ROCK HILL, S.C. — Sept. 22-28 is Banned Books Week, a national event to bring awareness to book restrictions and push for widespread access to information.
PEN America recently released data on these restrictions shows a stark increase from last year—with nearly three times more book challenges nationwide.
"It was an astounding amount for us to track, which is why we are still tracking it into the end of 2024," said Sabrina Baeta, a program manager with PEN America's Freedom to Read team.
So far, their research finds more than 10,000 instances of book bans in the 2023-24 school year. Many of them target books with themes of gender identity and race, and many are from Florida and Iowa.
However, recent legislation could put South Carolina higher up on the list.
"That goes down and affects everyone in the entire state," Baeta said. "The amount of book banning that happens really gets supercharged by legislation or regulations like those."
Baeta is referring to Regulation 43-170, which went into effect in August. It restricts books containing any "descriptions or visual depictions of sexual conduct" in South Carolina schools.
"It's very vague," said Amanda Campbell. "You could probably make the case, as one of our speakers said at the event, for banning a book like Romeo and Juliet."
Campbell is an English instructor who helped organize a Banned Books Week event for Winthrop University students, an area facing the book challenges head on.
"We actually had to bring in more chairs," Campbell said. "They're super vested in this idea that censorship still exists in the world really."
In fact, it may be even more common than the research shows. Baeta says "soft censorship" is harder to track.
"This can be canceled author visits -- authors that usually go to schools and speak to students there about their books," Baeta said. "It can be canceled book fairs, which happened in South Carolina."
Multiple organizations and libraries are having events throughout the week, including the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library system.
Contact Julie Kay at juliekay@wcnc.com and follow her on Facebook, X and Instagram.