By Anne Carroll | September 30, 2024
Photo Credit: Mattie Fitzpatrick / The ASP
The New York State Writers Institute and the University at Albany presented the seventh annual Albany Book Festival on Sept. 21. The festival featured many local authors and publishers, open microphone events and a range of discussion panels celebrating literature in the capital region.
The event, however, drew unexpected controversy when two authors who were planning on attending as panelists took issue with the moderator of their panel.
One of the panels initially advertised included “Girls, Coming of Age” with authors Lisa Ko, Aisha Abdel Gawad, and Emily Layden, moderated by Elisa Albert. The panel was set to be a conversation about Ko’s “Memory Piece,” Gawad’s “Between Two Moons,” and Layden’s “Once More from the Top,” which are the authors’ newest novels that all center on teenage girls navigating adolescence and becoming young adults.
However, “Girls, Coming of Age” was canceled two days before the festival began because two panelists, Gawad and Ko, reportedly did not want to be on a panel with moderator Elisa Albert who they labeled a “Zionist.”
Elisa Albert, a Jewish author who has written a number of books and articles in the past, has been vocal about her views concerning the Middle East, especially in an essay entitled “An Open Letter to Hamas’ Defenders” which was published in Tablet, an online Jewish magazine.
In her letter, Albert condemns the actions of Hamas, blaming them for “the plight of the Palestinian people.” However, she also calls for the “absolute necessity of a two-state solution, the complete removal of Netanyahu and his cronies, [and] a total withdrawal from Judea and Samaria.”
Gawad, an Arab Muslim author who was initially supposed to take part in the panel, criticized Albert for describing “anyone who questions a war as a ‘terrorist apologist.’” She eventually made the decision to drop out of the panel due to Albert’s “public rhetoric, which [she] felt mocked anyone who expressed grief over loss of Palestinian life,” Gawad told the Connecticut Post.
Similar to Gawad, Ko felt that Albert “calling those who have spoken out against the ongoing violence of Israel’s war on Gaza ‘terror apologists’” was concerning. Ko did reach out to the Writer’s Institute “in support” of Gawad, but claims not to have formally dropped out of the event, contrary to what was initially released.
The third panelist, Layden, also removed herself from “Girls, Coming of Age” out of the desire to avoid controversy.
Although Albert was willing to push on with “Girls, Coming of Age” and become its solo speaker, the Writers Institute was forced to cancel the panel from the Albany Book Festival’s programming since they “no longer had a panel to be moderated.”
The Writers Institute has been hosting the Albany Book Festival for the past seven years as well as a myriad of other literary and cultural events since its inception in 1983. On Sept. 26, the Writers Institute issued an apology statement expressing their remorse for “not treating this programming with the careful consideration it needed” and reaffirmed its “[commitment] to learning, growing, and doing better to uphold the core values of [its] mission.”
Many on social media have been vocal against Gawad, Ko and the Writers Institute, with one X (Twitter) user saying “Shame on these authors & shame on @nyswi” with an alleged leaked screenshot of communication from Writers Institute’s Assistant Director Mark Koplik. The post has received almost 800 likes and over 200 reposts.
Due to the controversy Gawad has lost her position as writer-in-residence at Wilton Public Library in Wilton, Connecticut. Gawad and Ko have both set their Instagrams to private and have reported receiving death threats.
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