Hello. Hi, everyone. Thanks for coming out tonight. As you can see and as you heard, these are cameras from cspan be, booktv. Very happy to have them here, were very happy to have this discussion here at powells. If you want to keep up with whos coming to powells, we have events nearly every night, lots of really great, outstanding stuff coming up especially in the month of october. You can look on powells. Com, our event calendars can be found around the store as well, and be you can pick those up at the information desk. Tonight were excited to host this event for banned books week. Its going to be moderated by Candace Morgan right here. Shes the coordinator of celebrate the freedom to read in oregon. And this is sponsored by the Oregon Library association and the Oregon Association of School Libraries intellectual Freedom Committee and the aclu of oregon. These authors do have books. If you would like to have a book signed, they would be very happy to sign it for you. Theres a bunch of them on that cart right back there after the talk, and there will be a time for audience q a as well. And as you heard, please wait for the microphone to come your way when we get to the audience q a so that itll be heard on the tv when it airs. All right. Thanks again for coming out. Please welcome Candace Morgan. [applause] welk thank you. And in addition to the well, thank you. And in addition to the various people that participate and celebrate the freedom to read in oregon is the state libraries intellectual clearinghouse. Were the only state in the union that has such an element in which they do all kinds of information to provide information on challenges and free speech and also collect a list of books that are challenged in oregon. So i want to thank powells for letting us have this event here. And and cnn and chris whos not here, but hes the director of the american booksellers for Free Expression, and hes the one that arranged for this to go. And there are three or four other locations in the country that are also doing this particular kind of a program. So i want to start out before we well have each of ill put some questions to the, our speakers here, and then as you heard, then well have questions and answers once we get through that. But the banned books week was started in 1982. At that year there was a big increase in the number of books that were being challenged, and many of them were also being banned. And so the american Library Association and a number of other organizations formed a coalition to be able to have this. And i want to name them all. The american booksellers for Free Expression, the american Library Association, the association of american publishers, the association of American University presses, the authors guild, the comic Book Legal Defense Fund whom are represented here the dramatist Legal Defense fund, the freedom to read foundation, the National Conference of teachers of english and people for the american foundation. So, and another thing which im sure youre probably all aware but sometimes we need to point this out, its not just about books. In 1982 it was about books. Now we have ebooks, we have movies in the libraries, we have dvds, we have a variety of different things, and we include those in all of what were talking about when were talking about challenges. And one the things to remember is that oh, i should say if your library participates in celebrate the freedom to read in oregon, then during banned books week, they have little buttons that say i read banned books. If you happen to be in a School Library, not all School Libraries do. But if youre ever in a location in portland and you dont see those buttons, you should tell them to contact the aclu of oregon, and well add them to the list. The aclu of oregon pays for those. Be so with no further ado, i will start with the questions, and if you each want to just oh, i didnt have you introduce yourselves first. Go ahead, excuse me. Introduce yourselves. Hello, im cathy camper, im the author of low riders in space and low riders to the center of the earth, two graphic novels for kids, and a kids science book called bugs before time about giant prehistoric insects. Ive also worked my whole life as a librarian, but im not here representing any particular library, but i may add some information from the library side to the discussion. Hi, im cory inside doctorow, i write Science Fiction novels and last year one for middle school readers. Im a recovering bookstore woke. I also do parttime work for a group called Electronic Frontier foundation which does Civil Liberties work on privacy and surveillance and Free Expression online. And i mention that because a month ago we brought suit against the federal government to repeal a particularly pernicious, lastcentury internet law s and were asking the court to invalidate it on the basis of its violations of the first amendment. So it relates to this work here. My names jonathan hill, im an illustrator, i was the illustrator for a young adult graphic novel about a book banning in a small town, and im also a teacher, i teach comics, middle school through college. Im charles brownstein, executive director of the comic Book Legal Defense Fund, and this years chair of the banned books week coalition. I also write nonfiction about comics, and the most recent pieces are the one trick ripoff which are out there. Okay. Well, i forgot to mention i am a retired librarian too, so we have good representation. So the first question is, why is it that we call it banned books week even though a majority of challenged materials are not removed from collections . Anybody want to well, i guess i can, i can throw out the opening pitch on that one. Banned is kind of the worst case scenario, but it all comes from the same matrix of attempting to pass judgment on content for other people. It all