado
Guy Maddin
Michael Magee
Sabrina Mahfouz
Miriam Margolyes
Lauren Markham
Francisco Márquez
Andrew Martin
Ahmed Masoud
Noreen Masud
Hisham Matar
Sarah Thankam Mathews
Robyn Maynard
Sophie McCreesh
Don Mee Choi
Maaza Mengiste
Lucy Mercer
Iman Mersal
Lina Meruane
China Miéville
Maggie Millner
Adrian Minckley
Fatima Farheen Mirza
Pankaj Mishra
Kagiso Lesego Molope
Caroline Moorehead
Ghazal Mosadeq
Michel S. Moushabeck
Hannah Moushabeck
Neel Mukherjee
Susan Muaddi Darraj
Sahar Muradi
Nora Lester Murad
Noor Naga
Ron Naiweld
Sham-e-Ali Nayeem
Cecily Nicholson
Joshua Nguyen
Viet Thanh Nguyen
Mark Nowak
Tea Obreht
Anthony Christian Ocampo
Daniel José Older
Kenan Orhan
Jen Parker
Morgan Parker
Shailja Patel
Torrey Peters
Andreas Petrossiants
Alycia Pirmohamed
Casey Plett
Max Porter
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein
Devon Price
Joy Priest
E.R. Pulgar
Derecka Purnell
Marcia Lynx Qualey
Sue Rainsford
Geoffrey Rickly
Corey Robin
Fariha Róisín
Sally Rooney
Jacqueline Rose
Margaret Ross
Jordy Rosenberg
Rhonda Roumani
Andrew Ross
Arundhati Roy
Aida Salazar
Edward Salem
John K Samson
Julia Sanches
Ayşegül Savaş
Bobuq Sayed
Robin Beth Schaer
Sarah Schulman
Kit Schluter
Claire Schwartz
Cam Scott
Walter Scott
Namwali Serpell
Kamila Shamsie
Solmaz Sharif
Kashif Sharma-Patel
Christina Sharpe
Dan Sheehan
Jack Shenker
Parini Shroff
Nikesh Shukla
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
Safiya Sinclair
Hamed Sinno
Johanna Skibsrud
Paulo Slachevsky
Gillian Slovo
Natasha Soobramanien
Ahdaf Soueif
Olivia Sudjic
Smokii Sumac
Madiha Tahir
Preti Taneja
Ben Tarnoff
Astra Taylor
Brian Teare
Saeed Teebi
Charles Theonia
Shze-Hui Tjoa
Miriam Toews
Jia Tolentino
Justin Torres
Tony Tulathimutte
Jack Underwood
Alejandro Varela
MG Vassanji
Françoise Vergès
Katherena Vermette
Cecilia Vicuna
Vanessa Angélica Villarreal
James Vincent
Ocean Vuong
Mirza Waheed
Rinaldo Walcott
Nicole Wallace
Zukiswa Wanner
Noah Warren
Imogen West-Knights
Jessica Widner
Elvia Wilk
Luke Williams
Jenny Heijun Wills
Gabriel Winant
Jacob Wren
Robin Yassin-Kassab
Nariman Youssef
Javier Zamora
Haifa Zangana
Nazanin Zarepour
Hannah Zeavin
Jeffrey Zuckerman
If you’re a published author and would like to join this position, you can do so here.
