During the 2015 controversy regarding American PEN 's decision to honor '' Charlie Hebdo '' with its annual Freedom of Expression Courage Award , she , alongside Michael Ondaatje , Teju Cole , Peter Carey , Rachel Kushner and Taiye Selasi , withdrew from the group 's annual awards gala and signed a letter dissociating themselves from the award , stating that although the murders were " sickening and tragic , " they did not believe that '' Charlie Hebdo '' s work deserved an award . The letter was soon co-signed by more than 140 other PEN members . Francine Prose published an article in '' The Guardian '' justifying her position , stating that : " the narrative of the '' Charlie Hebdo '' murders — white Europeans killed in their offices by Muslim extremists — is one that feeds neatly into the cultural prejudices that have allowed our government to make so many disastrous mistakes in the Middle East . " Prose was criticized for her views by Katha Pollitt , Alex Massie , Michael C. Moynihan , Nick Cohen and others , most notably by Salman Rushdie , who in a letter to PEN described Prose and the five other authors who withdrew as fellow travellers of " fanatical Islam , which is highly organised , well funded , and which seeks to terrify us all , Muslims as well as non-Muslims , into a cowed silence . " On January 7 , 2018 , in a Facebook post , Prose accused the author Sadia Shepard of plagiarizing Mavis Gallant 's " The Ice Wagon Going Down the Street " , which had appeared in '' The New Yorker '' on December 14 , 1963 . Shepard 's piece had been published online by '' The New Yorker '' and was scheduled for release in the January 8 , 2018 issue . Though Shepard 's story reimagines the original in a new context , with added detail and altered character dynamics , Prose contended that the similarities between the two stories constituted theft , writing in her original post that the story is a " scene by scene , plot-turn by plot-turn , gesture by gesture , line-of-dialogue by line-of-dialogue copy — the only major difference being that the main characters are Pakistanis in Connecticut during the Trump era instead of Canadians in post-WWII Geneva . " In a letter to '' The New Yorker '' , Prose maintained her original stance , asking , " Is it really acceptable to change the names and the identities of fictional characters and then claim the story as one 's own original work ? Why , then , do we bother with copyrights ? " Responding to Prose 's accusation , Shepard acknowledged her debt to Gallant but maintained that her use of Gallant 's story of self-exile in postwar Europe to explore the immigrant experience of Pakistani Muslims in today 's America was justified
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Charlie Hebdo shooting
Francine Prose