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John Grisham and Donna Tartt Headline Author Protest of Mississippi’s Anti-LGBTQ Law

Ninety-five Mississippi writers signed a letter that calls for the repeal of House Bill 1523, an anti-LGBTQ law that is set to go into effect July 1st. Novelist Katy Simpson Smith penned the statement and recruited the signees, which include John Grisham, Donna Tartt, and Kathryn Stockett.
As The Washington Post reports, Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant (R) signed HB 1523 last week. The measure “protects ‘persons, religious organizations and private associations’ from discrimination claims if they refuse to serve anyone based on the belief that marriage should only be between a man and a woman.”
“There’s this sense that Mississippi has gone down this path before,” Smith told The Post. After growing “more and more frustrated,” she decided to use her platform as a writer to speak out against the bill. She sent her statement to “as many writers as she could” and received 95 signatures. “It was an amazing thing,” she said, “to see this outpouring of support from the writing community.”
In the letter, Smith writes, “What literature teaches us is empathy. It reminds us to reach out a hand to our neighbors–even if they look different from us, love different from us–and say, ‘Why, I recognize you; you’re a human, just like me, sprung from the same messy place, bound on the same hard road.’” “It is deeply disturbing to so many of us,” Smith continues, “to see the rhetoric of hate, thinly veiled, once more poison our political discourse.”
Here is the complete letter and list of signees, available through the Jackson Free Press:
Statement of Mississippi Writers Opposing HB 1523
Mississippi has a thousand histories, but these can be boiled down to two strains: our reactionary side, which has nourished intolerance and degradation and brutality, which has looked at difference as a threat, which has circled tightly around the familiar and the monolithic; and our humane side, which treasures compassion and charity and a wide net of kinship, which is fascinated by character and story, which is deeply involved in the daily business of our neighbors. This core kindness, the embracing of wildness and weirdness, is what has nurtured the great literature that has come from our state. What literature teaches us is empathy. It reminds us to reach out a hand to our neighbors — even if they look different from us, love different from us — and say, “Why, I recognize you; you’re a human, just like me, sprung from the same messy place, bound on the same hard road.” Mississippi authors have written through pain, and they have written out of disappointment, but they have also written from wonder, and pride, and a fierce desire to see the politics of this state live up to its citizens. It is deeply disturbing to so many of us to see the rhetoric of hate, thinly veiled, once more poison our political discourse. But Governor Phil Bryant and the Mississippi legislators who voted for this bill are not the sole voices of our state. There have always been people here battling injustice. That’s the version of Mississippi we believe in, and that’s the Mississippi we won’t stop fighting for.
Ellis Anderson
Ace Atkins
Howard Bahr
Angela Ball
Marion Barnwell
Steven Barthelme
Matt Bondurant
William Boyle
Carolyn Brown
Kelly Butler
Jimmy Cajoleas
Sarah C. Campbell
Julie Cantrell
Hodding Carter III
Hodding Carter IV
Maari Carter
Jim Dees
James Dickson
Kendall Dunkelberg
William Dunlap
Lee Durkee
Margaret Eby
John T. Edge
Liz Egan
Kelly Ellis
W. Ralph Eubanks
Beth Ann Fennelly
Ellen Ann Fentress
William R. Ferris
Ann Fisher-Wirth
Tom Franklin
Martha Hall Foose
Christopher Garland
Melissa Ginsburg
John Grisham
Matthew Guinn
Minrose Gwin
Becky Hagenston
Derrick Harriell
Brooks Haxton
Gerard Helferich
Ravi Howard
Lisa Howorth
T. R. Hummer
Greg Iles
Deborah Johnson
Rheta Grimsley Johnson
Michael Kardos
James Kimbrell
Taylor Kitchings
Jamie Kornegay
Kos Kostmayer
Catherine Lacey
Kiese Laymon
T. K. Lee
Beverly Lowry
Richard Lyons
Suzanne Marrs
C. Liegh McInnis
Margaret McMullan
Greg Miller
Mary Miller
Andrew Malan Milward
Benjamin Morris
Family of Willie Morris
Scott Naugle
Teresa Nicholas
Michael Pickard
Catherine Pierce
John Pritchard
Douglas Ray
Julia Reed
James Seay
Kevin Sessums
Gary Sheppard
Katy Simpson Smith
Matthew Clark Smith
Michael C. Smith
Michael Farris Smith
Kathryn Stockett
Donna Tartt
Tate Taylor
Wright Thompson
Natasha Trethewey
Tiffany Quay Tyson
Jesmyn Ward
Brad Watson
Larry Wells
Neil White
Curtis Wilkie
Ruth Williams
Austin Wilson
Gerry Wilson
Steve Yarbrough
Steve Yates
