On September 28, authors Jenan A. Matari and Nora Lester Murad filed a state lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles, alleging anti-Palestinian discrimination, violation of their right to free speech, and breach of contract, in response to the Los Angeles Public Library’s cancelation of a December 2025 event where the two writers were scheduled to speak about their children’s books featuring Palestinian stories.

Matari and Murad had been invited to appear via video call at the LAPL on December 6 as part of the library’s programming recognizing international Read Palestine Week, which is designed to spotlight Palestinian writers. The library’s teen council voted to host the event. Matari, who is Palestinian American, was slated to promote her picture book Everything Grows in Jiddo’s Garden (Crocodile, 2025), which follows a Palestinian girl who learns about her family’s history as she helps her grandfather tend his garden. Murad, who is Jewish, planned to discuss her YA novel Ida in the Middle (Crocodile, 2022), in which Palestinian American eighth grader Ida is transported from her Massachusetts home to an alternate reality in her family’s ancestral village in Palestine after eating a magic olive.

On December 3, Matari and Murad received an email from a staffer who helped arrange the appearance, stating that the program had been canceled by library administration. “They gave us absolutely no reason,” Murad told PW. But prior to the cancelation, “the librarian who invited us did indicate that they were working against internal racism and trying to prevent the event from being canceled,” she added.

The authors later learned that in the weeks leading up to their program, an LAPL librarian circulated an internal email that was said to represent a group of Jewish library staff members, accusing Matari and Murad of “being connected to terrorists and of being antisemitic, and that we weren’t safe to have at the library,” Matari said. Documents detailing the accusations and LAPL staff’s handling of the situation are cited in the lawsuit.

Two LAPL spokespeople contacted by PW said they were unable to comment on pending litigation.

In the wake of the cancelation, Matari and Murad attempted to clarify the situation with library administration, to no avail. “We asked for a conflict resolution meeting right away, because that was offered to us in the contract that we signed,” Murad said. “We got no response.” Two subsequent requests were also ignored. Murad noted that numerous people who contacted the library and its board regarding the cancelation got no response either. “Then we started a petition,” Murad said. That effort generated 7,000 letters from the public calling for LAPL to take a stance against anti-Palestinian censorship.

In the meantime, more than 100 LAPL librarians and support staff signed a letter condemning the library’s actions. Organizations including the National Coalition Against Censorship, the ACLU of Southern California, the Authors Guild, and Palestine Legal released public statements of support for the authors and urged the library to reinstate the event. “As far as I know, they never got any response either,” Murad said. Filing the lawsuit was a last resort. “We came to a crossroads where we either had to give up and move on, or we needed to take that next step to use the law to try to hold them accountable.”

Matari agreed it was the necessary action. “This happening at the Los Angeles Public Library, one of the largest library systems in the country, could set a really dangerous precedent for authors in the future, and for the overall notion of free speech being allowed in places funded by taxpayer money, which are supposed to be free and open to all people,” Matari said. “We couldn’t let them get away with this.”

The Larger climate

Anti-Palestinian discrimination is not new to Matari. She shared that she has experienced it routinely in her personal and professional life. In 2025, she had two bookstore events canceled just prior to the LAPL controversy, and one additional library in New York canceled “within a couple of hours of the L.A. Public Library cancelation,” she noted. “In order to be in the public eye as a Palestinian, you unfortunately have to go in with that cliche thick skin and understand that you are already up against a number of obstacles that you might not even see yet, just trying to be heard,” she said.

For the last several years, Murad has focused her energy on supporting Palestinian authors who are censored. That experience fuels her motivation for bringing the lawsuit. She has researched and published several peer-reviewed articles on children’s books about Palestine and presented her findings at academic conferences. “A Palestinian child deserves to see themselves and a diversity of their stories in books and to have those reflected in public libraries and bookstores,” she said. “And non-Palestinian kids, and I’d say especially Jewish American kids, have a right to access accurate first-person information directly from Palestinians. Those readers’ rights are also denied when Palestinian authors and stories are censored.”

Murad continued, “Librarians who do their jobs bringing information and voices and perspectives into the library and protecting the public’s access to it, need to be protected from both internal and external forces that are trying to get them to participate in censorship. When we allow public institutions to become implementers of authoritarian policy, it’s really dangerous.”

Matari’s goal with the lawsuit is for the library to implement some form of anti-Palestinian racism training. “Palestinians have lost jobs and opportunities and relationships for decades for simply being Palestinian, and also for being outspoken,” she said. “The more outspoken you are, the less opportunity you have in this country.” In her view, the defamation leveled by one of the LAPL staff members is especially hurtful. “People need to understand that there are consequences for the things that you say. And those who take part in anti-Palestinian racism, just like those who take part in any type of racism or homophobia or antisemitism, should be losing their jobs as well.”

Mura said she wants the library to change its policies to ensure that racism doesn’t enter into decision making. “But more importantly, we want to draw attention to the censorship that exists at every single level of the publishing process,” she said. As an example, Murad said her research has shown that many Palestinian authors choose not to publish or to self-publish because of anti-Palestinian racism they experience when seeking an agent or publisher. Drawing further from her research findings, she noted that some agents or editors employ forms of soft censorship, such as “maybe you don’t put the word Palestine in the title. They’re trying to preempt a certain kind of criticism, and in doing so, they are modifying the way that Palestinians self-represent.” She added that when Palestinian authors do get published, their books are often not reviewed or get placed in fewer bookstores and libraries. “We hope the lawsuit can shine a light on that whole system, so that people at each stage can make decisions that will uplift all peoples.”

Since the lawsuit filing, Matari has received death threats. “A lot of this stuff is trying to scare people into silence,” she said. “But I was born and raised here, and as somebody in the Palestinian diaspora who gets to live safely and is not raising children under bombs, this is a debt I owe to my people. Being quiet and not fighting back is not an option.”