Book Banning and Censorship in America with Grace Ellis and Sabrina Baêta

Banned Books Week is an annual celebration of the freedom to read. The theme for Banned Books Week 2023 is “Let Freedom Read” and it’s being celebrated from October 1-7. A PEN America report for the first half of the 2022-2023 school year tracked 1,477 instances of individual book bans that have affected 874 unique titles. Book bans disproportionately target authors of color, LGBTQ+ authors, and other marginalized groups. Books about racism, sexuality, gender, and history have been removed from library shelves across America. In today’s episode, we talk to Sabrina Baêta from PEN America and author Grace Ellis about the current state of book banning in America, the impact that book bans have on creators, libraries, and young readers, and what we can do to stand up against book bans and protect the freedom to write, read, and access information. Grace Ellis will be at the Bexley Public Library on Wednesday, October 4 at 7:00 PM for a Conversation on Censorship to celebrate Banned Books Week.

Grace Ellis is a New York Times-bestselling, GLAAD Media Award–winning author and script writer. Born and raised in Ohio, she studied theater and journalism at The Ohio State University. Her graphic novels include the much-lauded "Lumberjanes," the long-running "Moonstruck," and several pieces for DC Comics. Her latest book, "Flung Out of Space: Inspired by the Indecent Adventures of Patricia Highsmith," was a New York Times Notable Book of 2022 and won the 2023 Eisner Award for Best Reality-Based Work. In 2022, Grace was given an Ohio Individual Excellence Award in playwriting for "Holding It Together," a site-specific play for high schools. Her next DC book, DIANA AND THE HERO’S JOURNEY, is out this fall. In 2023, she wrote the play “EXPLICIT CONTENT FOR TEENS,” about the fall out of a play’s censorship in a public highschool. Grace lives in Columbus, Ohio, where she can often be found eating ice cream or petting a cat.

Sabrina Baêta is a Program Consultant with Freedom to Read at PEN America. She engages in research and awareness-building around censorship attacks on public K-12 education, especially as it relates to literature accessibility in libraries and classrooms. Sabrina graduated from the University of Florida with a Bachelor of Arts in English and a Bachelor of Music in Voice. She earned her Masters from the University of Central Florida in Nonprofit Management. She is a poet, essayist, and writer and prior to PEN America, worked in educational publishing and in a variety of performing arts and education nonprofits.

Special thanks to fo/mo/deep for lending us their song, "Bourbon Neat" for the podcast!

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