PEN America names author Phil Klay, critic of Israel’s actions in Gaza and West Bank, as president

NEW YORK (AP) — Prize-winning author Phil Klay has been named the new president of PEN America, taking on the role as the literary and free expression organization continues to be torn by disagreements stemming from the Israel-Hamas war.

Klay succeeds Dinaw Mengestu, who resigned in July in the wake of a PEN article that drew upon interviews with dozens of Jewish and Israeli writers about the “widening cultural isolation” they had faced since the war began.

Mengestu, who had been president for less than a year, posted on Instagram that the report’s emphasis showed a continued trend of bias against Palestinians and undermined his belief that PEN was capable of changing.

“I argued that the organization would defend free expression equitably and equally,” Mengestu wrote. “This report makes clear that will not happen.”

Two years ago, so many writers were unhappy with PEN’s response to the war — alleging that the leadership was slow to criticize the deaths of Palestinian writers and journalists — that the organization was called off its annual awards ceremony and “World Voices” festival because of participants dropping out. The CEO at the time, Suzanne Nossel, has since left, replaced by co-CEOs Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf and Summer Lopez.

The war was sparked by the Hamas-led invasion and brutal massacre in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, in which some 1,200 people were killed, most of them civilians, and 251 abducted.

Klay is an Iraq War veteran whose debut book, the story collection “Redeployment,” won the National Book Award for fiction in 2014. He signaled support for the PEN article on Israeli and Jewish writers, but has strongly criticized Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. The “violence is unchecked, indiscriminate and targets innocent civilians,” he wrote on X in August, quoting a New York Times story regarding the West Bank. In March 2024, he wrote a piece for the Atlantic headlined “US Support for Israel’s War Has Become Indefensible.”

In a statement released by PEN on Thursday, Klay said he held a “broad faith in cultural exchange, in sustained efforts to understand other people, other cultures, and other ideas, including uncomfortable ones, and to the creation of a more open and egalitarian public square.”

PEN America published an article, titled “A Silent Moratorium,” in July describing the “cultural isolation” surrounding Jewish and Israeli authors, with one writer saying she had been told to remove Jewish references from her romance novel.

Others reported at the time of rising exclusion, including a writer who cited hostility in a spreadsheet that was circulated online in May 2024, titled “Is your fav author a zionist???” showing authors to be boycotted based on their expressed “Zionist” views.

In response, Mengestu argued that PEN America was harming pro-Palestinian free speech by defending free expression for Israelis and Jews. His resignation stood out because opposing boycotts of a national group and discrimination against writers would seem to be clearly in the organization’s mandate, which is to “champion the freedom to write” and “protect free expression.”

Since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel, anti-Zionist activism in progressive spaces has been on the rise, including alleged prejudice in literary spaces and disputes over free speech.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.