It’s likely when you think of book bans in the 2020s, one of the books that immediately comes to mind is Gender Queer. Maia Kobabe’s memoir was published in the spring of 2019, and it not only earned tremendous critical praise, but it also landed among the 10 books honored each year as an Alex Award winner. The Alex Awards honor the best books published for adult readers with teen appeal. It’s not “just” an award. It’s a designation that helps library workers discover new titles to share with readers, both adult and young adult.
Gender Queer has since gone on to earn even more honors. In one example, the book landed on Illinois’s Lincoln List, a statewide list that encourages high schoolers to read and discuss great literature. The titles on that list are selected by librarians and educators, with space for teen readers to nominate and vote for titles they want to see on the list. Kobabe’s memoir was selected as a Teen Choice Nominee for the 2023 list.
Kobabe’s memoir explores eir gender and sexuality coming-of-age. It’s a story that teen readers of any gender or sexual orientation will connect with, as it’s also about growing up and feeling the pressures of conforming to beliefs one has learned at home and/or adapting to one’s personal experiences outside the home. Censors tend to home in on seven particular panels in the 240-page book, pointing to them as “pornographic,” as “child pornography,” as “grooming,” or any other term du jour, failing to bother talking about the other hundreds of panels, including the especially potent final scenes where Kobabe wrestles with eir decision to not talk about eir identity with a group of students. Cherry-picking passages in this way is intended to cause a stir, and it does. Being confronted with nudity or sexuality on a blown-up poster board at a school board meeting is jarring; it is not, however, damnifying evidence that the book itself needs to be banned. Indeed, as schools throughout Maine have shown, when review committees are required to actually read the book when it’s been challenged, they keep the book on shelves because it is so much more than a few scenes that censors have fixated on.
In early October 2026, during the annual Banned Books Week awareness campaign, organizations whose work includes covering book censorship shared new data and reports on the state of book censorship this year. PEN America released its report on school book bans in the 2025-2026 school year, and the American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom (OIF) released a list of the 150 most banned books in America since the OIF launched in 1967.
Perhaps what’s most remarkable during the nonstop, virulent attacks on Gender Queer–which by virtue of the comic being a memoir, are direct attacks on Kobabe eirself–is that Kobabe has not backed down. A deluxe edition of the book was released in 2022, followed by a gorgeous annotated edition in May 2026. Kobabe has also published several other books in the 2020s, including Breathe: Journeys to Healthy Binding with Sarah Peitzmeier PhD and Opting Out with Swati “Lucky” Srikumar.
E has also been a relentless advocate for other authors feeling the sting of book bans, and e has poured incredible time, energy, and effort into championing the work of other comics. Not all creators step into the role of community advocate, and it’s been especially noteworthy when those who’ve had the most to lose as a result of ongoing personal and professional attacks via book censorship continue to use their voices to champion the kinds of stories and voices being suppressed right now. It is always those with the most to lose who understand the importance of doing that–and as readers and literary advocates, we’re lucky to know and see this.
So at the same time when Kobabe learned that eir memoir Gender Queer was the most banned book during the life of the OIF, it’s no surprise e was highlighting a project that furthered the realities of contemporary literary censorship. Kobabe served as curator and editor for a potent project from Xtra Magazine, sharing a moving and insightful series of comics about the realities of book bans.
Gender Queer isn’t an important text because of its distinction in this era of manufactured panic over books. It’s an important text because it is Kobabe’s origin story.
It’s an honor to share this conversation with Kobabe today, both as a means of talking about the efforts to silence and erase eir story and to showcase the incredible work e’s doing across media. To champion the work of colleagues is worthy of notice in and of itself. To do so while your own work continues to be the example of a real, hate-fueled movement against trans and gender minorities nationwide–and globally–is to deserve even more recognition. Kobabe’s voice resonates with readers of all stripes, and Kobabe is a leader and an example of a community builder worthy of championing, supporting, and celebrating.
Kelly Jensen: I want to begin this interview with a very straightforward, honest, and maybe difficult question: how are you doing right now as we enter our sixth year of relentless book bans that have been particularly personal for you? Where and how have you balanced the news and reality of the situation with the necessity and interest in continuing to create the kinds of stories that censors so desperately want to silence?
Maia Kobabe: Everyday I am frustrated and infuriated at the number of hours and amount of labor which authors, librarians, teachers, and activists have had to expend in the last six years to attempt to maintain the level of access to books, resources, and library services we had before the pandemic. I often imagine what we could have been doing instead– building new community engagement programs, writing new books, fighting for other causes. Instead, we’ve had to throw ourselves into a fight for free expression which should be protected already under the first amendment. I hate it! I hate that we have to do this, when we could be dreaming and creating a world even better than the one we currently live in!
