Gay activist
Larry Kramer sent a critical letter last week to the PEN
American Center, blasting the New York-based writers
association for featuring few LGBT authors at an
international literature festival it will
host later this month and for failing, he says, to
recognize their influence on art.
Kramer, the Obie
award-winning author of The Destiny of
Me and founder of ACT UP, wrote to PEN executive
director Michael Roberts: "It is particularly
upsetting that you, a gay man, would sanction such an
exclusionary undertaking. Have you no sense of
responsibility to your people to equal the sense of
responsibility you are obviously extending to
others?" In the letter Kramer also took aim at
PEN board member and gay author Michael Cunningham, who
wrote The Hours and A Home at the End of the
World, for condoning the event.
Of the
festival's 180 participants, Kramer could identify
only six or seven who were LGBT, and none of the 82
presentations, scheduled over six days, focused on
queer literature, he said. "Indeed I can't
even locate the words 'gay,'
'lesbian,' or 'transgender' in
this entire 60, repeat 60, page program -- not in any
description of any of these 82, repeat 82, events, or,
worse, in any biography of the 180, repeat 180,
participants, a few of whom can surely be numbered as
one of my people," Kramer wrote.
Founded in 1922,
the PEN American Center aims to advance literature,
defend free speech, and foster camaraderie among
international writers. (The Advocate)
