Maxine Hong Kingston, Alexander Chee, Alissa Nutting, David Henry Hwang, Eugene Lim, Rachel Khong, Susan Abulhawa, Susan Bernofsky, Laura van den Berg, R. O. Kwon, Bryan Washington, Danzy Senna, and Ha Jin are among the hundreds of authors who have signed an open letter in support of novelist Lisa Ko.
After privately expressing her support for Aisha Abdel Gawad—an Arab American writer who chose to withdraw from a panel at the Albany Book Festival due to a series of social media posts and published articles written by the panel’s moderator, Elisa Albert, about Israel’s assault on Gaza—Ko, a fellow panelist, was subjected to weeks of harassment as well as a broader smear campaign in the media which resulted in a loss of professional opportunities.
The open letter—which was organized by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Viet Thanh Nguyen—calls for the New York State Writers Institute (which runs the Albany Book Festival) to issue a full correction of the misinformation they circulated in September 2024 regarding Ko and Gawad:
We are disturbed and offended by the defamation of our colleagues, which has caused deep-seated harassment and loss of professional opportunities for both. Such harassment is rooted in a long history of silencing and mischaracterizing non-white voices in mainstream western media.
It goes on to condemn the “deeply problematic and dangerous” behavior of “literary gatekeepers” The New York Times and The Atlantic, as well and free speech organization PEN America, with regard to this particular case and to their wider coverage of the cultural fallout from Israel’s war on Gaza:
Though serious strides have been made in the last two decades in redressing complex identity politics in the United States, the fallout of the Gaza war among media and cultural institutions has reeked of centuries of racism. For literary gatekeepers such as the New York Times and the Atlantic to disregard fact-checking—fanned in no short form by newspapers Haaretz, The Times of Israel, and The Forward—is deeply problematic and dangerous. Additionally, free speech organization PEN America also joined these neo-McCarthyist erasure and reductionist efforts in a press release, and, along with the New York State Writers Institute, must issue a full correction in order to stop defamatory lies from spreading.
The letter closes with the following call for unity among writers in holding literary world institutions accountable:
Literary festivals, publishers, media outlets, and related organizations rely on the labor of writers to make profits. When we are united, we are powerful in holding them accountable. We stand in solidarity with Ko and Gawad and all writers who have been vilified for opposing war and genocide. To silence these voices is an attack on not only free speech, but on the truth.
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Here is the open letter in full:
We are writers and community members who stand in solidarity with Lisa Ko in calling for the New York State Writers Institute to issue a full correction of the misinformation they circulated in September 2024 regarding Ko and fellow author Aisha Abdel Gawad. We are disturbed and offended by the defamation of our colleagues, which has caused deep-seated harassment and loss of professional opportunities for both. Such harassment is rooted in a long history of silencing and mischaracterizing non-white voices in mainstream western media.
In September 2024, acclaimed Asian American author Lisa Ko reached out privately to members of the New York State Writers Institute, in solidarity with Arab American author Aisha Abdel Gawad, expressing concern about anti-Palestinian rhetoric by the moderator with whom they were to share a panel. These concerns were then mischaracterized and made public, and both authors were attacked in a smear campaign and accused of being anti-semites.
According to Ko: “I wrote the New York State Writers Institute in support of Aisha Abdel Gawad, expressing concern about a panel moderator’s public rhetoric. In social media posts and published articles, the moderator mocked people who advocate for a ceasefire by calling them ‘terror apologists’ and other names. In response, the assistant director of the Writers Institute emailed the moderator and called these concerns ‘crazy,’ going so far as to fabricate a story that I refused ‘to be on a panel with a Zionist,’ a message that was then made public. This has resulted in death and rape threats, harassing messages, and the loss of livelihood for both me and Aisha, including Aisha’s dismissal from her writer-in-residence position.
“To set the record straight, I neither refused to be on the panel nor used the word ‘Zionist,’ but this clarification, while necessary, is not the point. The implication is that vitriol directed at those opposing war and genocide is acceptable; objecting to such vitriol is not.”
Solidarity in the wake of the deadliest war to ever be recorded on children is not only essential, it is imperative. The resilience of minoritized and colonized peoples, from Asian to Black, Indigenous, Latino, Muslim, and Arab populations, is built on standing together. From the civil rights movement to recent Hollywood writers’ strikes, history has shown us that gatekeepers only negotiate when workers unite. The sustained campaign of conflating any criticism of Israel, including US-supported military action, as anti-semitic, reduces and dehumanizes the suffering and grief of entire groups and populations.
Ko’s expression of solidarity is an important aspect of the need to build and maintain coalitions among Asian, Black, Indigenous, Latino, Muslim, and Arab populations. This is in itself rooted in the cross-cultural unity necessary to overcome the racial overtures of profiling that have long been present in the US. From the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, to the fetishization of Asian bodies over decades in Western cultural imaginations as either unclean or overtly sexualized, to the perversions of calling all Arabs “terrorists,” the truth remains that media outlets play an oversized role in silencing and ridiculing critical pro-peace voices among non-white populations.
Though serious strides have been made in the last two decades in redressing complex identity politics in the United States, the fallout of the Gaza war among media and cultural institutions has reeked of centuries of racism. For literary gatekeepers such as the New York Times and the Atlantic to disregard fact-checking—fanned in no short form by newspapers Haaretz, The Times of Israel, and The Forward—is deeply problematic and dangerous. Additionally, free speech organization PEN America also joined these neo-McCarthyist erasure and reductionist efforts in a press release, and, along with the New York State Writers Institute, must issue a full correction in order to stop defamatory lies from spreading. The Writers Institute’s inadequate apology that admits that they “fell short of the ideal of celebrating diverse voices and conversations” is woefully insufficient if not met with a fuller correction.
Literary festivals, publishers, media outlets, and related organizations rely on the labor of writers to make profits. When we are united, we are powerful in holding them accountable. We stand in solidarity with Ko and Gawad and all writers who have been vilified for opposing war and genocide. To silence these voices is an attack on not only free speech, but on the truth.
To add your name to the letter, please use this form.
