Hilarie Burton Offers Advice to Help Combat Book Bans (Exclusive)

A new report from PEN America reveals increasing “normalization” of book bans in the United States.

On Oct. 1, the nonprofit organization published their annual “Banned in the USA” report, which collects data on book banning and censorship from the 2024-2025 school year.

The report recorded 6,870 instances of book bans across 87 public school districts and 23 states nationwide. Titles like Wicked by Gregory Maguire, Forever by Judy Blume and Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo were among the school year’s most commonly banned books, while authors like Stephen King, Sarah J. Maas, Yūsei Matsui and Jodi Picoult were among the most banned authors.

Though some of the report’s findings remain consistent from last year’s — many targeted books, for example, feature protagonists from historically marginalized backgrounds — new trends also emerged.

PEN America found increased pressure on book banning from the federal government, as seen through a series of Trump administration executive orders, like “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling.” Though the orders don’t explicitly target books, they’ve been used as justification for book censorship, PEN America states, like with the removal of nearly 600 books from military base schools in July 2025. The report also finds that individual and group attempts to censor books are now becoming “increasingly routine.”

“This isn’t something that’s happening in just one pocket of our country,” actress and author Hilarie Burton tells PEOPLE. “This is a wide sweeping problem.”

Burton, who is teaming up with PEN America for their Eleanor Roosevelt Book Ban Awards on Oct. 11, in time for Banned Books Week, is an outspoken advocate for free speech. As a parent of two, she “can’t think of a fight that’s more important” than the combatting censorship in schools.

“That is a place that is sacred for learning new ideas, for breaking free of the bubble that you’ve grown up in, for exploring who you are and what you want to be when you grow up and what kind of life you want to live,” Burton says. “And school libraries are such an important place for that period of discovery.”

PEN America’s report also highlights how authors and illustrators are affected by censorship, whether through increased financial worry due to lower book sales and fewer school events, or feeling the need to “self-censor” their work.

“The reality is the people most affected by these bans are people who are writing from marginalized positions and are trying to create a safe space for other readers to find themselves,” Burton says. “That’s a really noble act. We need to protect these authors at all costs.”

The report additionally records how book bans harm public school systems. Increased book ban campaigns leave educators and librarians less time for “quality instruction,” and on top of “decreased engagement” in reading, students can also be impacted by the lack of access to books that teach them about life experiences.

Burton recalls how important it was to her to have access to books growing up, through her local public library in Northern Virginia.

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“I came from a deeply conservative home,” she says. “Questions I had about religion, politics, sexuality — all of these things that you really didn’t talk about at home or that you had been given perspectives on that you didn’t agree with — it was so important to have resources where I could explore what I thought, what I felt. I am horrified that there are kids that will not get that experience.”

Despite the increasing normalization of censorship, PEN America states that there’s still resistance against the practice. The report found that of the 87 school districts impacted by book banning during the 2024-2025 school year, 70 also had “public response against censorship” from individual people, groups or communities.

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For those who may not know where to begin in the fight against book bans, Burton emphasizes the power of starting small, whether that means buying a banned book to put in little free libraries, or participating in local school board elections.

“When we are on social media and we see all the things that are happening on a really big scale, you can easily become very overwhelmed,” she says. “But if you just zero in on what’s happening in your community, it makes things so much more manageable.”

“There are small acts of resistance that will have a lasting impact on people in your community and I think we can all participate in those.”

To learn more about PEN America, visit their website.