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It's Banned Book Week, a time to celebrate the freedom to read

  • Writer: NYS Writers Institute
    NYS Writers Institute
  • Oct 7
  • 3 min read

It’s Banned Books Week, a time to celebrate the freedom to read and to stand against censorship in all its forms.


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According to PEN America’s Index of School Book Bans, the most banned book in U.S. schools this year is: A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess — banned in 23 school districts across the country.


The dystopian classic, included in Time magazine's 2005 list of the 100 best English-language novels written since 1923 and named by Modern Library and its readers as one of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century, joins a long list of titles targeted for their challenging themes and provocative ideas.


In the 2024-2025 school year, PEN America recorded 6,870 instances of book bans affecting nearly 4,000 unique titles. For the third straight year, Florida was the No. 1 state for book bans, with 2,304 instances of bans, followed by Texas with 1,781 bans and Tennessee with 1,622.


Past Guests with Banned Books

At the NYS Writers Institute, we’ve proudly welcomed many authors whose works have faced bans or challenges, including:

  • Toni Morrison 

  • Salman Rushdie

  • Margaret Atwood

  • Alice Walker 

  • Maya Angelou

  • Julia Alvarez 


A message from Paul Grondahl, Opalka Endowed Director, NYS Writers Institute:

"For 42 years, since our founding in 1983 by Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist William Kennedy, we have championed the cause of literature as an art form that enriches our lives. We have welcomed more than 3,000 writers from around the world to our campus, we place no limits on what they can say, and we never would think of doing so.


Freedom of expression is sacrosanct.


We celebrate a diverse range of voices and every genre imaginable while upholding the Constitutional right to free speech and a free press. We abhor attempts at censorship in any form and we will challenge any effort to restrict what we can read, write or say. Great writing is a powerful force, and instead of fearing it or trying to control it, we should give it free rein and let it elevate the human condition."


Thank you for supporting the freedom to read.


How many banned books have you read? Here's an American Library Association list of some classics that have been banned, burned, challenged or seized:


  • The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald

  • The Catcher in the Rye, by JD Salinger

  • The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck

  • The Color Purple, by Alice Walker

  • Ulysses, by James Joyce

  • Beloved, by Toni Morrison

  • The Lord of the Flies, by William Golding

  • 1984, by George Orwell

  • Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov

  • Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck

  • Catch-22, by Joseph Heller

  • Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley

  • Animal Farm, by George Orwell

  • The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway

  • As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner

  • A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway

  • Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston

  • Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison

  • Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison

  • Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell

  • Native Son, by Richard Wright 

  • One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey

  • Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut

  • For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway

  • The Call of the Wild, by Jack London

  • Go Tell It on the Mountain, by James Baldwin

  • All the King's Men, by Robert Penn Warren

  • The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien

  • The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair 

  • Lady Chatterley's Lover, by D.H. Lawrence

  • A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess

  • The Awakening, by Kate Chopin

  • In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote

  • Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie

  • Sophie's Choice, by William Styron

  • Sons and Lovers, by D.H. Lawrence 

  • Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut

  • A Separate Peace, by John Knowles

  • Naked Lunch, by William S. Burroughs

  • Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh

  • Women in Love, by DH Lawrence

  • The Naked and the Dead, by Norman Mailer

  • Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller

  • An American Tragedy, by Theodore Dreiser

  • Rabbit, Run, by John Updike


What banned book has made the biggest impact on you? We’d love to hear your thoughts.



 
 
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