Immediate release. Thursday 12 December 2024
7,000+ authors and book workers join historic boycott against complicit Israeli publishers
Thousands join pledge for Palestinian rights since October.
Over 7,000 writers, editors, translators, illustrators, publishers, agents, librarians, and other book industry workers have now joined the boycott of Israeli literary institutions complicit in the dispossession of the Palestinian people. Upon its release on 28th October 2024, the public letter announcing the campaign already constituted the largest boycott against Israeli cultural institutions in history. Now, with thousands more signing on, this letter signals a watershed moment in the international movement for Palestinian rights.
Among the new signatories are Khaled Hosseini, Piper Kerman, Ling Ma, Robin Coste Lewis, Michael Rosen, Peter Carey, Omar El Akkad, Chris Kraus, R.O. Kwon, V (fka Eve Ensler), Annie Baker, Brandon Taylor, Douglas R. Hofstadter, Akwaeke Emezi, adrienne maree brown, Bette A. & Brian Eno, John Cusack, Sapphire, and Greta Thunberg.
The signatories include winners of the Nobel Prize, Booker Prize, Pulitzer Prize, Giller Prize, MacArthur Fellowship, Miles Franklin Award, and National Book Award—including three of this year’s winners: Percival Everett, Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, and Shifa Saltagi Safadi—and editors at each of the “Big Five”[1] publishing houses, and many independent publishers.
While retaliation against signatories has been rare, authors are standing fast when faced with shameful backlash. Germany’s Schelling Architecture Foundation, for example, rescinded a prize and €10k award from James Bridle, citing the writer and artist’s participation in the cultural boycott. In response, Bridle reaffirmed their position. “The far right, and the denial of genocide that accompanies it, are on the march everywhere,” they wrote. “Late enough to be ashamed, but never too late, I sign my name."[2]
The solidarity campaign, heeding the call from Palestinian civil society, takes aim at institutional complicity, not the identity or national origin of any individuals or groups of people. The list of signatories includes Israeli authors who stand against the country’s genocidal actions. Institutions willing to meet the campaign’s basic demands can exempt themselves from the cultural boycott:
- Denounce and distance themselves from Israel’s genocidal apartheid regime.
- Affirm the full protected rights of the Palestinian people under international law, including the right of return.
Research into 98 Israeli publishers found that only one, November Books, a small, independent publisher, is currently meeting these two demands against complicity.
Quotes from new signatories:
Even if I wasn’t complicit in the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people (and I am: my tax dollars fund it), the least I can offer in solidarity is my non-involvement with any institutional machinery that actively or passively normalizes this horror. We are writers: we may claim concern for the human condition or we may look away from the most grotesque, well-documented atrocity of our age, but we can’t do both.
Omar El Akkad, Giller Prize winning novelist
We have chosen to sign the boycott to express our solidarity with the oppressed people of Palestine, to support the Palestinian individuals and organizations that keep working for safety and peace, as well as the courageous Israeli individuals and organizations who publicly protest the oppression of the Palestinian people. It's not an easy choice for us to boycott any literary institution—the book world is a place where we can connect across cultures, find nuance and bridges to peace. Unfortunately, since the Israeli government and its supporters have no hesitation in using literary institutions for propaganda, we consider our decision to boycott to be a way of taking this particular weapon out of their hands.
Bette A. & Brian Eno
As an anti-Zionist Jew, it is beholden on me to take every step possible to refuse this genocide purportedly done in my name.
Nicholas Mirzoeff
As cultural workers we must speak out for the liberation of Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza.
Naomi Wallace
As an Israeli author who writes on Zionist settler colonialism, Israeli militarism and the Palestinian struggle, I add my name to any initiative calling out and demanding the end to Israeli genocide.
Jeff Halper
To Israeli publishers: If you are complicit in imprisoning the people of Gaza and Palestine, in the bombing of their hospitals and schools, in the theft of their land, in their starvation, in their slaughter, I have no interest in talking books with you.
David Bergen
I'm a signatory to this letter because history shows that boycotts are effective when they become popular. I hope the cumulative effect of all our pledges will be to catalyze those who have yet to support the BDS movement and to pressure Israel to end its occupation of Palestine, beginning with an immediate and unconditional ceasefire in Gaza.
