“Tonight, the shared purpose that bound us so tightly behind Narges has frayed,” Nossel said. “Our assembly is disassembling. People of good intention and staunch conviction are wracked by a wrenching conflict. We are haunted by destruction, death and suffering that has caused some to question PEN America’s words, deeds and purpose.”
She reiterated the organization’s mission to defend free speech for all, which has meant defending “drag shows, Moms for Liberty, right-wing provocateurs and a revolutionary Communist Party bookstore.”
And then Nossel turned to the topic on many minds. She nodded at the charge that PEN America has been slow to help writers in Gaza.
“Our work to call out assaults on Palestinian writers has been extensive and evolving,” she said. “When writers are in danger, we always press ourselves to do more.”
And she cautioned against the appeal of seeing just one side of any story. “My personal touchstone, very simply, is that when it comes to Israel and Palestine, you cannot care about one people without caring about the other,” she said.
In one of the last speeches, the novelist Dinaw Mengestu, a board member and PEN America vice president, introduced the award for Pham, the Vietnamese writer. Last week, after another board member, George Packer, argued in The Atlantic that PEN America was the victim of “authoritarian” bullies bent on demanding total loyalty to their cause, Mengestu blasted back on social media, saying that critics needed to be listened to, not belittled.
In his speech, Mengestu called out to Pham and others far beyond the conviviality in the room.
“We know that writers work all too often alone, in silence and solitude, without the power or protection of the very institutions they hope to change,” he said.
