The internal controversy at PEN America shouldn’t obscure the original point that touched it off: that progressive mania about Gaza has so pervaded the publishing industry that many Jewish authors, especially Israeli authors or people writing on Jewish or Israeli themes, are having a very hard time getting published. There’s no reason why book publishing should be a rigidly ideological business, but it’s no mystery that it is: The big houses are disproportionately in New York and other deep-blue cities and are full of underpaid people with advanced degrees who wanted an academic-type job.
One author has decided to take matters into her own hands:
Meg Keene had an enthusiastic agent with a long track record of sales when she submitted her novel, a romance with Israeli characters, to publishers in 2024. But she said heard over and over that editors saw her book as too Jewish to publish at a time when the war in Gaza had turned anything that could be perceived as pro-Israel radioactive. As has happened to an untold number of Jewish authors in recent years, her book did not sell.
Now, Keene is the eponymous tastemaker at the helm of a new imprint within Wicked Son Press, a 5-year-old publisher that has released mostly nonfiction that leans right. Meg Keene Books will release four to six novels over the next year that she and Wicked Son’s founders believe will elevate Jewish voices and reconstruct a bygone communal Jewish literary conversation. She’ll also edit a forthcoming literary magazine designed to shape the Jewish book-buying audience.