Censorship is on the rise and it's up to us to fight it -

In 2024, when books with queer characters and authors are boxed up and pushed into a dark corner, are we really so far from Section 28?

- KATIE DANCEY-DOWNS

British author Juno Dawson is a top target for US censors. Her books unpack LGBT+ themes and she is a trans woman. They're the perfect recipe when it comes to things to get irate about – if you’re one of the US’s many book challengers, of course.

I was interviewing Dawson for nonprofit Index on Censorship, where I am the assistant editor, when she told me she had no idea whether her books were being taken off the shelves in the UK because we haven’t got a method for tracking library censorship over here. Well then, I thought. I’d better find out.

Fast forward nearly a year, and we have an answer. Yes, Juno, your books are being removed from UK school libraries. And you’re in the company of authors including Simon James Green, Philip Pullman and comedian Rosie Jones.

The Index on Censorship investigation, where 53 per cent of school librarians who responded to our survey said they had been asked to remove books from their shelves and – even more worryingly – 56 per cent of those librarians were forced to actually remove those books, paints a concerning picture. More than half of the requests are coming from parents, and it’s largely around LGBT+ content.