Faced with widespread dissatisfaction with his response to the Israel-Hamas War, the writers group PEN America has canceled its annual awards ceremony. Dozens of candidates had withdrawn from the event, which was to take place next week.
PEN, a literary and free speech organization, hands out hundreds of thousands of dollars in prizes each year, including $75,000 for the PEN/Jean Stein Best Book Prize. But with the withdrawal of nine of Jean Stein’s ten finalists, as well as nominees in categories ranging from translation to poetry, continuing the ceremony at Manhattan City Hall proved impractical.
Among those who dropped out was first novel finalist Rachel Eliza Griffiths, wife of former PEN president Salman Rushdie.
“It is a much-loved event and a huge amount of work goes into it, so we all regret this outcome, but ultimately concluded that it was not possible to hold a celebration in the way we had hoped and planned,” said Suzanne Nossel, CEO of PEN America. in a press release Monday.
The cancellation comes as war-related tensions have spread across the country, from college campuses to political events to roadways, which have at times been blocked by protesters everywhere from Illinois to California.
Since the start of the war last October, authors affiliated with PEN have repeatedly denounced the organization, accused of favoring Israel and minimizing atrocities committed against Palestinian writers and journalists. In an open letter published last month and supported notably by Naomi Klein and Lorrie Moore, the signatories criticized PEN for failing to mobilize “substantial coordinated support” for the Palestinians and for failing to uphold its mission to “dispel all hatred and to defend the ideal. of one humanity living in peace and equality in one world. »
PEN responded by citing that it had condemned the loss of life in Gaza, called for a ceasefire and helped establish 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 going back decade back, to ensure we are aligned with our mission and provide recommendations. on how we respond to future conflicts.
Critics said the relief fund was too small and pointed out that PEN waited until March to approve a ceasefire, five months after the war began.
Stein’s finalists included “Blackouts” by Justin Torres, last fall’s winner of the National Book Award for fiction, and “Biography of X” by Catherine Lacey. At the request of the estate of Jean Stein, author and oral historian who died in 2017, the prize money will be donated to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund.
“Jean Stein was a passionate advocate for Palestinian rights who published, supported and celebrated Palestinian writers and visual artists,” reads a statement from Katrina Vanden Heuvel, Wendy Vanden Heuvel and Bill Clegg, on behalf of the Stein estate . “Although she established the PEN America Prize in her name to bring attention and meaningful support to the most accomplished writers in literature, we know that she would have respected the position and sacrifice of the writers who withdrew competition this year.”
Camille T. Dungy’s “Soil” was the only remaining candidate for the Stein Prize.
PEN announced Monday that judges had selected a handful of winners, including Javier Fuentes’ “Home Country” for his first novel, the PEN/Hemingway Prize. Playwright/screenwriter Tony Kushner will still receive the PEN/Mike Nichols Writing for Performance Award. Other honorary awards include the PEN/Nabokov Prize for Achievement in International Literature, awarded to the late Maryse Condé.
Some authors have called for the resignation of Nossel and other top officials. Lacey, in an Instagram post last week, wrote that PEN needed to “make big leadership changes and enter a new era.” More than a dozen finalists supported a recent letter demanding that Nossel, Boylan and others step down and alleging that PEN had “demonstrated blatant disregard for our collective values.”
A PEN spokesperson said it had no plans to respond to calls for Nossel and others to resign.
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 proceed as planned. Klein and Moore are among the writers who have said they will not participate in the World Voices festival, which Rushdie helped create 20 years ago. Rushdie and other former PEN presidents, including Jennifer Egan and Andrew Solomon, had recently published a letter urging the literary community to participate in the festival.
“The festival was conceived in the context of conflict to bring together diverse authors and thinkers at a time of growing and deadly geopolitical tensions after 9/11,” the letter reads in part.
“We believe in PEN America and the festival and insist that, even in this time of discord, readers and writers once again find a way to come together to jointly seek ideas and inspiration.”
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