Gossip
Author Neil Gaiman won’t be at Jeff Bezos’ top secret Campfire literary retreat amid sexual assault allegations
It’s the kiss of Jeff!
Superstar author Neil Gaiman won’t be at this year’s top secret Campfire literary retreat, Page Six has learned, as he battles sexual assault allegations.
Gaiman — a longtime darling of the intellectuals’ scene — has been a mainstay of Jeff Bezos’ slightly shadowy gathering of book world bigwigs and power dorks for years.
And we’re told he was expected to be at this year’s bookish bash as well.
But sources say that, as the case has ramped up in the media over the past few weeks, Gaiman’s invitation has become lost in the mail.
The news comes as Bezos’ Amazon Prime Video “paused” production of an adaptation of his book with the bitterly ironic title, “Good Omen.”
Gaiman has reportedly offered to step back from the project to keep it on track.
In a podcast called “Master: The Allegations against Neil Gaiman,” four women gave “accounts of rough and degrading sex with the author, which they say was not always consensual.”
A fifth woman came forward after the series began.
Gaiman —the author of “The Sandman,” “American Gods,” “Coraline” and “The Graveyard Book,” among others — has denied all the allegations of non-consensual sex, and called them “disturbing.”
The scribe has previously attested to the value of the Santa Fe, New Mex., meet-up. When Amazon was squeezing books published by Hachette during a dispute with the publisher, Gaiman — whose now-estranged wife, Amanda Palmer, is a Hachette author — said in an interview that the retreat had been an opportunity to, er, hash it out.
“The many Hachette authors here this year, like my wife, have enjoyed having a chance to have a full and frank exchange of opinions with the Amazon folk,” he said in 2014.
It sounds like the he won’t be part of this year’s full and frank exchanges — although we’d put good money on him being the subject of a lot of them.
Reps for Bezos and Gaiman didn’t get back to us.
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