I think the Russians felt and Masha felt that it - you know, they put it in an article in The Atlantic that it was sort of being at a lesser table, and that felt uncomfortable. The Ukrainians felt that would run counter to the permission they had gotten to leave to be part of this big festival. And we proposed to both sides: Could we go forward, but rebrand the event, just call it PEN America instead of PEN World Voices, same venue, same participants, same time of day? That was our proposal, one approach that we took to try to resolve it. So, then we had a real dilemma about what to do with these two events that we very much wanted to host. And it wasn’t just an ethical objection, but, rather, concern in terms of the visas that they had gotten that enabled them to get permission from the army to take leave and come here to the U.S. Once they arrived here after the long trip from Ukraine, they made clear that they were not willing or able to be in an entire festival with Russians, even though it was a separate event, separate venue, that just the very fact that they were in the same festival posed a real problem for them. The Ukrainians had told us they couldn’t be on stage in an event with Russians. And then we had a separate panel with Russian writers, including Masha and two other Russian journalists - one historian, one journalist, who we’ve actually brought here to New York to work on a project that was initiated by Masha and PEN America called the Russian Internet Archive, that archives independent media from Russia that was at risk of being destroyed once Putin cracked down on independent media so aggressively after the Ukraine war started. We had two separate panels, one of Ukrainian soldiers coming from the front who we’re putting together with American soldiers who are also authors. So, what happened was, we have this annual World Voices Festival.
SUZANNE NOSSEL: Yeah, look, yeah, I need to correct you, Amy. I wanted to ask you about the Russian American journalist Masha Gessen, who resigned from your board, from the board of PEN America, after PEN America canceled a Russian writers panel at your World Voices Festival after Ukrainian writers threatened to boycott. AMY GOODMAN: And finally, I wanted to go to a very different topic with Suzanne Nossel.
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