PEN America has called off its annual awards ceremony, scheduled for next week, due to widespread unhappiness over the organization’s response to the Israel-Hamas war.
Dozens of nominees have dropped out of the event, including nine of the 10 finalists for the PEN/Jean Stein Award for best book. With nominees withdrawing from categories ranging from translation to best first book, PEN America, a literary and free expression organization, concluded that continuing with the ceremony was not possible.
“This is a beloved event and an enormous amount of work goes into it, so we all regret this outcome but ultimately concluded it was not possible to carry out a celebration in the way we had hoped and planned,” PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel said in a statement Monday.
Since the war began last October, authors affiliated with PEN have criticized the organization for allegedly favoring Israel and downplaying atrocities against Palestinian writers and journalists. In an open letter published last month, and endorsed by Naomi Klein and Lorrie Moore among others, the signers criticized PEN for not mobilizing any substantial coordinated support for Palestinians and for not upholding its mission to dispel all hatreds and to champion the ideal of one humanity living in peace and equality in one world.
PEN has repeatedly called for a ceasefire and has helped set up a $100,000 emergency fund for Palestinian writers. Last week, PEN America President Jennifer Finney Boylan announced that a committee was being formed to review the organization’s work, not just over the last six months, but indeed, going back a decade, to ensure they are aligned with their mission and make recommendations about how they respond to future conflicts.
PEN’s other high-profile spring events — the World Voices” festivals in New York and Los Angeles, and the gala at the American Museum of Natural History — will go ahead as scheduled, a spokesperson said Monday.
