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“It didn’t happen because writers are lonely, selfish people, and they don’t do this sort of thing,”said the Mellon Assistant Professor of English at Dartmouth.

Sharlet decided to take matters into his own hands by asking Salman Rushdie if he would sign such a letter. Rushdie said yes, and now the letter has grown into a website called Occupy Writers.

“So I was wrong,” said Sharlet. “Writers are not lonely and selfish.” He is using help from Dartmouth students to vet would-be signers.

Read the full story, published by The New York Observer on 10/14/11.