begins with this particular book, magazine, movie, whatever offends my sensibilities to the degree that i dont think anybody should have the right to see it, and theres a path to censorship that cathy can probably walk us through as a librarian more effectively that begins with the challenge, can go through the media attack where you go to the local media and say this librarian is putting filth into the hands of kids and ends with the ban. It all kind of comes out of the same matrix of i know better than the other people in my community in a way that shuts down the ability for people to make their own decisions about whats right for hem in their household for them in their household. I mean, and i think its unabashedly about having an accessible, catchy name for things. I mean, we call it [inaudible] it means you made something i dont agree with sound interesting. [laughter] and, you know, theres a reason we have names for things and then we have further detail about those things. We have headlines and articles, and so headlines dont always express all the nuance, because other side we wouldnt call it banned books week, wed call it the week devoted to books that are challenged but not bans, and books that we think might be banned and books people would like to ban, but but theyre not good at their job, so they fail to ban them. [laughter] it fits on a button, right . [laughter] anybody else have something to say for that . Hard to follow that up. [laughter] i agree. Im a word guy, youre a picture guy. [laughter] so what is each of yours personal experience with challenged or banned books . Well, cory, you should go first. Youve lived it. Well, so like so many of these stories, it begins in florida. [laughter] i wrote a novel in 2008 called little brother thats about kids who, after a terrorist attack in San Francisco, find themselves interrogated by the department of homeland security, they then emerge from a multiday interrogation to discover that their citys become a kind of police state and that everyone they know seems to have gone along with it, because after terrible disasters, you sort of seek daddy figures who will reai sure you with their authority. And they decide that this isnt good enough, and they build a network out of hacked xboxs to get around dhs surveillance, and they build a guerrilla army, and they kick the dhs out of San Francisco and restore the bill of rights to america. Sort of unambitious 17yearolds. Its been moderately well received. Its taught in west point, its taught at the nsa, and theres a school in pensacola called booker t. Washington high ironically where every summer they have a one book, one School Summer read program where all the kids are given an optional assignment. So an extra credit assignment to read a book thats then discussed school wide in the autumn. And the librarian and the head of the English Department came together tolan this. They went through to plan this. They went through the normal channels to do so, and like a week before school let out, the principal decided to cancel the Summer Reading program rather than have his kids read the book which he hadnt read, be but hed read reviewed of it, and he decided that he might get into trouble with the parents. And his concern seemed to revolve around the fact that a bunch of them were in the military which given that they teach it in the military, seems like a weird, misplaced concern. So the teacher and the librarian went back to him and said youre not allowed to do this. We have a process in the School District for challenging books. And it doesnt go like this. Im the principal, youll do what i say, right . Like, our process has, like, rule of law elements to it, and he told them to get bent. And so my publisher arranged to send them 200 copies over the summer that were given out for free on day one. The book is a creative [inaudible] download so you can get it for free online, so kids who downloaded the book emailed to me, and i crypt graphically signed them and sent them back to them. And lit graphs, which is this company that does tshirts and posters that have the entire text of a book on them but arranged in a weird, highresolution ascii art of scenes from the book, sent them huge, postersize list thoughs of the lithos from the book. And i heard from all these students like i never do these extra credit assignments. Theyre for, like, weenies. But i figured the principal, if he doesnt want me to read this book, i really want to know whats in it. [laughter] and i, i was meant to record a video for them about the book for the summer read, and instead i recorded a video about how disappointing it was that this process wasnt being followed, and there was a bit of press and stuff. But the thing that really was difficult and disturbing was that the english teacher faced disciplinary hearings and could have been fired. And floridas a right to work state, so shes not unionized. Charles put me in touch with the National Coalition against censorship, and the nct, the National Conference of teachers of english, worked to help her keep her job. And in the end, the superintendent exonerated her and told the principal that hed done wrong. And i did a Video Conference with the students in the autumn, but it was with an ap english class. And be this was a school in a really poor district, and what the english teacher and the librarian the reason theyd chosen that book is they thought a lot of their reluctant readers would be excited about it, and that was exactly the group that wasnt in this Video Conference. And so although the book got read and it raised its profile, theres this thing that my colleague called the streisand effect, theres this coastline survey in california for erosion where they take pictures of the whole coastline, and that includes Barbra Streisands house that is on the coast. Nobody looks