You can join us for this event in person on ESFL’s lawn or virtually on Zoom.

COME READ A SHORT SECTION FROM YOUR FAVORITE BANNED BOOK! 

JOIN AUTHOR SHANNON GIBNEY AND LIBRARIAN TAMI LEE FOR A GREAT PANEL DISCUSSION! 

HAVE YOUR FRIENDS JOIN YOU EITHER IN PERSON OR VIRTUALLY.

Register here to join this event on Zoom.

Access to books and ideas are at the center of the cultural and political war raging in the United States, and libraries and schools have become battlegrounds. The East Side Freedom Library intends to be a space where ideas can be freely discussed and where books from diverse cultural and ideological perspectives are available. We invite you to join us for our observance of “Banned Books Week.”

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, GLAAD, 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.

ESFL invites you to join us on Saturday, September 24, at 1pm CT, either by Zoom or on our front lawn. We will hear from a panel including author and professor Shannon Gibney and librarian Tami Lee.

We also invite you to volunteer to read a paragraph from a book written by any of these authors whose work has been under threat of censure: Junauda Petrus, Toni Morrison, Sandra Cisneros, Ibram X. Kendi, Barbara Ehrenreich, Judy Blume, Rudolfo Anaya, Dr. Seuss, Charles Dickens, Alice Walker, Neil Gaiman, Cristina García, Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell (Tango Makes Three), Lois Lowry, Allison Bechdel, J.K. Rowling, JRR Tolkien, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Isabel Allende, Maya Angelou, David Sedaris, Amy Tan, Toni Cade Bambara, Rebecca Sklott, Jodi Picoult, Elie Wiesel, Chinua Achebe, Zora Neale Hurston, Harper Lee, Ursula Le Guin, Sara Gruen, Sue Monk Kidd, Ismael Baeh, Margaret Atwood, Jeannette Walls, Julia Alvarez, Anne Frank, Frank McCourt. Maia Kobabe, Angie Thomas, Sherman Alexie.

Please let us know at [email protected] if you would like to read a passage from any of these authors or one of your favorites. We hope you will join us—to read, to listen, to discuss!

Free and open to all