Banned Books with Judy Blume

Judy Blume’s twenty-five books for young readers and her four bestselling novels for adults have been published in forty languages. Among her many honors, she has been named a Literary Legend by the Library of Congress, received the National Book Critics Circle Lifetime Achievement Award, and was named one of Time's 100 Most Influential People of the Year in 2023. For more than forty years she has been a champion of intellectual freedom working to support teachers and librarians in their fight to keep challenged books on their shelves. An Emmy-nominated documentary Judy Blume Forever and a major motion picture based on her iconic novel Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, are now streaming. In 2016 Blume and her husband, George Cooper, founded an independent, non-profit bookstore (Books & Books KW) in their hometown of Key West. Blume can be found working there several days a week, shelving books and chatting with customers.

Roald Dahl (1916 – 1990) was born in Wales of Norwegian parents. After establishing himself as a writer for adults, Dahl began writing children's stories in 1960 while living in England with his family. His first stories were written as entertainment for his own children, to whom many of his books are dedicated. With more than 40 million Roald Dahl books in print in the U.S. alone, Dahl is considered one of the most beloved storytellers of our time. Although he passed away in 1990, his popularity continues to increase as his fantastic novels, including James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, The BFG, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, delight an ever-growing legion of fans.

Troy Iwata joined Comedy Central's The Daily Show as a new correspondent, and in the same year was named to Variety's Top 10 Comics to Watch of 2024. He recently starred in the hit independent film Summoning Sylvia, a queer-horror-comedy in which he stars alongside Michael Urie and Frankie Grande. He recurred on Apple TV+’s limited series We Crashed as Damian Saito alongside Jared Leto and Anne Hathaway, and was featured in the Netflix series Dash & Lily, which garnered 12 Emmy nominations. He made his Broadway debut in the viral sensation Be More Chill in 2019. Iwata can currently be seen in the Netflix series The Perfect Couple, opposite Nicole Kidman.

Catherine O’Hara is best known for her multi-award–winning portrayal of Moira Rose on Schitt's Creek, the Christopher Guest mocumentaries For Your Consideration, A Mighty Wind, Best in Show, and Waiting for Guffman, and as an original cast member on SCTV. Additional film and television credits include Beetlejuice and its 2024 sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, After Hours, Home Alone, Away We Go, Temple Grandin, What Lives Inside, A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Kids in the Hall, Argylle, and The Wild Robot. O’Hara can be seen in the forthcoming second season of HBO’s The Last of Us, scheduled for release in Spring 2025.

Xu Mason is a bilingual first-generation Asian American actress/writer/comedian. She came up through the Chicago improv scene, where she studied at The Annoyance, iO, and The Second City. Her writing has been featured in Reductress, McSweeney’s, and more. She currently resides in LA.

Maulik Pancholy is an award-winning actor, author, and activist. He is best known for his comedic turns on television playing Jonathan on the Emmy, Golden Globe, and SAG award–winning NBC comedy 30 Rock. He played Sanjay on Showtime’s hit series Weeds, and starred as Neal on the NBC comedy Whitney. He is the voice of Baljeet on Disney’s Emmy Award–winning Phineas and Ferb and the title voice of Sanjay on Nickelodeon’s Sanjay and Craig. For his work on television, he has been nominated for and won the Screen Actors Guild award on multiple occasions. On Broadway, Pancholy has starred in Grand Horizons and It’s Only A Play. Pancholy’s debut novel, The Best at It, was named a 2020 Stonewall Honor Book, a 2019 Junior Library Guild Selection, and a Chicago Public Library Best of the Best Books. His second novel, Nikhil Out Loud, was named a 2023 Lambda Literary Award Winner and a Kirkus Best Book of 2022. Pancholy is currently creating, executive producing, and writing a fiction, scripted podcast for Broadway Video, and his third novel, Will They, Won't They, is slated for a Summer 2026 release. A longtime advocate for the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) and LGBTQIA+ communities, Pancholy was appointed by President Barack Obama to serve on the President’s Advisory Commission on AAPIs. He is also a co-founder of the AAPI anti-bullying nonprofit ActToChange.org, which envisions a world where all young people can celebrate their identities.

With sardonic wit and incisive social critiques, David Sedaris has become one of America’s preeminent humor writers. The great skill with which he slices through cultural euphemisms and political correctness proves that Sedaris is a master of satire and one of the most observant writers addressing the human condition today. David Sedaris is the author of Barrel Fever, Holidays on Ice, Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk as well as collections of personal essays, Naked, Me Talk Pretty One Day, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls, Calypso, The Best of Me, and Happy-Go-Lucky. His diaries were published in two volumes Theft By Finding: Diaries 1977-2002 and A Carnival of Snackery: Diaries 2003-2020. His latest book is the children's book Pretty Ugly, which is illustrated by Ian Falconer. He lives in England, and is a contributor to the New Yorker, the BBC, and CBS Sunday Morning.

Meg Wolitzer is the New York Times bestselling author of The Female Persuasion, The Interestings, The Ten-Year Nap, The Position, and The Wife. She is a faculty member in the Creative Writing and Literature Program at The Lichtenstein Center at Stony Brook University, where she co-founded and co-directs BookEnds, a one-year, non-credit intensive for emerging novelists. Wolitzer, who was the guest editor of The Best American Short Stories 2017, is the radio and podcast host of Symphony Space’s Selected Shorts.

CREDITS

“Finally, A Book That Cannot Be Banned,” by Xu Mason, from McSweeney’s (April 11, 2023). Copyright © 2023 by Xu Mason. Used by permission of the author.

“Bruised,” by David Sedaris, from Happy-Go-Lucky (Little, Brown and Company, 2022). Copyright © 2022 by David Sedaris. Reading granted with permission of Don Congdon Associates, Inc. and the author.

“Lamb to the Slaughter” by Roald Dahl. Copyright © 1953 by Roald Dahl. First published in Harper’s Magazine (September 1953). Used by permission of David Higham Associates.