Authors held a rally in New York on Friday in support of Salman Rushdie, the Satanic Verses novelist who was viciously stabbed on stage before a lecture earlier this month, NPR reports.
The event was held on the steps of the New York Public Library, which sponsored the rally along with publisher Penguin Random House and literary nonprofits PEN America and House of SpeakEasy.
Rushdie remains hospitalized from the attack, but PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel said the author had hoped to watch via livestream. “Not even a blade to the throat could still the voice of Salman Rushdie,” Nossel said.
Andrew Solomon (Far From the Tree) told the crowd that Rushdie’s attack was “not a coincidence” given growing threats to free speech, the New York Times reports.
“We are living at a time when the right of free speech has been under constant assault from both the left and the right, when there have been closures of libraries, books removed from schools, when everything that used to be tokens of America’s freedom of speech is under threat,” Solomon said.
Other authors speaking or reading from Rushdie’s works at the event included Paul Auster, Roya Hakakian, Hari Kunzru, and Gay Talese.
Also attending was Kiran Desai, who, the Times reports, addressed Rushdie directly, saying, “This past week so many of us realized that we had been counting on you to hold up the sky. We hope you know that you can count on us, too. We are here for you, and we’re here for the long haul.”
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.
