PEN America—along with Penguin Random House, authors, and parents—has filed suit in federal court, asking for books to be returned to public school library shelves in Escambia County, Florida, after their “unconstitutional” removal. Of course, Escambia is but one county in a country-wide effort to ban or restrict books in schools and libraries. But Escambia has been singled out after a high school teacher challenged more than 100 titles across age groups and genres; the school board voted to remove 10 books, while others are indefinitely restricted pending review. The majority of affected titles have LGBTQ themes; they include The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, Push by Sapphire, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, Two Boys Kissingby David Levithan, and Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, among others.
The teacher who has campaigned for the books’ removal has admitted she had not even heard of some of the books prior to her efforts to ban them. Instead, she consulted a list of books frequently targeted as part of the ongoing nationwide book-banning movement. Learn more.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