A lot of the actions of conservatives are so clearly designed to waste our time– lawsuits they know won’t stand, but which we have to take seriously anyway until they are thrown out; bills that won’t pass, but which we have to hassle our representatives about anyway– it’s so obvious. I think this makes me even more determined to keep writing queer and trans stories for the whole rest of my career. I can’t let the distractions or attacks keep me from my work. Writing trans stories, including ones about healthcare access such as my second book, Breathe: Journeys to Healthy Binding, feels increasingly urgent. I want to write about my own top surgery experience. I wish I’d had the time to write it a few years ago, because multiple people in my life are getting top surgery soon, and I wish I could hand them my already finished book about it. But, since I can’t do that, the best I can do is start working on it now.
Although folks doing anti-censorship work are familiar with the types of books being censored and purged at alarming rates, most folks are not. Comics make up at least 14% of known school book bans, per PEN America’s most recent report. Why are comics so heavily targeted? Beyond what PEN or the American Library Association report, what are some of the trends or areas of concern you’ve seen when it comes to comics censorship, whether in America or elsewhere globally?
Comics are regularly targeted because images and words together often hit readers more viscerally than words alone. Book banners can find things they dislike in comics simply by flipping through them quickly without having to actually read the book. When the government of Alberta in Canada began targeting books in school libraries in the summer of 2025, the first four books they held up as examples of what they wanted to remove were all comics- Blankets by Craig Thompson, Flamer by Mike Curato, Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, and my memoir, Gender Queer. In Australia, Gender Queer spent two years being reviewed and re-reviewed by the Classification Board, at the urging of a conservative activist who challenged its “unrestricted” rating in federal court. In Norway my memoir was removed from a school library in Arendal, but returned before the week was out after librarian outcry. In Poland the current conservative president, Karol Nawrocki, ran the cover of my book through a papershredder onstage during a campaign speech, then went on to win his election. You can find the video of him shredding it on youtube. So it’s obvious that comics are striking a nerve, internationally as well as in the US.
Perhaps even more specifically, comic memoirs–true stories of real lives–have been in the crosshairs of censorship. There’s your story, of course. Then there are books like Flamer by Mike Curato, Homebody by Theo Parish, and Messy Roots by Laura Gao, alongside older titles that have been censored for decades, including Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home and Blankets by Craig Thompson. We know the “why” here–but can you articulate the particular cruelty that this specific targeting takes on? What sort of message does this send to young people in particular who are turning to comic memoirs to explore the world and lives around them? Can you share a comic memoir or two that have been particularly potent reading experiences for you that you want to recommend?
Having my personal story, my life, called inappropriate for teen readers is really frustrating. I was a teen when I had many of these experiences, thoughts, and questions! I definitely worry about young readers in communities wrestling with book challenges, who might see a book they deeply related to called inappropriate, harmful, pornographic, etc by adults aiming to suppress the book. I really hope none of those young readers internalize the message that their own thoughts and feelings are also inappropriate or too shameful to share. The titles you mentioned are powerful precisely because all of them are extremely vulnerable, and aim at ending stigma around feelings and experiences which can feel very isolating, but are in fact very normal and human.
Some of the comic memoirs which hit me particularly hard in the last few years are stories about loss and grief. Dancing at the Pity Party by Tyler Feder tells of the author losing her mother to cancer, written ten years after that loss. It’s the book the author wished she could have read about loving someone, watching them fall sicker and sicker, die, and then what comes next. The immediate things: a funeral, sitting shiva, going back to her sophomore year of college. But also the much later pieces– the grief and memories that resurface at surprising moments even a decade later. Turning the age her mother was when the author was born– contemplating living to ages her mother never reached.
Something Not Nothing by Sarah Leavitt tells the story of Leavitt’s partner of more than 20 years, Domino, who died with medical assistance after years of severe chronic pain and a rapid decline at the end of her life. Leavitt, a cartoonist and writer, tried to make sense of this decision through comics and abstract watercolor paintings. The result is a gorgeous, heart wrenching, deeply human meditation on love and loss. There were pages that lifted my spirits and pages that pierced me to my core. I sobbed through the majority of reading it but couldn’t put it down. It’s a map of the landscape of grief, and I really think the fact that it’s a comic means it conveys things a prose-only book couldn’t.
