This week the American Library Association celebrates Banned Books Week, honoring notable literature that has been challenged for controversial material. This September, PEN American Center reached out to writers, editors, literary illuminati, and PEN staff to write about the banned books that matter to them most. Below you’ll find the list of books we covered along with the writers who contributed to PEN’s Banned Books Month.

Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal
by Melissa Broder 

Alice Walker’s The Color Purple
by Amy King

Boris Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago
by Matthew Zapruder

J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series
by Deji Olukotun

Judy Blume’s Forever
by Lydia Kiesling

D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover
by John Oakes

Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl”
by Larry Siems 

Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary
by Ana Božičević

Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried
by Leily Kleinbard

William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying 
by 
Rob Spillman

Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five
by Sheila Schwartz

Robie Harris on the Banning of Her Books

Vladimir Nobokov’s Lolita 
by 
Lydia Kiesling 

James Joyce’s Ulysses 
by Margaux Weisman

Robert Cormier’s The Chocolate War 
by 
Justin Alvarez

John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men 
by 
Nate Brown

J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye
by Steven L. Isenberg

Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited
by Jasmine Davey