Across the country, laws and policies of censorship and book banning are making it harder for libraries and schools to provide access to books. Arkansas’s Act 372 is one example of such a law. It created new restrictions surrounding materials made available to minors and placed significant pressure on librarians and libraries over what they can offer by prohibiting books that are deemed “harmful.” The consequence of violating the law is jail time, and “harmful” is left undefined, leaving bare shelves in libraries for fear of persecution. The ACLU of Arkansas has challenged those restrictions on First Amendment grounds.
The government should not be able to decide for everyone what they can read, nor should the government be able to tell every parent what their child is allowed to read. I believe librarians should be able to do their jobs. I believe parents should be able to make choices for their own families. And I believe young people deserve the opportunity to discover books that challenge them, comfort them, educate them, and make them feel seen or less alone.
As an author—and especially an author of LGBTQ romance—I believe in the freedom to read and that the people banning the books are never the good guys. So I’ve joined with a group of authors to publish an anthology to support the ACLU’s efforts. This two volume anthology is a collection of swoony, spicy scenes from previously published works, and you can find my contribution—a scene from To Love the Dragon King—in volume 2.
Both volumes are available in ebook, paperback, and special edition paperback, and you can find links to them all here.
RSS Feed