More than 100 prominent writers and literary figures have written to PEN American Center, urging it to reject Israeli support for a festival in New York at the end of this month.

In a letter published online, they have denounced the Israeli embassy’s sponsorship of PEN’s seven-day annual World Voices Festival (PWVF).

Over 100 writers have penned a letter calling on the PEN American Center to reject support from the embassy of Israel, The Guardian reported Wednesday.

Writers including Pulitzer Prize winners Alice Walker and Junot Díaz wrote an angrily worded letter opposing the Israeli embassy’s sponsorship of PEN’s annual World Voices Festival (PWVF).

Some 100 writers, including Pulitzer Prize-winning Alice Walker, Richard Ford, and Junot Diaz, are urging the PEN American Center to deny any support from Israel as it denies “basic rights to the Palestinian people.”

The writers sent an impassioned letter to PEN America in March, but only now has it been published. PEN American Center, created in 1922, is a group aiming to promote literature and support literary fellowship.

PEN American Center, which describes itself as “the US branch of the world’s leading international literary and human rights organisation,” has chosen to align, once again, with the government of Israel, one of the world’s most persistent abusers of human rights. It has accepted funding for the annual World Voices Festival from the Israeli embassy as part of the Brand Israel programme, a government pubic relations initiative launched in 2005 that uses cultural productions to distract from Israel’s well-documented and systematic destruction of Palestinian life.