(HYDE PARK, N.Y.)— Actress and bestselling author Hilarie Burton Morgan will moderate a panel discussion among authors to be honored with the Eleanor Roosevelt Awards for Bravery in Literature on Oct. 11. The ceremony will take place at The Bardavon 1869 Opera House in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. Each of the ten honorees have written books that have been banned and include celebrated author Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid’s Tale), who will receive a lifetime achievement award.
Burton is a New York Times best-selling author of Grimoire Girl, a collection of memoir essays and magical practices and The Rural Diaries, her debut memoir that tells her inspiring story of leaving Hollywood for a radically different kind of life in upstate New York—a celebration of community, family, and the value of hard work in small-town America.
A resident of the Hudson Valley, Burton for six seasons starred as Peyton Sawyer on the hit CW series ONE TREE HILL. She reunited with her co-stars Sophia Bush and Bethany Joy Lenz to launch the podcast, “Drama Queens,” for iHeartRadio.
The event is open to the public. Tickets are available by calling the Bardavon’s box office at 845.473.2072 or online at ervk.org/banned-books
The Eleanor Roosevelt Center in Hyde Park, N.Y. is co-presenting the awards with PEN America, which for four years has documented sweeping book bans nationwide in public schools. The writers and free expression organization has counted more than 16,000 book bans since 2021, a level of censorship unseen since the McCarthy era Red Scare of the 1950s. Author and PEN America President Jennifer Finney Boylan will give the keynote address at the awards.
Read more about the awards and the authors to be honored here.
Other organizations sponsoring the awards include: Freedom To Read Foundation, The Freedom to Learn Foundation, Sourcebooks, and Oblong Books.
About the Eleanor Roosevelt Center
A 501c3 non-profit organization, the Eleanor Roosevelt Center honors Eleanor Roosevelt’s values in ways that tackle today’s challenges. The organization is dedicated to breathing new life into the precedents set and the legacies left behind by the First Lady of the World, Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt. We strive to be Eleanor Roosevelt’s heart, mind, and voice in realizing a better world—a world of acceptance, opportunity, dignity, and respect for all.
Eleanor Roosevelt’s passion for civil rights and human rights changed the world and inspired generations. Intellectual freedom was at the heart of her work. She believed that a society cannot “fulfill its commitment to education without taking seriously its commitment to the right to seek, receive, and impart information” and that discourse among diverse voices is foundational to democracy.
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Website: www.ervk.org
About PEN America
PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect free expression in the United States and worldwide. We champion the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world. Our mission is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible. Learn more at pen.org.
Contact: Suzanne Trimel, [email protected], 201-247-5057