Book Event for Award-Winning Jewish Author Canceled After Co-Panelists Refuse to Appear Alongside ‘Zionist’

A book event for award-winning author Elisa Albert was canceled after two fellow panelists refused to appear alongside a “Zionist.”

The nixed event, which was set to take place at the Albany Book Festival, was going to cover the female “coming of age” experience. The organizers of the event New York State Writers Institute (NYS) wrote that they were “nonplussed” at the decisions of Aisha Gawad and Lisa Ko to refuse to attend the panel, but decided to cancel the event anyway. 

Mark Koplik, NYS assistant director, sent Albert a letter saying that Gawad and Ko “don’t want to be on a panel with a ‘Zionist.'” Koplik added that Gawad and Ko’s decision not to share the event with Albert took the organization by “surprise” and that they “want to talk this out.”

Albert stated that the book event cancellation was the latest instance of discrimination she has experienced since the Hamas Oct. 7 attacks on the Jewish state. 

“Unfortunately, I’m not surprised,” Albert said. “I’ve been really vocal from the get-go, and I’ve lost many friends. I’ve seen my whole professional life wildly altered. I’m not surprised at all. I’ve seen all kinds of people behaving in all kinds of ways that are on the spectrum of this exact same kind of bigotry, complicity, fear — all of it.”

Despite the heavily anti-Israel sentiment prevalent throughout the literary world, Albert has been a public and vocal supporter of the Jewish state since the Oct. 7 slaughter of roughly 1,200 people. She has criticized Hamas supporters on social media and penned articles defending the Jewish state. Weeks following Oct. 7, she wrote “An Open Letter to Hamas’ Defenders” in which she defended the need for a two-state solution to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 

“We unequivocally condemn antisemitism,” Koplik said in an email to WAMC public radio. “I can’t tell you how sad and upsetting this is for me personally.”

Koplik added that the organizers refused to remove Albert from the panel, which resulted in two authors refusing to participate in the event. 

“We no longer had a panel to be moderated. We fully support Elisa’s expression of outrage and disappointment. We believe in civil dialogue, and we condemn intolerance of any kind,” Koplik stated. 

Zionists authors have faced a torrent of backlash from the literary industry in recent months. Joshua Leifer, the author of Tablets Shattered, was unable to hold a discussion at a New York City bookstore after the manager canceled the event over the presence of a “Zionist” rabbi on the panel. PEN America, a prominent literary society, was forced to cancel its annual awards ceremony after the organization refused to condemn the Israel-Hamas war as a “genocide” and agree to deplatform “Zionist” writers.

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