The bestselling children's author Anthony Horowitz is also "seriously considering" pulling out of the inaugural Emirates Airline international festival of literature, which is due to starton 26 February, while other authors are understood to be reviewing their positions.

*****

In a letter to Isobel Abulhoul, the festival's director, Atwood wrote that "as an international vice-president of Pen, an organisation concerned with the censorship of writers, I cannot be part of the festival this year". Horowitz, a key speaker at the festival is deciding whether he would have more of an effect by withdrawing, or by attending and protesting."I cannot be associated with a literary festival that opposes freedom of speech," he has said in an email to the organisers.

The children's author Lauren Child, is also considering her position, and the Orange prize-winning novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie plans to attend, but says she will be talking to the organisers about their actions: "I fiercely disagree with the censorship of any work of fiction; it is ethically wrong." Jonathan Heawood, director of English Pen, praised Atwood for making "a difficult decision", but did not urge others to pull out, saying it was "a decision for individual authors to take". The high-profile line-up of writers scheduled to attend the fair includes Wilbur Smith, Kate Adie, Jung Chang, Louis de Bernières, Philippa Gregory, Frank McCourt and Karin Slaughter.

Geraldine Bedell, a journalist for the Observer newspaper and the author of several previous novels, said organizers had been discussing launching her book "The Gulf Between Us," which is set in the Gulf, at the festival. But she claims festival director Isobel Abulhoul later wrote to her publishers, saying: "I don't want our festival remembered for the launch of a controversial book." "The Gulf Between Us" is scheduled to be published by Penguin in April.

*****

Bedell said Abulhoul wrote to Penguin toward the end of last year to say the book was not acceptable because one of her characters, Sheikh Rashid, is gay. The author also said festival organizers complained that "it talks about Islam and queries what is said." Bedell, who lived in Bahrain for five years in the 1980s, said Sheikh Rashid "is only spoken about" and "assumed to be gay." "Of course it does make reference to Islam because it's a Muslim country and part of it is set during Ramadan," she added. "But the narrator - a middle-aged Englishwoman - is incredibly respectful to Islam."

Another criticism from the organizers, according to Bedell, was that "it is set in the Gulf and focuses on the Iraq war." But she said the book's action was set in the months leading up to the Iraq war. "They (festival organizers) were talking to Penguin about the possibility of launching my book there because my book is set in the Gulf and there are few books in English set in the Gulf," she told The Associated Press.