© 2026 The Key.
The Palestine Festival of Literature was founded in 2008 as an annual gathering of international and Palestinian writers in Palestine.
Over the last eighteen years it has staged twelve major festivals and welcomed hundreds of authors to its free, public events.
Authors to PalFest have included Nobel Prize winners JM Coetzee and Abdulrazak Gurnah, best-sellers such as Ta-Nehisi Coates, Michael Ondaatje, Alice Walker, Teju Cole, China Mieville, William Dalrymple, Natalie Diaz, Maaza Mengiste, Sadiya Hartman, Nick Estes and many more.
The inaugural festival was welcomed with a written address from Mahmoud Darwish and PalFest has had the honour of working with many of the most important Palestinian writers of our time, such as Rashid Khalidi, Mourid Barghouti, Tamim Barghouti, Taha Muhammad Ali, Suheir Hammad, Noura Erakat, Najwan Darwish, Mohammed El-Kurd, Isabella Hammad and many more.
PalFest’s Founding Patrons were Chinua Achebe, John Berger, Mahmoud Darwish, Seamus Heaney and Harold Pinter. Today Philip Pullman and Emma Thompson are Festival Patrons.
Its Founding Director and Chair is Ahdaf Soueif.
PalFest produces regular international events in London and New York in support of new work on Palestine; publishes a regular podcast featuring authors in conversation and a weekly cultural newsletter; curates a book subscription service and a bookshop in London.
In 2024 PalFest was one of several organizations that led the largest ever artistic boycott of Israel, with over 7,000 book workers pledging to refuse working with any organisation complicit with Israeli war crimes. That number continues to grow today.
The Key is PalFest’s newest project.
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