In October 2024, a few hundred 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. The unprecedented size of the literary boycott signals the clarity with which people see the material and psychological connections between art and politics, between art and war, perhaps even between North and South.

What limits and contradictions do we encounter when we use boycott as a starting point for resisting pacification in the arts and literature? What new possibilities, directions, and actions are opened up by working through and against them, in dialogue and in relation to one another? A number of writers will be invited by The Palestine Festival of Literature to think about these questions and more.

This event will also be livestreamed for free on the Project’s YouTube channel.