Dinaw Mengestu resigned Thursday as president of Pen America, walking away barely seven months after he was elected to lead the country’s best known literary free-expression organization. The novelist and longtime trustee said he could not stay in a role where he believed the group defended some writers but not others, a rupture that adds yet another leadership test for an organization already worn down by months of internal strife.
As reported by The New York Times, Mengestu’s resignation came on the heels of an article titled “A Silent Moratorium,” which chronicled how Israeli and Jewish authors say they have faced harassment and professional obstacles since the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks. Mengestu told the paper the piece “continues this approach toward defending some rights while not defending others” and called that stance “unethical.”
Background
Mengestu had spent roughly a decade on Pen America’s board before being elected president in December 2025, when the organization announced he would chair the board. In its Pen America press release, the group cast his election as a chance to repair frayed relationships across the literary world and spotlighted his dual roles as novelist and educator.
How the Organization Got Here
Pen America has been pulled into a broader, heated argument over its response to the Israel Gaza war. The conflict led hundreds of writers to pull out of Pen events and pushed the group to cancel both its 2024 literary awards ceremony and its World Voices festival. The Washington Post has detailed how those clashes fed leadership turnover and spurred increasingly vocal calls for reform.
What Mengestu Told the Times
In his comments to The New York Times, Mengestu said he could not remain in a presidency that, in his view, tolerated a selective approach to defending free expression. He argued that the organization’s posture raised basic questions of principle that he was unwilling to overlook, even if that meant exiting the job he had only recently taken on.
Pen’s Stated Policy and Next Steps
Pen America has maintained that it opposes cultural and academic boycotts while still defending writers’ rights to engage in political actions. That position is laid out in the group’s public FAQ and recent statements. According to Pen America’s FAQ and the board’s latest announcements, trustees and the co chief executives will continue to manage day to day operations while the organization sorts out its governance plans.
Mengestu’s departure is likely to restart arguments that had barely cooled inside the literary community over where Pen should draw the line between advocacy and principle. For now, trustees find themselves squeezed from all sides of the debate as they decide what kind of free-speech guardian the organization wants to be next.
