Gillian Slovo is an internationally acclaimed South African-born British Jewish novelist, playwright, and memoirist. She served as the President of English PEN and is a leading figure in the contemporary literary world championing freedom of expression and human rights.
Slovo’s background is legendary; she is the daughter of South African anti-apartheid icons Joe Slovo and Ruth First. This heritage instilled in her a profound understanding of state violence, exile, and the cost of pursuing justice. Her works, such as the memoir Every Secret Thing and the novel Red Dust, explore personal memory and justice amidst political upheaval. She has translated her acute insight into the mechanics of “apartheid” directly into her analysis of the contemporary situation in the Middle East.
Given her family’s role in the South African struggle, Slovo is one of the most powerful Jewish voices internationally defining Israeli policies in the Occupied Territories as “apartheid.” She believes her lived experience in South Africa gives her a moral duty to point out the striking parallels between the systemic discrimination in the West Bank/Gaza and the old South African regime. As she said in the interview: I’ve never been to Gaza, but I have been to the West Bank. And I had a childhood in South Africa. I knew what apartheid looked like. And I can tell you, when I went to the West Bank, what I saw was apartheid in action, in the fact that people have different rights and different right to be on the land that is theirs.
An early signatory of Artists for Palestine UK, she staunchly supports cultural boycotts and has frequently protested the censorship of pro-Palestine artists and writers.
Throughout and after her presidency at English PEN, she has worked to protect writers facing professional threats for their criticism of Israeli policy. Between 2023 and 2026, she has authored numerous op-eds condemning the conflation of criticism of Israel with antisemitism, viewing it as a threat to both free speech and Jewish ethical traditions.
She has visited the Palestinian territories to engage with local artists and remains a key initiator of major literary petitions calling for a UK arms embargo and a permanent ceasefire in Gaza.