By Dan Sheehan, October 23, 2024, 2:30 pm, via LitHub
Viet Thanh Nguyen, Isabella Hammad, Maaza Mengiste, Laila Lalami, Sinan Antoon, Bryan Washington, and Susan Muaddi Darraj are among the hundreds of authors who have signed a petition calling for the reinstatement of Arab American writer Aisha Abdel Gawad, who was dismissed from her position as Writer-in-Residence at Wilton Library in September.
The petition—which was organized by Palestinian American writer Muaddi Darraj on behalf of the mentoring organization Radius of Arab American Writers (RAWI)—details how Gawad was fired from her role at the Wilton Library after she “chose to withdraw from a panel at the recent Albany Book Festival due to statements made by the panel’s moderator about the Israeli assault on Gaza.”
Read the remainder of the statement and the petition in full via LitHub here.
