Writers to Read Rushdie’s Works

Some of America’s best-known writers will gather today in Los Angeles and New York to demonstrate their solidarity with British author Salman Rushdie, who has been targeted for assassination by Iran’s supreme leader, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Members of PEN Center USA West and the National Book Critics Circle will read from Rushdie’s works, including “The Satanic Verses,” during a private reception in Los Angeles. Authors Ray Bradbury, T. Coraghessan Boyle, Lawrence Thornton and Roberta Smoodin are scheduled to participate.

Prof. Carl W. Ernst of Pomona College, a student of Indo-Muslim culture and a world expert on blasphemy, will provide general background to the fury in the Muslim world: why now, why this book, why this author?

The Los Angeles event is for PEN and National Book Critics Circle members only.

The reading in New York was organized by the Freedom-to-Write Program of PEN American Center, which represents 2,200 novelists, poets, playwrights, essayists and editors.

Among those who will take part are Susan Sontag, president of the PEN center, Norman Mailer, E. L. Doctorow, Joan Didion, Gay Talese, Robert Stone, Larry McMurtry and Edward W. Said.