Feeding Ghosts by Tessa Hulls is another one– an incredibly powerful tale of the author searching back in her family history to find the roots of the trauma that defined her relationship to her mother and her material grandmother, who both survived the Communist takeover of China by escaping to Hong Kong but at a terrible cost. The comic format allows the author to build visual metaphors (the cowboy, the ghost mask) to express complex internal emotional states; the stunning artwork makes the compressed history of Chinese Communism digestible and urgent.
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One of the things that you’ve been doing during the last several years is really shining a spotlight on the creative work–and specifically comics–by and about marginalized genders. Can you talk about where and how you’ve been inspired to do that and how you’ve been able to support those creators in this difficult and dangerous moment?
Supporting work by other queer, trans, and nonbinary cartoonists is one of the best parts of my job! I love reading other people’s exploration of gender and sexuality in comics, seeing what visual metaphors and identity insights others have reached. Often, they influence how I think about my own identity. In the past few years I had the pleasure of blurbing many books by fellow queer cartoonists: The Third Person by Emma Grove, a stunning work telling of the author’s journey working through a Disassociative Identity Disorder diagnosis at the same time as coming out as trans; A Pros and Cons List for Strong Feelings by Will Betke-Brunswick in which the author tried to come out as trans and nonbinary as gracefully as they could while their mother was actively dying from cancer; Homebody by Theo Parish, which is the author’s gentle and affirming story of coming out as nonbinary; Trans History from Ancient Time to the Present Day by Alex L Combs and Andrew Eakett, a succinct and informative illustrated guide by two trans authors; Queer As All Get Out by Shelby Criswell, a collection of biographies of ten lesser known queer historical figures; Gaysians by Mike Curato, a deeply moving story of a queer Asian friend group in Seattle; Queer and How We Got Here by Hazel Newlevant, a weaving together of queer US history and memoir. I’m very happy that the reputation I have as an author brought all of these wonderful titles, and more, to me. I love getting the exact books I most want to read sent to me in advance of their releases!
You recently guest edited a series of comics for Xtra Magazine called “Comics Against Censorship,” which launched during Banned Books Week in October. The series was sparked by ongoing censorship in Alberta, Canada, where the provincial premiere has targeted books in libraries, following the well-tread paths created by the censors in the U.S. What drew you to this project and what was the guest editing process like?
I was delighted to get the invite to work on this series from Mel Woods, who’d been closely covering the growing book ban situation in Canada for Xtra Magazine before they moved on to work with The Canadian Anti-Hate Network (CAHN) to track and document anti-trans attacks. This invite was the first time I’ve ever been asked to be the editor, rather than the author or illustrator, for a comic piece. I’ve been telling my own story of censorship over and over for the past half decade at this point; I was very excited to have the opportunity to highlight some other stories of censorship instead. I reached out to multiple cartoonists whose work I love and asked them to either write about the challenges they’ve personally encountered against their own work, or to interview others on aspects of censorship ranging from challenges against gay magazines in the 1970s and 80s to the suppression of queer webcomics today. I solicited all of the pitches, worked closely with all of the cartoonists on their stories, and negotiated the highest payments I could from Xtra. It was a great experience and I loved stretching my wings in a new realm of comics publishing.
One of the themes that comes through several of these comics is the ways in which access to comics–and specifically, queer comics–impacted the creators, some of whom grew up in rural communities with little or no access to a wide range of lived experiences. Where and how did you relate to these stories? Where and how do you see today’s young people finding connection here, even if they themselves don’t live in rural or isolated communities?
I was a teenager in the early 2000s, the “pre-Glee” era in the United States. I was so hungry for queer stories as a young person. I latched onto every side character, every single episode special, every crumb I could find, and I didn’t even grow up particularly rural or disconnected! I lived near a mid-sized town with a robust public library system in the liberal Bay Area, and yet I still felt starved for queer stories in my formative years. Many of the early examples of queer stories I was able to find were in manga series. I believe the first trans character I encountered was Isabella in Paradise Kiss by Ai Yazawa, which was published in English between 2002-2004, when I was in high school. I remember at that time thinking I could read every single queer YA novel as it was published, because there were so few. Nowadays, there’s no way I could read every single queer book in any genre, which is such a blessing. My hope is that queer kids, even in the most rural and conservative areas, can find queer stories somewhere– even if they need books with slightly less obvious titles than mine. I hope kids today still make friends the way I did: by spotting someone carrying around a book I loved, or wearing a t-shirt of an anime I liked, or with a sticker on their water bottle for a webcomic I was reading.
