The Eleanor Roosevelt Center in partnership with PEN America, presents the 2025 Banned Book Awards
The ceremony will celebrate authors and activists who are bravely fighting, in the face of censorship, for the right to have their incredible stories heard. The Eleanor Roosevelt Awards for Bravery in Literature recognize authors whose works advance human rights amid a surge in book bans.

This year’s Eleanor Roosevelt Lifetime Achievement honoree is best-selling author Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid’s Tale), who will be accepting the award in person. Becky Calzada, a Texas Librarian and co-founding member of Texas #FReadom Fighters, will receive the Eleanor Roosevelt Literary Freedom Award.

This year’s Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Bravery in Literature recipients include:
● Matthew A. Cherry & Vashti Harrison for Hair Love
● Juno Dawson for This Book Is Gay (video acceptance)
● John Green for Looking for Alaska (video acceptance)
● Malinda Lo for Last Night at the Telegraph Club
● Justin Richardson & Peter Parnell for And Tango Makes Three

The awardees will be joined on stage by leaders in the field, including:
● Jennifer Finney Boylan (Keynote), Author and President of PEN America
● Deborah Caldwell Stone, Director of the American Library Association’s Office
for Intellectual Freedom
● Cameron Samuels, Executive Director of Students Engaged in Advancing Texas (SEAT).
Books by the honorees will be available for purchase courtesy of Oblong Books.

For more information about the awardees and the Eleanor Roosevelt Center, please visit: https://ervk.org/banned-books/.

This event is sponsored by Freedom to Read Foundation