Wednesday, October 22, 2025, 8:00 PM - 10:00 PM - 131 East 10th Street, New York, NY

Networks of Value: on Refusing Complicity - New York

by Palestine Festival of Literature in collaboration with The Poetry Project

In October 2024, around 1,000 writers and book workers signed an open letter boycotting Israeli literary and cultural institutions that are complicit in violating Palestinian rights, and/or have not recognized those rights publicly. Within a week, more than 5,500 more writers and book workers joined them in taking this position.

Similar letters refusing complicity have emerged across cultural industries, signaling the clarity with which people see the material and psychological connections between art and politics. But little has been done to further organize this refusal, as we approach the third year of genocide in Palestine. We want to focus on the literary industry and materially map its complicity with genocide. We want to get down to the granular: the material workings of refusal, its contradictions, and the new possibilities, directions, and direct actions that might emerge by working through—and against—those contradictions.

We’ll hear reflections from a number of writers, editors, and organisers: Nour Annan, Alessandra Bastagli, Hannah Black, Ismail Ibrahim, Benjamin Krusling, Abdeljawad Omar. Organized in collaboration with The Poetry Project.

Tickets: Networks of Value: on Refusing Complicity - New York — The Palestine Festival of Literature