Judy Blume will be among the writers celebrated by a new set of literary awards honoring banned and censored books.
The Eleanor Roosevelt Banned Book Awards, created by the Eleanor Roosevelt Center and Fisher Center at Bard College in New York state, were announced Thursday. According to a release, the awards were created to honor “authors whose works focus on racial justice, LGBTQ+ rights, and gender equality.” The presence of books on race and gender have faced increasing challenges in public and school libraries in recent years; a 2023 PEN America report expressed concern that “new moral litmus tests on books and authors [are] chilling literary expression.”
The first seven tiles honored by the awards are Laurie Halse Anderson’s SHOUT, Mike Curato’s Flamer, Alex Gino’s Melissa (originally published as George), George M. Johnson’s All Boys Aren’t Blue, Jelani Memory’s A Kids Book About Racism, and Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer. All are YA or children’s books that have faced efforts by municipalities and school boards to ban them.
In addition to honoring those recent tiles, the organizations will also present the inaugural Eleanor Roosevelt Lifetime Achievement Award for Bravery in Literature to Judy Blume, whose candid novels about adolescence have made her work a target for book banners since the publication of her 1970 classic, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. At the ceremony, Blume will participate in a virtual conversation with American Library Association president Emily Drabinski and U.S. Department of Education “banned book czar” Matt Nosanchuck.
The awards will be presented at Bard College’s Fisher Center in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, on February 17.
Mark Athitakis is a journalist in Phoenix.
