Stephen King is the most banned author in US schools, PEN report says

Some 80% of those bans originated in just three states that have enacted or attempted to enact laws calling for removal of books deemed objectionable — Florida, Texas and Tennessee. Meanwhile, PEN found little or no instances of removals in several other states, with Illinois, Maryland and New Jersey among those with laws that limit the authority of school and public libraries to pull books.

“It is increasingly a story of two countries,” says Kasey Meehan, director of PEN’s Freedom to Read program and an author of Wednesday’s report. “And it’s not just a story of red states and blue states. In Florida, not all of the school districts responded to the calls for banning books. You can find differences from county to county.”

King’s books were censored 206 times, according to PEN, with “Carrie” and “The Stand” among the 87 of his works affected. The most banned work of any author was Anthony Burgess’ Dystopian classic from the 1960s, “A Clockwork Orange,” for which PEN found 23 removals. Other books and authors facing extensive restrictions included Patricia McCormick’s “Sold,” Judy Blume’s “Forever” and Jennifer Niven’s “Breathless,” and numerous works by Sarah J. Maas and Jodi Picoult.

Reasons often cited for pulling a book include LGBTQ+ themes, depictions of race and passages with violence and sexual violence. An ongoing trend that PEN finds has only intensified: Thousands of books were taken off shelves in anticipation of community, political or legal pressure rather than in response to a direct threat.

“This functions as a form of ‘obeying advance,’” the report reads, “rooted in fear or simply a desire to avoid topics that might be deemed controversial.”

The PEN report comes amid ongoing censorship efforts not just from states and conservative activists, but from the federal government. The Department of Education ended an initiative by the Biden administration to investigate the legality of bans and has called the whole issue a “hoax.” PEN’s numbers include the Department of Defense’s removal of hundreds of books from K-12 school libraries for military families as part of an overall campaign against DEI initiatives and “un-American” thinking.

In Florida, where more than 2,000 books were banned or restricted, a handful of counties were responsible for many of the King removals: Dozens were pulled last year as a part of a review for whether they were in compliance with state laws.

“His books are often removed from shelves when ‘adult’ titles or books with ‘sex content’ are targeted for removal — these prohibitions overwhelmingly ban LGBTQ+ content and books on race, racism, and people of color — but also affect titles like Stephen King’s books,” Meehan says. “Some districts — in being overly cautious or fearful of punishment — will sweep so wide they end up removing Stephen King from access, too.”

PEN’s methodology differs from that of the American Library Association, which also issues annual reports on bans and challenges. PEN’s numbers are much higher in part because the free expression organization counts any books removed or restricted for any length of time, while the ALA only counts permanent removals or restrictions.

Both organizations have acknowledged that because they largely rely on media reports and information they receive directly their numbers are far from comprehensive. Stephana Ferrell, director of Research & Insight at Florida Freedom to Read Project, wrote in an email this week that PEN left out hundreds of recent bans in the state that have not yet been widely publicized.

The PEN report includes no banning data from Ohio, Oklahoma, Arkansas and other “red” states because researchers could not find adequate documentation. Meehan adds that PEN also doesn’t know the full impact of statewide laws.

“It’s become harder and harder to quantify the scope of the book banning crisis,” Meehan says. “In a state where a banning law is passed, we don’t have the data to know whether every school in that state had the books affected. Our data is snapshot. It’s what we were able to collect through what’s publicly reported or on websites or what journalists have uncovered.”

AP writer Kate Payne in Tallahassee, Florida, contributed to this report.