Porter Square Books is excited to present a panel discussion about protecting the freedom to read with Fin Leary, Padma Venkatraman, and Ira Wells, moderated by author and PSB bookseller Josh Cook.

Books by the panelists are available for purchase (and can be shipped!) here.

From the destruction of libraries in ancient Rome to today's state-sponsored efforts to suppress LGBTQ+ literature, book bans arise from the impulse toward social control. In a survey of legal cases, literary controversies, and philosophical arguments, Ira Wells illustrates the historical opposition to the freedom to read and argues that today's conservatives and progressives alike are warping our children's relationship with literature and teaching them that the solution to opposing viewpoints is outright expurgation. At a moment in which our democratic institutions are buckling under the stress of polarization, On Book Banning is both rallying cry and guide to resistance for those who will always insist upon reading for themselves.

Josh Cook is a bookseller and co-owner at Porter Square Books in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he has worked since 2004. He is also author of the critically acclaimed postmodern detective novel An Exaggerated Murder and his fiction, criticism, and poetry have appeared in numerous leading literary publications. He grew up in Lewiston, Maine and lives in Somerville, Massachusetts.

Fin Leary (they/he), is an author, a program manager at We Need Diverse Books, and a writing professor at GrubStreet and Emerson College, where he teaches in the MFA program in popular fiction. Fin was a 2024 Lambda Literary Emerging LGBTQ+ Voices Fellow for Young Adult Fiction and a 2024 Publishers Weekly Star Watch Honoree. Fin is the editor of the science fiction anthology Future States of Stars (OwlCrate Press, 2026). They are a contributor to the young adult horror anthology These Bodies Ain’t Broken edited by Madeline Dyer (Page Street Publishing, 2025). Their work has been published in the anthology About Us edited by Peter Catapano and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, as well as the New York Times, Good Housekeeping, Refinery29, The Washington Post, Cosmopolitan, The Oprah Magazine, Teen Vogue, Healthline, and more. Fin lives with their orange literary cat and a rainbow bookshelf outside of Boston, Massachusetts.

Padma Venkatraman is the internationally acclaimed author of Safe Harbor, Born Behind Bars, The Bridge Home (a Global Read Aloud), A Time to Dance, Climbing the Stairs and Island’s End, which have secured over 20 starred reviews and sold over ¼ million copies. She is the winner of WNDB’s Walter Dean Myers Award for Outstanding Children’s Literature and numerous other prestigious awards. Her books have been featured in the New York Times and Washington Post; included on ALA’s notable and several other best book of the year lists; and received book prize honors from Canada to Spain to Japan. Her poems have been published in Poetry and nominated for the Pushcart Prize. A sought-after speaker, she has presented the opening keynote address at the NCTE-ALAN 2019 conference, Rutgers-One-on-One conference, and other teacher, librarian and writer conferences, and has appeared on PBS and NPR. She loves sharing her passion for reading and writing, through talks and workshops on a variety of topics, with audiences of all ages across the world: from Mongolia to Trinidad to Sweden. She left India (where she was born) on her own, at age 19. Before becoming an American citizen and acquiring a doctorate in oceanography, Dr. Venkatraman directed a school in England, served as chief scientist on oceanographic vessels, conducted research in environmental engineering at Johns Hopkins and the College of William and Mary, and led diversity efforts. Discover more: www.padmavenkatraman.com ; visit www.diverseverse.org ; and arrange an event: theauthorvillage.com/presenters/padma-venkatraman/.

Ira Wells is a critic, essayist, and an associate professor at Victoria College in the University of Toronto, where he teaches in the Northrop Frye stream in literature and the humanities in the Vic One program. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Globe and Mail, Guardian, The New Republic, and many other venues. His most recent book is Norman Jewison: A Director’s Life. He lives in Toronto with his wife and children.

VIRTUAL: Banned Books Panel ft.Josh Cook, Fin Leary, Padma Venkatraman, and Ira Wells