Each of the comics in this collection packs a punch. But one that I think really highlights an underdiscussed issue is by Hazel and Bell, as it explores the ways online censorship impacts online web comic creators. The censorship goes both ways–artists can’t create without fear of censorship or cancellation, and readers are hindered from accessing the stories and voices of creators whose work is best suited and accessible online (for any number of reasons, including the fact traditional publishing is harder for marginalized creators, made worse now with these stories being censored in institutions which would typically consider purchasing them). For folks who may be unfamiliar with the challenges of online comics creation–in addition to what’s covered in “Online Censorship is Crushing Indie Webcomics,” are there additional pieces of legislation or actions being taken by authorities that are concerning as they relate to online comics that people should know about? What are we losing in terms of art, creativity, and connection? Are there groups or organizations doing resistance work or advocacy that people should know about or can get involved with?
There are tons of different issues impacting web censorship at the moment. Every site which wants to have an app available in the Apple app store now has to bend to Apple’s rules. This is what caused the Tumblr “female-presenting nipple” ban of 2018, an anti-nudity terms of service change which drove many webcomic authors, erotic/NSFW artists, trans people, and artists in general off the site. It’s what’s forcing Patreon to switch to subscription billing on November 1, 2026– and will allow Apple to take a 30% cut from every single subscription purchased through the Patreon iOS app (rather than the web browser version of Patreon, which will remain unaffected). Many queer webcomic artists have been forced to put their work behind paywalls on Patreon as many other sites for sharing work online have changed their terms of service to define anything queer as inherently sexual, and anything sexual as banned.
The platform Itch.io, on which many indie game designers and web artists sell downloadable games and ebooks, delisted all adult NSFW content from their browse and search pages with no warning in the summer of 2025, folding under pressure from payment processors like Visa, Mastercard and Paypal. Many queer and trans comic artists had a major source of income cut off overnight with no avenue for recourse except to call Visa, Mastercard, and Paypal to complain. The webcomic site Tapas, owned by Korean entertainment company Kakao, is going to be shut down in 2027, leaving over 75,000 webcomic creators in the lurch. Webtoons, one of the other most popular webcomics hosting sites, has very strict content rules which keep tightening, to the point that Hazel and Bell have to post heavily censored versions of the pages from their series Electric Bones on Webtoons and post the uncensored version on a personal website or on Patreon behind the paywall.
Internet censorship bills such as the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), the Interstate Obscenity Definition Act (IODA) and the SCREEN Act which keep rearing their heads in Congress with various tweaks would all increase censorship online, probably in ways that specifically target queer and trans media, access to sexual health and abortion information, and communities supporting survivors of sexual assault, as website would likely ban all of this content in an attempt to comply.
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What was the most rewarding part of editing this series? What did you take away from the experience and what surprised you (or enlightened you) the most?
I loved getting to reach out to cartoonists I knew had stories about censorship to tell, stories which haven’t received the same level of media attention as my experiences with censorship. Every artist and creative team was a delight to work with. I loved watching the stories take shape and thinking about all five stories in relationship with each other. No one comic can tell the whole story, but the opportunity to edit a series meant we could paint a bigger picture from multiple angles. It was important to me to have a story which interviewed queer elders, a story which interviewed queer youth, a story about traditionally published books, a story about webcomics, and also voices from on the ground in Alberta where the most intense censorship is currently being pushed in Canada. The best part was hearing from the authors I was working with “the feedback you gave me was really useful.”
Where or how do you wish more people would engage with ending censorship? What ways can folks make an impact beyond reading or buying the books being censored? Perhaps even more specifically, where and how can the average person be an advocate for queer voices? For comics?
Attacks on free speech are happening at so many levels right now, I really hope people pay attention to this issue both hyper-locally and at the state and federal levels. There are four different bills proposed in Congress right now, all of which aim to remove all trans books, as well as books about race, racism, and the history of race in America, from all public schools in the country. These bills are HR 2616 (“Stopping Indoctrination and Protecting Kids Act”) which has already passed in the House and moved to the Senate; HR 8705 (“CHARLIE Act”- it’s named in honor of conservative activist Charlie Kirk) and HR 7661 and its companion Senate version S 4925, both titled “Stop the Sexualization of Children Act.” If any of these four bills passed, they would force all public schools in the country to remove every book I’ve ever written or face the loss of their federal school funding. I hope people take a few minutes to call their representatives to say NO to all of these bills, as well as keeping their ears open for challenges at the school district level or library board in their own communities. We need vocal advocates for free speech!
What advice would you give to literary advocates and to targeted authors when it comes to protecting themselves and their energy during this era of unrelenting censorship? Where and how can joy continue to be a key component of the work of advocacy and creativity?
