Staff of the Hachette Book Group walked out of their offices on Thursday to protest the company’s decision to publish the memoir of director and accused child molester Woody Allen. Earlier this week, Allen’s son, reporter Ronan Farrow, issued a statement saying he would be cutting ties with the publisher, whose imprint Little, Brown and Company published Farrow’s book Catch and Kill in October 2019. Allen’s autobiography, Apropos of Nothing, is reportedly set to be published by Hachette’s imprint Grand Central Publishing on April 7. “I was disappointed to learn through press reports that Hachette, my publisher, acquired Woody Allen’s memoir after other major publishers refused to do so and concealed the decision from me and its own employees while we were working on Catch and Kill — a book about how powerful men, including Woody Allen, avoid accountability from sexual abuse,†Farrow wrote.
Farrow added that Hachette did not fact-check Allen’s book, or reach out to Farrow’s sister Dylan, who has accused Allen of molesting her as a child, for comment. (Allen has denied the allegations against him.) Dylan issued her own statement on Tuesday as well, writing that Hachette’s decision to publish Allen’s book is “deeply upsetting to me personally and an utter betrayal of my brother.â€
According to the Daily Beast, staff at Little, Brown and Company circulated a memo about the walkout saying they “stand with Ronan and Dylan Farrow and survivors of sexual assault.â€
On Twitter, users began to voice their support of the walkout with the hashtags #HachetteWalkout and #LittleBrownWalkout.