“The goal of Banned Together is to talk about what is happening to books in libraries, why these vanishing stories matter, and how readers can empower themselves and others to resist.” — Ashley Hope Pérez, from the opening letter of Banned Together: Our Fight for Readers’ Rights (Holiday House, 2025)
Resources
Ashley Hope Pérez (she/her) (ashleyperez.com) is the editor of Banned Together: Our Fight for Readers’ Rights, the author of three novels, a professor, and a youth advocate. She currently directs The Unite to Read Project, a Mellon Foundation-funded initiative to support positive engagement with banned books and expand youth access to diverse literature. Her 2015 novel Out of Darkness has become one of the most frequently banned novels in the United States despite its noted literary merit. Out of Darkness was described by The New York Times Book Review as a “layered tale of color lines, love and struggle in an East Texas oil town,” and was selected as a best book of the year by both Kirkus and School Library Journal. It received a 2016 Printz Honor for Literary Excellence in Young Adult Fiction, the 2016 Tomás Rivera Book Award, and the 2016 Américas Award. Her other novels, What Can’t Wait and The Knife and the Butterfly, appear on YALSA’s Best Fiction for Young Adults and Popular Paperbacks lists. Ashley is also a former high school English teacher, holds a doctorate in comparative literature, and is an associate professor who teaches world literatures at The Ohio State University. She lives in Columbus, Ohio, with her two sons. Read more about her responses to book banning here
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Books by Ashley Hope Pérez
