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April 16, 2008

Kramer Criticizes Lack of LGBT Writers at Literature Festival

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)

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