Industry & Advocacy News
June 15, 2017
Censorship isn’t isolated to certain time periods, nations, cultures, or governments. Suppression of speech takes many forms, and can just as easily prevail in free societies. Books are one of the first things that authoritarian governments go after, whether through outright banning or other pressures on free expression. We’re reminded of this as we begin planning the Authors Guild’s initiatives for Banned Books Week 2017 (September 24–30), an annual event sponsored by the American Library Association celebrating the freedom to read and the importance of diverse viewpoints in our society. Stay tuned for what the Guild is planning for this event.
On that note, here’s a post by Yannick Pasquet at Digital Journal about a wonderful piece of installation art on banned books. Installation artist Marta Minujin erected a Parthenon of banned books spanning continents and centuries at the site where the Nazi party held its May 1933 book-burning.
Photo credit: !Koss via Visual hunt / CC BY-ND
