i’ve just turned down the pen/dau prize, in solidarity with palestine + the protest against pen america’s refusal to take a clear, principled stance on the israeli genocide against the palestinian people

i wrote my winning story, “daughterhouse,” when i was 20. i’m 22 now + thinking about who i want to be as a writer + person living in this world. i cannot begin my literary life/career stained with the blood of the palestinians pen is normalizing the genocide against

it has been 186 days of this genocide, and pen america, so-called literary bastion of free speech, has not stood against what is happening to palestinian writers, journalists, the thousands of martyred children who never got to write their first poem

following the words of palestinian artist fargo nissim tbakhi, i’m also thinking of craft as making. what is made can be unmade, and we can begin with our small acts of refusal

though i have no illusions that this refusal will move pen in any meaningful way, i am reminded that resistance is also quotidian. we must live + practice it every day, even/especially if the stakes are our careers, our livelihoods

this is palestinian poet rasha abdulhadi’s “throwing sand in the gears of genocide.” it’s through stories we imagine + build better worlds, but it’s also through action. echoing other winners/longlisters who have declined, i refuse to let my words be attached to this institution