In response to a rising tide of book bans and global censorship, the Northampton-based publishing house Interlink Publishing has launched a new 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to safeguarding stories at risk of being erased or silenced, and amplifying marginalized voices from the Global South.
Michel Moushabeck, board director of the Interlink Foundation and co-founder of Interlink Publishing, created the independent publishing house nearly 40 years ago. Interlink Publishing specializes in books by authors of marginalized identities and features topics on history, activism, politics, art, cultural guides, award-winning cookbooks and illustrated children’s books.
Moushabeck said he and his family began thinking about creating a foundation two years ago, in large part due to their shock from Israel’s attacks on Gaza and the re-election of President Donald Trump.
“We felt that Gaza is really asking us a vital question about what kind of a future we want to have for our children and grandchildren, and are we willing to fight for it?” he said.
Moushabeck created Interlink Publishing shortly after he graduated from New York University.
“It was an eye-opening experience for me,” he said. “I immediately embraced a lot of American values, such as the First Amendment, freedom of speech and education and democracy and all that, but I was really shocked to learn how little people knew about where I came from. People would ask me, and I would say, ‘I’m from Palestine,’ and they say, ‘Oh, Pakistan,’ and I say, ‘No, Palestine!’”
The longstanding mission of Interlink has been to promote Palestinian authors and causes. The new foundation, likewise, will build on the important work of Interlink with resources to help mentor, nurture, support, share, amplify and promote marginalized and underrepresented voices, Moushabeck said. The nonprofit will also help “to uplift the voices and preserve stories before they fade,” he added.
The foundation will champion translations to make foreign works accessible to U.S. readers and archive important cultural works to preserve heritage. According to a press release, this work will also involve “amplifying banned, suppressed, and censored voices,” providing mentorship to emerging writers, and supporting events like annual writers’ retreats that foster a stronger literary community.
“In preserving cultural heritage and amplifying voices too often pushed to the margins, we are building a more just and inclusive literary landscape — one that refuses to be silenced,” the release said.
Moushabeck noted that the foundation’s translation work is especially significant because the publishing house previously found such projects cost-prohibitive. Currently, the team is working on a translation of a book by Gazan writer and journalist Sami al-Ajrami called “The Keys to My House: A Gaza Diary.”
Though the foundation only officially launched about a month ago, it’s already had a presence in the community since receiving a $100,000 cultural sustainability grant from the New England Foundation for the Arts in April. In May, the foundation sponsored Queer Kidlit Camp, a retreat to southern Vermont for queer people in the book publishing industry; in September, it sponsored the second annual Read & Resist Fest, a social justice festival with more than 1,000 attendees.
The foundation and the publishing house operate separately, but, Moushabeck said, there will always be a connection between the two. Members of Moushabeck’s family — including three daughters, Hannah, Leyla and Maha Moushabeck; and son-in-law, Harrison Williams — are part of the leadership teams of both Interlink Publishing and the Interlink Foundation. Moushabeck and his wife Ruth transferred ownership of the publishing company to their daughters and son-in-law in 2024.
The formation of the foundation is particularly important because the literary and cultural ecosystems across the U.S. are increasingly under threat, Moushabeck said.
“Every day, we hear of policies that are shaking the foundations of cultural life in America, including the erosion of academic freedom, the cutting off of federal support to libraries and museums, the increased book banning — I can’t tell you how many Interlink books have been banned this year — the censorship of our authors of critical and diverse voices,” he said. “That’s why we felt that the work of our foundation is needed today more than ever before.”
The foundation has its own imprint as well, for “important works that are not commercially feasible,” Moushabeck said, noting that the publishing house receives plenty of manuscripts that would not likely break even but have impactful content.
Interlink Foundation’s first release, “Palestine Mapped: From the River to the Sea in Early Geographic Thought,” by Thomas Suárez, is now out.
For more information about Interlink Foundation, visit interlinkfoundation.org.
