Book Banning In Walton County Based On Misleading “Porn In Schools Report” Illustrates Alarming Influence Of Fringe Groups On Educational Censorship
School districts like Walton are letting bigoted, unfounded claims dictate access to literature for all Last week, reports circulated that Walton County School District in Florida decided to remove a… More
Banned in the USA: Rising School Book Bans Threaten Free Expression and Students’ First Amendment Rights (April 2022)
PEN America has collated an Index of School Book Bans, offering a snapshot of the trend of decisions to ban books in school libraries and classrooms in the United… More
Report: 1,586 School Book Bans and Restrictions in 86 School Districts Across 26 States
Book bans have targeted 1,145 unique book titles by 874 different authors, 198 illustrators, and 9 translators, impacting the literary, scholarly, and creative work of 1,081 people altogether. Texas… More
PEN Pals: Fatima Shaik Interviews Cheryl Willis Hudson
"We have unique histories, songs, stories, and languages but far too many people refer to us in biased and inaccurate ways." More
Mississippi Principal Fired for Reading a Book to Second Graders Should be Reinstated
The letter to the Hinds County School District said the firing of Assistant Principal Toby Price from Gary Road Elementary School on March 4 was “an extreme disciplinary action,… More
SIGN NOW: Hinds County Schools, Reading Is Not a Crime
We object to the idea that reading a children's book shouldn't be the cause for a teacher's firing in Mississippi. More
Dohle Book Defense Fund Established to Combat Rising Threats to Free Speech and Open Discourse
The Dohle Book Defense Fund will boost PEN America’s initiatives to educate the public, partner with local community groups to advocate against censorship, track and expose the egregious assaults on… More
PEN Pals: Margarita Engle Interviews Debbie Reese
"We have unique histories, songs, stories, and languages but far too many people refer to us in biased and inaccurate ways." More
PEN Pals: Margarita Engle and Padma Venkatraman Use Words as Bridges
“I knew that poetry could help me feel empathy and compassion as well as joy. I hoped that would be true for young readers and writers too.” More
PEN Pals: Eliot Schrefer and Padma Venkatraman on When Others Take Up the Torch
“I knew I couldn’t contribute to the cultural life of an institution that actively discriminates against its students—that didn’t want people like me to exist.” More