Photograph: Courtesy of Nora Lester Marud and Jenan Matari Nora Lester Murad and Jenan Matari City of LA faces free speech suit after public library officials scrapped two writers’ Read Palestine Week book talks Two authors have sued the city of Los Angeles over the Los Angeles public library’s (LAPL) cancellation of a Read Palestine Week event where the writers were scheduled to discuss their books featuring Palestinian stories.

Jenan Matari, a Palestinian-American author, and Nora Lester Murad, a Jewish-American writer, were invited to speak virtually at a 6 December 2025 event organized as part of the LAPL’s Teen’Scape program, which works with youth. Matari and Murad’s talk was promoted as the library’s programming for Read Palestine Week, an international event promoting Palestinian writers.

Members of the library’s “teen council”, a youth volunteer group, had advocated for the event. Matari was promoting her debut children’s book, Everything Grows in Jiddo’s Garden about a young Palestinian girl and her grandfather, and Murad was set to discuss Ida in the Middle her young adult novel about a 13-year-old Palestinian-American girl.

Three days before the discussion, the writers were told that LAPL administrators had cancelled the event without explanation, according to their complaint filed on Monday. The authors said their requests for a follow-up meeting were ignored.

The lawsuit, filed in state court in LA, alleges free speech violations, discrimination and breach of contract.

“Palestinian writers and creatives are so exhausted by having to fight every day to have our voices heard,” Matari said in her first interview about the lawsuit. “To be censored by an institution like the library is really scary because this is where free speech should be cultivated and nurtured. It sets a very dangerous precedent … Nora and I agreed we had to show these institutions they cannot continue to get away with this.”

Jenan Matari Photograph: Courtesy of Jenan Matari The cancellation came after a staff librarian wrote an email to library leadership on 17 November, accusing both writers of having “strong terrorist ties and virulently antisemitic views”, according to documents disclosed through public records requests and cited in the lawsuit. The email said it was sent on behalf of a group of Jewish library staffers, and said: “although the event is planned as an online program, the safety of library staff and participants must still be taken into consideration.”

The email included links to rightwing news articles and pro-Israel activist websites that had accused Matari and Murad of antisemitism. One website cited social media posts by Matari after the 7 October 2023 attacks in which she wrote “resist”, “May this Palestinian uprising be the push needed for the dominos of colonialism to fall from every corner of this world.”In another post, she said the US was “under Zionist occupation”.

A pro-Israel webpage about Murad cited her participation in Gaza solidarity protests at Columbia University in 2024 and included video of her chanting along with protesters: “Resistance is justified when people are occupied!”In a 16 December staff email discussing the cancellation, John Szabo, the longtime city librarian, said all library programs must “align with our core values, including welcoming everyone”. He said Matari’s posts related to 7 October “did not meet these requirements”, and said cancellation was “necessary to uphold the library’s commitment to an inclusive environment”.

An LAPL spokesperson did not respond to detailed questions about the event and the claims raised in the complaint, saying in an email Monday that it had not yet seen the lawsuit. Szabo and the librarian who sent the email criticizing the authors did not immediately respond to inquiries, nor did a spokesperson for the city attorney’s office.

Matari said she was used to being criticized, but that the terrorism allegations were particularly disturbing.

She stood by her social media posts, saying her detractors had conflated anti-Zionism with antisemitism: “I’m vehemently anti-Zionist and all my posts reflect that … I have been watching people back home living every single day with a violent oppressive boot on their neck that I pay for with my tax money.”She added: “Every day for the last 100 years has been 7 October for Palestinians.”

Murad, who has written for the Guardian and previously taught at Fordham University, condemned the claims made about her and Matari: “To say someone has strong terrorist ties is an accusation of a crime, the consequences of which can be lifetime in jail.”

Nora Lester Marud Photograph: Courtesy of Nora Lester Marud The claims of antisemitism, she said, were “laughable”. But these kinds of baseless claims, she added, can have big consequences: “In this historic moment, a completely bogus accusation can have a lot of power. It got me canceled from a library, but it’s getting people abducted and deported Matari also objected to claims that the event raised “safety” concerns: “Nora and I weren’t even supposed to be there physically, but they framed it as if our event was going to put the library in a position of danger. This fear is all manufactured. Bringing Palestinians into your spaces does not make it dangerous.” The authors’ lawsuit said the cancellation was “hypocritical” and “inconsistent” with past practices, saying the library had recently hosted several panellists who had expressed political beliefs, including an actor who campaigned for a presidential candidate.

The lawsuit claims violations of a California anti-discrimination law, writing: “The portrayal of Palestinians … as hateful or violent simply because they speak out in opposition to the Israeli genocide and in defense of the fundamental and legal rights of Palestinians is an anti-Palestinian trope that has long been employed to silence and dehumanize Palestinians.”Emails show there was internal backlash to the cancellation, including from two librarians involved in organizing the event, who wrote a joint email to leadership saying the message accusing the authors of terrorist ties was “disrespectful, disgusting, and racist”. More than 100 staffers signed a letter to administrators condemning the cancellation and requesting an apology to the authors.

One LA librarian, who was not authorized to speak publicly and requested anonymity, said the library was normally dedicated to promoting diversity, inclusion and platforming marginalized voices, and that the cancellation took staff by surprise: “People were questioning whether this was an organization for them, whether they could do the work we’re tasked with under these conditions.”

Mark Kleiman, a lawyer for the writers, argued that as a taxpayer-funded institution, the library cannot ban people from giving a talk based on their identities or viewpoints: “When you are dependent on public money, you don’t get to be bigoted and shut people up because they are Palestinian-American … and are speaking up about a genocide.”Before the LA library, two private bookstores had already cancelled planned readings with Matari. After the LA news broke, a library in New York also cancelled her scheduled event, she said.

The writers are coming forward at a time of widespread outrage about the suppression of pro-Palestine advocacy in the US after the rapper Macklemore was dropped from Ed Sheeran’s tour after his “free Palestine” comments.

In past youth events about her book, Matari said she has talked about her grandfather’s displacement and connected with a diverse range of families about their own histories and relationships to gardening: “I get to plant that seed in kids’ heads about the importance of being land stewards versus seeing land as this thing so many people abuse and take for granted.

“It would have been such a pivotal moment to see a Palestinian author and Jewish author sitting with each other,” Matari added. “These events are geared toward kids, but it really does wonders for parents who may have been hesitant to talk about Palestine to see the solidarity.”

Murad said she wanted to file the lawsuit on behalf of youth, who may no longer think the library is a safe space: “The violation of our rights has this much bigger ripple effect … not just for the children that day who couldn’t hear about our stories, but to all children who received a message that these books, these people, these ideas are too dangerous to be in the library.”

She noted that Read Palestine Week was aimed to amplify works and authors already facing censorship, arguing the library should be publicly censured: “The mission of the libraries is to protect accessibility to all information for the public … if they can get away with censoring Palestinians, then censorship is allowed and normalized.”