CALS Banned Books Week

September 18 – 24, 2022

Join us for our 12th annual Banned Books Week at CALS, as we celebrate the battle against censorship! This year’s event focuses on Melissa by Alex Gino. The book, formerly published as George, topped the list of the most challenged books in 2018, 2019, and 2020, according to the American Library Association. It is a tender story about self-acceptance and friendship weaving in E. B. White’s classic, Charlotte’s Web.

Banned Books Week is the annual celebration of the freedom to read. The event is sponsored by a coalition of organizations dedicated to free expression, including American Booksellers for Free Expression, American Library Association, American Society of Journalists and Authors, Amnesty International USA, Association of University Presses, Authors Guild, Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), Freedom to Read Foundation, Index on Censorship, National Book Foundation, National Coalition Against Censorship, National Council of Teachers of English, PEN America, People For the American Way Foundation, PFLAG, and Project Censored. It is endorsed by the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress. Banned Books Week also receives generous support from HarperCollins Publishers and Penguin Random House.

CALS Banned Books Week is sponsored by the Fred K. Darragh Jr. Foundation.

Censorship By The Numbers