Several independent Canadian publishers are among a group of 500 international presses calling on the Frankfurt Book Fair to cut ties with Israel.

The group, Publishers for Palestine, formed last November. In their open letter, issued last week, they are asking the Frankfurt Book Fair to “publicly denounce Israel’s regime of genocide and setter-colonial apartheid against the Palestinian people,” among other demands.

The 500 members are publishers from 50 countries, including Canada, the U.S., Ireland, Spain, and Australia. Canadian signatories include Arsenal Pulp Press, Between the Lines, Fernwood Publishing, Invisible Publishing, and others.

The letter comes not long before the opening of this year’s book fair, which will be held Oct. 16-20.

“Every year, people from more than 100 countries attend Frankfurter Buchmesse,” a spokesperson for the fair said in a statement. “The book fair is a platform for democratic discourse and peaceful encounters between publishers, authors, translators, illustrators and readers from all over the world. Our programme reflects this, featuring voices from every corner of the globe.”

Last year, the Frankfurt Book Fair took place from Oct. 18 to 22, not long after the Oct. 7 attack that precipitated the ongoing conflict in Gaza. In a statement issued before the 2023 fair, director Juergen Boos said the fair had added programming to highlight Jewish and Israeli voices. A ceremony awarding Palestinian author Adania Shibli the LiBeraturpreis, an award for authors from the global south given out by the German literary organization LitProm, that was scheduled to take place during last year’s book fair was postponed indefinitely, according to LitProm. (The award has been suspended for 2024.)

The program of this year’s fair includes a talk with Palestinian novelist and former minister of culture Atef Abu Saif called “Occupied, Destroyed, Fought over, in Turmoil: Quo Vadis Palestine?” on Oct. 19, moderated by German journalist Kristin Helberg, as well as a talk on Oct. 17 by Palestinian author Abdalrahman Alqalaq on writing in exile.