Bestselling novelists Stephen King and Don Winslow have offered to donate $200,000 (£153,000) to a children’s hospital if the White House press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, will hold a press conference.

White House press briefings used to be a regular affair, but the last one was held more than 300 days ago, according to CNN, by Grisham’s predecessor in the role, Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Instead, Donald Trump prefers informal huddles with reporters, with his spokespeople appearing on sympathetic television channels to put their points across. Grisham told Fox and Friends in September that “a lot of reporters were doing [press briefings] to get famous”, and there were no plans to bring the briefing back in the near future.

Winslow, whose acclaimed Cartel trilogy charts the war on drugs, offered on Twitter to donate $100,000 in Grisham’s name to Tennessee children’s hospital St Jude’s if she would “take questions from the full White House press corps for 1 HOUR in the WH briefing room”.

King offered to match the amount. “That’s 200 K for charity. And all you have to do is YOUR DAMN JOB! Why no press briefings?” he asked Grisham on Twitter. “This administration isn’t about information, it’s about propaganda. A press briefing will only underline lies and contradictions. Go ahead, Stephanie Grisham, prove me wrong. Bonus: $200,000 to sick children.”

Grisham did not respond directly to the challenge, but told CNN’s Jake Tapper: “If you have $200,000 to play with, why not just help children because it’s a good thing to do? Donations to charity should never come with strings attached.”

Winslow responded: “First, we both regularly donate to charity. Second, why do all Trump officials refuse to answer the most basic questions they are asked? Stop evading, Stephanie. Let’s try again: Why have you not held any White House press briefings for over 300 days? What are you afraid of?”

As yet, Grisham has not explained her reasoning.

Both Winslow and King have a history of publicly criticising the president. Two years ago, Winslow took out a full-page ad in the New York Times to pull apart Trump’s border policies. And in 2019, he challenged Trump to a debate on Fox News about his administration’s border wall plans, with King announcing that he would “pay $10,000 to see that!”