If you are an author who has been targeted by censorship, you are in good company! Find some community, join Authors Against Book Bans (or Canadian Authors and Illustrators Against Book Bans in Canada) and join in the conversation. It’s so much easier, and more fun, to face this in community than alone. I’ve felt so much support and encouragement from talking to other authors in the censorship battle. Do the things you need to protect yourself online– sign up for a service like DeleteMe to make sure your address and phone number aren’t floating around– and try to spend less time on social media. There’s a lot that feels very urgent to comment on or address every single day, but we have to protect the quiet, focused, uninterrupted time we need to keep writing and drawing. I constantly remind myself “writing and drawing is the fun part of my job.” How can I make sure I am still spending as much time as possible creating, not just emailing, commenting, spiraling? I find it really helpful to pick a specific type of advocacy work and do it on a schedule of my own choosing (for example phone calls to my reps on my lunch break, or an AABB zoom meeting Tuesday morning, or a single blog post on the book bans bills I plan to write in the afternoon). It’s way easier to handle it this way than logging on to the internet every morning to check “what fresh hell must I counter today?” Knowing I have a scheduled task ahead of me at a later time helps me step away from the chaos when I want to focus and write.
What are you most proud of right now when it comes to your work?
The challenges against Gender Queer really helped clarify the purpose of my work. I want to write books and tell stories which make it easier, safer, and more joyful for trans and nonbinary people to exist in this world. I have three books out all of which have that statement as their driving purpose, and I am excited to keep writing books in the direction of this goal for the rest of my career!
Book Censorship News: November 13, 2026
More reflections on the midterms to come, but there’s been so much good news in school board elections. Several schools that have faced book bans and library restrictions are seeing new faces–including whole new slates–put into those roles. People don’t want time and money wasted on censorship. If you read one take this week, make it Frank Strong’s look at how Texas school board races were a foreteller of the blue tsunami.
- Charleston County Public Library (SC) has banned two books and is moving several books for young readers out of their intended areas and into different areas to make them harder for those young readers to find.
- This is a pretty big deal and unfortunately, the story is behind a paywall. But the students of Department of Defense Education Activity schools who sued over the banning of books will see that the injunction on the bans follows them if they transfer schools within the Department of Defense (the injunction applied only to the schools where students attended).
- The New York Times covers the forthcoming ban on books in Alberta, Canada, libraries. You already know what kinds of books are included because this is the same playbook from America.
- Brian Harrison, a Texas republican lawmaker, has sponsored a bill to ban membership of libraries and librarians in the American Library Association. It’s the second time he’s done this, and this is far from the first place to try to do this.
- “Before my parents immigrated to the United States in 1993, they lived through a severe book ban themselves. China’s Cultural Revolution included a campaign to rid the country of symbols and artifacts that did not comport with Maoist thought. My dad was born into a village recovering from famine. He grew up toiling in the fields. At school, which he was fortunate to attend at all, he read propaganda materials and traded a handful of war novels favorable to China with his friends.” This is a really interesting read.
- Washington City Council (NC) tried to ban LGBTQ+ programming from their local library, “inspired” by the fight to remove a logo from Farmville Public Library recently because it looked too much like rainbow colors. The proposal to do the bigotry thing did not move forward.
- Where and how school library policies work in Tennessee amidst its “Age Appropriate Materials” law.
- Conroe Independent School District (TX) is pausing its requirement that all books in classroom collections be posted for public ASAP. If you are around the bookish internet, you’ve seen the videos of classroom educators recently pulling their collections and cataloging them for this reason. It makes the books completely unavailable during the 30-day “review” process. This has been a tremendous waste of teacher time, energy, and money over a manufactured republican panic.
- Democracy dies beneath a paywall, so I cannot tell you much about this story except that Van Buren Public Library (AR) is dealing with decisions of where to shelve two children’s books with trans themes (and no action was taken this week). The books are My Rainbow and The Rainbow Parade.
- Psychology Today talks with George M. Johnson about being a banned author and the ways that–plus fighting book bans–impacts their mental health.
- The debate over whether or not The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian should be among the choices for literature circles at Pittsfield High School (IL) continued this week.
- In some good news, the University of Wisconsin’s volunteer Jail Library Group, which helps ensure books and libraries are accessible in Dane County jails, is back. It dissipated following COVID-19, but it’s up again. If you’re local, they’re hosting a book drive next week.
- This story is paywalled, but Readington School Board (NJ) decided to ban The Perks of Being a Wallflower from the middle school library. New Jersey, you may recall, has an anti-book ban law.
- New members of the Garfield County Public Library (CO), which has been dealing with censorship issues for years, are split on what to do with the new demands to restrict manga.