Alejandro Varela
New signatories include
- Annie Baker, author of Janet Planet and The Flick
- James Bridle, author of Ways of Being and New Dark Age
- adrienne maree brown, author of Emergent Strategy and Pleasure Activism
- Peter Carey, author of True History of the Kelly Gang and Oscar and Lucinda
- John Cusack, co-author, with fellow signatory Arundhati Roy, of Things That Can and Cannot Be Said
- Omar El Akkad, author of What Strange Paradise
- Akwaeke Emezi, author of The Death of Vivek Oji
- Bette A. & Brian Eno, authors of What Art Does
- Douglas R. Hofstadter, author of Gödel, Escher, Bach
- Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns
- Piper Kerman, author of Orange is the New Black
- Chris Kraus, author of I Love Dick
- R.O. Kwon, author of The Incendiaries and Exhibit
- Robin Coste Lewis, author of Voyage of the Sable Venus and Other Poems
- Ling Ma, author of Severance
- Helen Macdonald, author of H is for Hawk
- Michael Rosen, author of We’re Going on a Bear Hunt
- Sapphire, author of Push (adapted into major motion picture Precious)
- Shifa Saltagi Safadi, author of Kareem Between (2024 National Book Award)
- Brandon Taylor, author of Real Life and The Late Americans
- Greta Thunberg, author of The Climate Book
- Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, author of Something About Living (2024 National Book Award)
- V (fka Eve Ensler), author of The Vagina Monologues
See the full letter and list of signatories.
If you’re a published author, translator, illustrator, publisher, editor or book worker and would like to join this position, you can do so here.
The 'Refusing Complicity' letter has been coordinated by a coalition: Books Against Genocide (BAG), Book Workers for a Free Palestine (BWfFP), Fossil Free Books, The Palestine Festival of Literature (PalFest), Publishers for Palestine, and Writers Against the War on Gaza (WAWOG).
For additional information and context, including quotes from initiating authors, read the initial press release.
- Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group, Penguin Random House, MacMillan, and HarperCollins Publishers. ↩
- Art Review, 'James Bridle: "The Denial of Genocide is on the March Everywhere"', 19 November 2024. ↩
ENDS
Notes to editors
Books Against Genocide
(BAG) is a campaign to pressure the US Big Five publishers to end their relationships with the Zionist entity. BAG is dedicated to exposing the ways that Big Five publishers manufacture consent for genocide and use books to normalize the apartheid state.
Book Workers for a Free Palestine
Book Workers for a Free Palestine (BWfFP) is a coalition of book workers – publishing workers, agents, booksellers, librarians, writers, translators, visual creatives – who have come together out of horror at the genocide taking place today in Gaza to call for an immediate ceasefire, to express solidarity with Palestinians, to organise for the academic and cultural boycott within the book industry of companies complicit in Israeli apartheid and to stand in solidarity with individuals targeted within our industry.
Fossil Free Books
Fossil Free Books is a collective of 1,000 writers, translators, artists, booksellers, publishers and other book workers who believe that a fossil fuels free, genocide free books industry is possible. Through collective power, Fossil Free Books calls for divestment across the books industry from fossil fuels and Israeli genocide, occupation and apartheid. Fossil Free Books activities and direct action have been carried out and supported by workers from all sections of the books industry - from literary household names to individuals passionate about making a difference.
The Palestine Festival of Literature
The Palestine Festival of Literature (PalFest) is a cultural initiative committed to the creation of language and ideas for combating colonialism in the 21st century. The festival was created as an act of cultural solidarity with Palestine by a group of international cultural figures brought together by Founding Chair, Ahdaf Soueif, in 2008. Since then PalFest has run an annual festival in which international authors combine with their Palestinian counterparts for free, public events in cities across Palestine. During the daytimes, visiting authors are taken to sites of historical and political relevance and meet with artists, authors and activists.
Publishers for Palestine
Publishers for Palestine is a global collective of over 500 publishers, and others who work in publishing around the world in 50 countries, who stand for justice, freedom of expression, and the power of the written word.
Writers Against the War on Gaza
Writers Against the War on Gaza (WAWOG) is a coalition of media, cultural, and academic workers who are committed to the horizon of liberation for the Palestinian people, and who organise against Zionism and American empire from within the imperial core.
Press enquiries contact: refusingcomplicityletter@gmail.com
Full letter and list of signatories.
If you’re a published author, translator, illustrator, publisher, editor or book worker and would like to join this position, you can do so here.