Manuscripts Don’t Burn: a Timeline of Literary Censorship, Destruction, and Liberation
Check out our interactive timeline about censorship through the ages--and what PEN has done to fight it. More
PEN Members Reading at Paradise Banned Event
On Monday, September 30, PEN partnered with the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression for readings in celebration of PEN's Banned Book Month. Reading the poets whose work have been… More
Tyranny of Parents: Banning Shel Silverstein
Warning: What you are about to read contains profanity, vile, morbid, and anti-parent material, suggestive illustrations, subliminal messages that glorify Satan, suicide, cannibalism, disrespect for truth and legitimate authority,… More
Song of Songs
Why is Song of Songs singled out as the problem child? Song of Songs, the Bible's great love poem, is the zenith of the Bible's contemporary social incomprehensibility because… More
The Naked Lunch: Disguised Espionage
In a sense, the book was predestined to cause a censorial response, programmed, as it was, to infiltrate and disrupt. It seems likely that Burroughs, along with his editors… More
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
Immunization Through Fear: Banning R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps
I assert that the original Goosebumps series and all the subsequent spin-offs are so popular (over 300 million sold, making Stine the second most best-selling children’s author of all-time)… More
Australian Psycho
PEN staffer Jordan DeBor talks about the ban on Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho in Australia, where the book is censored for “graphic violence, sexual content, and its potential… 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
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PEN America On 
White House will not pay for staff's official Twitter profiles to be verified: "It is our understanding that Twitter Blue does not provide person-level verification as a service... a blue check mark will now simply (verify)... the account is a paid user." https://www.axios.com/2023/03/31/twitter-verification-white-house-biden-check-mark
#Florida: Pinellas school officials now deny the PG-rated ‘Ruby Bridges’ film they banned was banned.
Previously: The district banned Toni Morrison’s first novel, “The Bluest Eye,” from all high schools in January after one Palm Harbor parent complained. https://www.tampabay.com/news/education/2023/03/31/school-board-superintendent-kevin-hendrick-disney-north-shore-elementary/
Proud. @PENamerica supports kidlit and authors esp on Trans Day of visibility. Trans stories are being attacked. And it's never about the books - it's about what the books represent. The ultimate free expression - celebrating who you are. https://pen.org/banned-books-transgender-stories/