at them except in an abstract way. Streisand objected to these pictures of her roof being on the internet. She sued. It went from three views to 500 million views. We call in the streisand effect. That certainly happened here. But even so the principal did manage the victory of completely confounding this personal time project that the librarian and the head of the English Department had worked on really diligently and at great personal risk to try and bring literature that they thought would engage the most vulnerable kids in their school, and he really succeeded at keeping this book out of those kids hands which is a real pity. Yeah. My book hasnt been challenged, fingers crossed, but one thing i should say low riders in space, its about these three characters that customize their car with it gets customized by outer space. And its written in spanglish, and ive noticed on good reads weve gotten some comments from teachers very irate that the spanish isnt correct spanish. So one of the things that theyre saying, in effect, is that we dont want the spanish that you speak be, that you lived, kids, we want this sort of perfected style not stylized, but almost strict spanish kind of. And its interesting, because where we are connecting, where the book is super popular is texas, california, the southwest, right where spanglish exists. So in the diaspora of spanishspeaking people, some people read it, and if you dont know what spanglish is, then it doesnt make sense to you. So, but i wanted to bring that up because theres also a lot of passive censorship well, not passive, but sort of unknown censorship. For example, librarians just choosing not to buy books. And thats another thing that ill notice if im at a signing, and its like, say, a whole lot of low brains from oregon librarians from oregon. Many times the librarians will come to say i have latino kids, but who i wont necessarily see is somebody like i have an allwhite classroom, and i think they should read this book. So there can be a lot of censorship before it even gets to the shelf. Well, i mean, for me my experience is that i wrote this book i drew this book with my friend m. K. , its about censorship, this kid in a small town in oklahoma, and he, his town kind of sucks, and he the only thing he has is reading because it lets him escape from this small town. And its one of the book series that he loves is challenged by a mother in the community. And so its sort of just like an entryway for people to Start Talking about banned books and how you have to sort of fight censorship and stand up for, you know, things that you love. But i also have a story about censorship that i actually was involved in censorship when i was in high school because i went to school overseas, i was in kuwait for most of high school, and they would it was an american school, but they, the kuwaiti government still was in charge of sort of what was approved and what could be taught because it still, you know, is a muslim country. And so how they would do that, though, is they would give High School Students the new books that wed get at the end of the year and then give us all sharpies, and theyd give us a list of things that wed have to black out. [laughter] but the thing is, when you give that to students [laughter] that are high schoolers, that are, you know, sort of wise asses, like, we were supposed to cross out, like, instances of the holocaust and also, like, persia, the word persia, but we would just my friends and i would just black out all the words around that word so that that word was sort of sticking out. [laughter] so i hate to admit that i was actually part of censorship, but i was really bad at it, so [laughter] thats my censorship story. [laughter] fantastic. A lot of what i do at the comic Legal Defense fund is actually working with the kids like the kids in america that are affected by censorship or the Library Professionals that are affected by censorship. The teacher will call us up and say i have this problem, how can you help . We will counsel behind the scenes and create resources for those folks to help them deal with the process and fight the challenges. And that kind of brings us to a point that i think gets lost in banned books week which is we get very interested in the statistics, we get very interested in what are the books that are banned because thats the stuff we want to read, right . But behind every single one of those,there are two stories that are seldom told. The first is that library professional, that librarian, that teacher, that person that got this book because their Community Needs this, and they are putting their livelihood on the line to serve their community and to get that out there, and then the second person that we really, really never hear about is that person in the community that needs access to this material. Either because they see themself in it or because it speaks to a piece of Life Experience that they are going through, or it simply opens up to a window onto the world that they would not otherwise see. And younger kids are taking that as theres something wrong with me that youre attempting to take this book away. And so a lot of my experiences interacting with those people and trying to create a path that, no, theres actually nothing wrong with you. Youre okay and we need to have a conversation about the things that are upsetting people about this book so we can all land on the same page that we all have the right to choose. Good. Anybody else have anything additional to add to that . All right. Well, the theme of this years banned books is diverse books. And so the question i would put to you all is why are more books by women, people of color, gay lesbian transgender bisexual individuals and books in those communities disproportionately challenged and banned . And id like to give a little bit more context