November 4, 2024, 3:06pm
Last Monday, we published an open letter signed by over a 1000 prominent authors—including Percival Everett, Sally Rooney, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Annie Ernaux, Arundhati Roy, Peter Carey, Kamila Shamsie, Jhumpa Lahiri, Téa Obreht, Jia Tolentino, Rachel Kushner, Jericho Brown, China Miéville, Layli Long Soldier, Rupi Kaur, Naomi Klein, Ben Lerner, and Ocean Vuong—who pledged not to work with “Israeli cultural institutions that are complicit or have remained silent observers of the overwhelming oppression of Palestinians.”
This boycott campaign—the largest commitment to cultural boycott ever made by the global literary community with regard to the Israeli cultural sector—was organized by a coalition of pro-Palestinian groups, including the Palestine Festival of Literature, Publishers for Palestine, and Writers Against the War on Gaza.
In the week since their letter was published, a staggering 5,500 more writers and book workers have signed the boycott pledge.
High profile authors who have added their names over the past seven days include John Cusack (who co-authored a book of essays and conversations with Arundhati Roy back in 2016), Robert Macfarlane, Michael Rosen, Jesmyn Ward, Katie Kitamura, Benjamin Moser, Helen Macdonald, Kiese Laymon, Akwaeke Emezi, Chris Kraus, Merve Emre, Yuri Herrera, Paul B. Preciado, Rob Delaney, Anne Waldman, Deborah Eisenberg, Mark Haddon, Ronan Bennett, Jeff Halper, Kevin Barry, Caleb Azumah Nelson, Damon Galgut, Aleksandar Hemon, Laila Lalami, Annie Baker, Sapphire, Robin Coste Lewis, Tom McCarthy, Saul Williams, Daniel Alarcón, and Greta Thunberg.
You can see the full list of signatories here.