Press Releases
April 22, 2026
The Authors Guild Foundation held its annual gala on April 20, 2026, at Cipriani Wall Street, gathering more than 400 writers, publishers, and literary community supporters for a night that was equal parts celebration and rallying cry. Against a backdrop of surging book bans and ongoing legal battles over AI copyright, the literary community’s mood was defiant and determined.
Hosted by comedian and writer Josh Gondelman (Last Week Tonight, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel), the evening honored three major figures in American letters: novelist Percival Everett received the Baldacci Award for Literary Activism; Amy Tan received the Preston Award for Distinguished Service to the Literary Community; and Dr. Carla Hayden, former Librarian of Congress, received the Champion of Writers Award. Presenters included Academy Award-winning writer and director Cord Jefferson (American Fiction) and Emmy Award-winning author and host Christian Cooper (Extraordinary Birder). Notable attendees included David Baldacci, Jeannine Cummins, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Mira Jacob, Sylvia Day, Salman Rushdie, Marlon James, Walter Mosley, Alexander Chee, and many more.
Gondelman set the tone early, drawing laughs while landing punches. Generative AI, he said, “is a facsimile of a perspective, a thoughtless recombination of existing phrases, a narrative without ideas. It will never open a reader’s eyes to new horizons or inspire a personal awakening.” The crowd, he told them, was “fighting — or even better, financing — a series of crucial and interrelated battles.”
Dr. Carla Hayden, the first woman and first Black person to serve as Librarian of Congress — appointed by President Obama in 2016 and abruptly dismissed last year — was introduced by writer Marie Arana, who called her “a defender of writers” whose “influence has radiated through our most important cultural institutions.” During her tenure, Hayden expanded digital access to the Library’s vast collections and fought back against the Patriot Act’s threat to reader privacy.
Hayden accepted her award on behalf of “librarians and library workers everywhere, who open their doors each day.” Libraries, she reminded the audience, “are where a child discovers a first favorite book, where a new American finds language and belonging, where a researcher uncovers hidden history, and where communities see themselves reflected in the pages of literature.” In an era of record book bans and attacks on public institutions, she said, librarians “remain steady and hopeful.”
Cord Jefferson, presenting the Baldacci Award for Literary Activism, noted that “those who write books in an increasingly hostile country are doing the essential work of making the world a better place.” Everett accepted with characteristic wit and characteristic bite. He joked that being called an activist was akin to being called “an athletic chess player, an intellectual bobsledder,” but honored the spirit of it. Instead of a conventional speech, he offered a parable set in a near-future Library of Congress where history books have been relocated to a bunker in Anacostia, a story that drew knowing, rueful laughter from the crowd.
Christian Cooper introduced Amy Tan — his fellow Central Park birder — as a writer who has “fought book banning in schools and taken on causes that shouldn’t be political but end up that way.” Tan’s remarks were the most personal of the evening. She traced her path to becoming a writer to a childhood trauma involving a minister who assaulted her after catching her reading The Catcher in the Rye — a book now, she noted with dry irony, that shares banned-book status with The Joy Luck Club in some school districts.
“I have always been a subversively political writer by virtue of my compassion,” Tan said. “Compassion is political. It is the opposite of a blinkered mind.” She closed with an appeal to her fellow writers: “We need you to write more and more and more — and not with AI.”
Author David Baldacci, himself a plaintiff in litigation against OpenAI and Microsoft, offered an unflinching account of what fighting back actually costs. When he testified before Congress on AI in July 2025, he told lawmakers that it “felt like someone had backed up a truck to my imagination and taken everything that I had ever created.”
The legal battle has extracted a steep personal toll: Baldacci has had to turn over virtually every document he’s ever created, his full financial and royalty records, and his private communications to a third-party scrubber — all to satisfy the discovery demands of trillion-dollar companies. He has sat through nine hours of deposition, fielding what he described as “an avalanche of insulting and belittling questions. It’s as though I did something wrong instead of the fact that they stole all of the books.”
None of it has shaken his resolve. “Writers, all creators, matter,” he said. “Belief is not enough. It takes action and support.” The Authors Guild and its Foundation, he told the crowd, “Are on the front lines of this fight — in courts and in Congress.”
Proceeds from the gala support the Authors Guild Foundation’s advocacy, legal action, and nationwide literary programs.
