Dozens of Writers Sign Open Letter: 'Sally Rooney Is a Writer, Not a Terrorist'

An open letter published today in The New Statesman opens with a blunt line: "Sally Rooney is a writer, not a terrorist." Dozens of artists, authors, actors, politicians and public thinkers signed it. The addressee is the British government.

The letter responds to a specific chain of events. Last week, Rooney announced she could no longer sell her books in the United Kingdom. The reason: the British government banned Palestine Action, a direct action group (a protest organization using nonviolent confrontation rather than lobbying), and Rooney supports that group with a portion of her novels' profits. Under the UK's anti-terror framework, that financial link put her book sales in legal jeopardy.

The signatories don't mince words about the mechanism. Here's the letter's core passage, in full:

"Her books must be available to the public. Their withdrawal from sale, on the basis of ill-conceived and draconian anti-terror legislation, is an affront to basic principles of free speech and expression so long taken for granted in this country. We categorically reject censorship—whether direct or indirect—and urge the government to change course, amending the legislation which has led us to this point of repressive absurdity."

Who signed it?

The list mixes scholarly heavyweight and literary star power:

• Scholars and public thinkers: Amitav Ghosh, Namwali Serpell, Naomi Klein, Slavoj Žižek
• Literary peers: Zadie Smith, Patricia Lockwood, Sophie Kemp
• Both lead actors from the Normal People television adaptation
• The band Massive Attack

That spread matters. You have Booker-adjacent novelists, academic theorists and pop-culture figures making the same narrow argument. Nobody in the letter disputes the government's power to ban organizations. They dispute what happens when that ban reaches a novelist's royalty stream.

What does this change for Rooney and UK readers?

In the short term, nothing legal. The letter is a petition, not a court filing. It can't force the government to amend the anti-terror legislation, and it doesn't restore Rooney's UK sales channels. What it can do is shift the political cost: when Zadie Smith and Slavoj Žižek publicly call a law "repressive absurdity," the story stops being about one author's finances and becomes a free-expression test case.

The framing is deliberate. The letter's central claim is that this amounts to indirect censorship—the state didn't ban Rooney's books, but the legislation produced the same result. That distinction, direct versus indirect, is where the legal and rhetorical fight will happen.

The context around the letter

Tanjil Rashid, The New Statesman's cultural editor, published a companion op-ed titled "This is censorship by other means." His piece objects both to the UK's anti-terror laws, which critics have long called overly broad, and to censorship in general. The newspaper didn't just host the letter; it built an editorial frame around it.

The timeline is tight. Rooney announced her UK sales withdrawal last week; the letter landed today. That speed signals an organized response, not a spontaneous one—and it suggests more public pressure on the government may follow.