Burning is Banning: On the Qur’an
At this very moment, somebody somewhere in the United States is trying, in some way or other—be it by burning, be it by banning—to censor the Qur’an. At this… More
On Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn
It’s a luxury in our country that banning books is by and large an academic argument...[W]hen we have a discussion of “banned” books in this country, what we are… More
School board relents: Invisible Man is “vulgar,” but it’s back on the shelves
Wednesday night, the Randolph County School Board reversed its ban on Ralph Ellison’s novel Invisible Man, just nine days after they had removed the book from school library shelves. More
Where the Wild Things Aren’t: On the Banning of Sendak
With his work Sendak acknowledges darkness and fear, and provides an introduction to complicated thinking, the basis for reason and, fundamentally, humanism. The very things that protective censors wish… More
Wish You Were Here: The Perks of Being Banned
The humanities are in crisis, they say, and I am telling you this because the banning of books is another kind of restricted access: If you reduce the amount… More
On Banning Barbara Comyns’s Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead
I believe that one of the surest ways to enrage those inclined to censorship is to present a fictional world that requires the reader to provide the fictional world's… More
Sharing Your Truth
Novelist and former PEN staffer Nick Burd kicks off our second annual Banned Books Month with some insight into the banning of his novel, The Vast Fields of Ordinary.… More
Super-Mongrels of Indeterminate Breed
Our Freedom to Write Fellow on Banned Books Week and the magic, terror, and racism of Jack London's famous novella The Call of the Wild. More
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