Banned books are not a relic of history. Maya Angelou, John Steinbeck, and Kurt Vonnegut have all faced bans. So have dozens of contemporary authors writing the truths of our time. The goal is always the same: limit access, narrow perspective, reduce who gets to speak.

“At the altar, she studies a small devotional painting hung above the lighted candles in a votive stand. The Madonna and Child, specked with wax, paint flaking off the canvas, the gilded frame has been gnawed by flames. A lost cause if ever there was one.” —from Emily Russell’s “Restorations”

“When it’s first thing in the morning, I still have the illusion that I can accomplish anything I want to, and everything I need to. By 10 a.m. that illusion is gone.” —Will Schwalbe @willschwalbe.bsky.social

“You hope you can be like the river and the music. You want motion to take you to a new place and want even more for the place you just were to be left far behind.” —excerpt from “Finding Absolution in the Flow” by Brent King

“I tell Meg I feel dead and she says you’re not dead you’re just not in New York.” —excerpt from “October Phone Call and Other Poems” by Madeleine Cravens

Are you familiar with the word “cark”? Join @caroledgarian.bsky.social as she dives into the meaning and history of this temporally appropriate word. bit.ly/3t85Mqp

“I used to think that the way writing worked was that I would suddenly be filled with the burning passion to tell a story, a story that was already fully formed in my brain, zero gestation, and that it would come flowing out of me, no typos, no rewrites, no stops and starts, no hems and haws.”

“sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep Steady thy laden head across a brook; Or by a cider-press, with patient look, Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.” —excerpt from “To Autumn” by John Keats

“Hating your body and hating your looks is a fool’s errand. It will dog you for the rest of your life, and where will it get you? It will never make you happy. It will never bring you love. It will never make sex juicier. It will never let you feel peace.” —Peggy Orenstein

Cartoon by Kaamran Hafeez

“Everyone is trying to sell me something. The night spins a boardroom of salesmen like wool— they pitch me an alternate route to myself.” —excerpt from Ali Nasir’s “Reckoning with the Truths of My Falsehood”

Every banned author is a voice someone fears. Fear of disruption. Fear of truth. Fear of a different point of view. We collect these voices. We keep them free. We make them impossible to erase. When you read them, you carry their words forward—beyond the reach of any ban.

“I thought about the little graveyard where the man would be laid. I had seen the place once on the man’s property. He had chosen a large stone, unengraved, to sit on him. It was to have a fleur-de-lis chiseled into it.” —excerpt from “Fleur-de-lis” by Susan Minot

“I once heard in a sermon, ‘Choose the important over the urgent.’” —Min Jin Lee @minjinlee.bsky.social

“Lorena was nervous. She knew that walking at night with a man meant that she might be tempted to kiss him.” —excerpt from “The Flowers in the Desert” by Jennifer Delgadillo

Join @caroledgarian.bsky.social as she explores the word “arrive” in this week’s “A Word, Please.” bit.ly/3t85Mqp

“It was so grotesque a mark that one had the feeling it was the art of no human hand and could be peeled off like so much soiled putty. But this was a surgeon’s office and the scar was real.” —excerpt from “The Story of a Scar” by James Alan McPherson

“Remember that imagination and art don’t conform to a capitalist’s ratio of productivity to time, however easy it is to succumb to the wish that with enough effort they could be made to.” —Adam Haslett

“When you get here it will be different but we will use the same words. You will look & look—& see only the world. Well here’s the world, sweetheart.” —excerpt from “No One Knows the Way to Heaven” by Ocean Vuong

“The pad of his strong feet, that ceaseless sound Of supple tread behind the iron bands, Is like a dance of strength circling around, While in the circle, stunned, a great will stands.” —excerpt from “The Panther” by Rainer Maria Rilke

“I make myself write a thousand words a day. I’m allowed to write more, but never less, and when I reach a thousand, I’m free to knock off if I want to. It gives me a small jolt of accomplishment, the feeling that I’ve earned my place on earth for the day.” —Justin Cronin

Join @caroledgarian.bsky.social as she explores Rumi’s “The Guest House” in this week’s “A Word, Please.” bit.ly/3t85Mqp

Cartoon by Jon Adams

Our Fall Story Contest is open for submissions! Have an idea that’s been floating around in your mind? Or a draft that you haven’t been motivated to finish? Get your pen on paper (or your fingers on the keys), and get writing! www.narrativemagazine.com/fall-2025-st...

It's a beautiful day to crack open a book and learn something new 📖

This fall, your library card may not get you the whole truth. In too many schools and communities, “approved” reading lists are shrinking. Voices are being left out, not because they lack merit, but because they challenge the way things are. Our library is free, uncensored, and open to everyone.

“We were so high up now that all the other mountains in the distance looked like dirt clods. I suddenly understood the poetification of mountainous places, the romance of scale.” —excerpt from “The Fall Line” by Tim Erwin

“I wish I could tell my twelve-year-old self that shutting out feelings as a strategy for dealing with pain isn’t the answer. I understand why she did it, though.” —Narrative Prize winner Maud Newton @maudnewton.bsky.social

Join us in celebrating Andre Dubus III’s birthday with his story “Tort”: www.narrativemagazine.com/issues/narra...

22 years of stories and voices that inspire. Here’s to many more chapters. 🎂📚

It’s almost our favorite time of year: the announcement of the next Narrative Prize winner! Hit Follow to be the first to know.

What better way to celebrate an author’s birthday than by getting to know them better? www.narrativemagazine.com/issues/fall-...

“nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals the power of your intense fragility” —excerpt from “somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond” by E. E. Cummings

“The older I get, the more I perceive that love is everywhere on this earth.” —Sarah Ruhl

Cartoon by David Ostow @daveostowdraws.bsky.social

Join us in congratulating our Spring Story Contest winners! 🥇 Our first place winner is Massoud Moussavi’s “Were All the Stars to Disappear” 🥈 In second place is Baird Harper’s “Motherland” 🥉 Third place goes to R. D. Saporita’s “Sorry”

Censorship thrives in silence. We refuse to be quiet. Every banned, challenged, or silenced author in our archive remains free to read, for everyone. Always. See for yourself: www.narrativemagazine.com/archive/auth...

“If you’d seen the lightning of his smile, you might have believed that man was walking on water, or at least that he had legs again.” —excerpt from Natalie Diaz’s “The Gospel of Guy No-Horse”

We’re thrilled to announce that Narrative for Schools is partnering with the National Writing Project @writingproject.bsky.social to empower the next generation of readers and writers.

“I’ll take you to her said the mortician when I returned to collect you & he gestured toward a pedestal, lit by a spotlight, guarded by a velvet rope.” —excerpt from “You’d Be Thirty Today” by Lo Naylor

“Because you are good at a thing does not mean that you are obliged to do it.” —Ann Beattie

“They were in the last rank of the armies of law. Clever junior partners were above them, partners, associates, men in fine suits who had lunch at the Four Seasons.” —excerpt from “American Express” by James Salter

“Love enlarges. What you put out into the world, you get back tenfold.” —Vanessa Hua @vanessahua.bsky.social

✒️ Calling all writers! 🖋️ Fall is here, which means so is our fall contest!

Cartoon by Mick Stevens

If your reading list makes everyone comfortable, it’s not doing its job. Books are meant to provoke, to complicate, to reveal. So when entire school districts censor what students can access, they’re not protecting kids. They’re protecting power.

“A year from now we’ll say a prayer for the dead over a candle in a glass so ugly you have to imagine that its only purpose is to convince us forever not to fall in love with death.” —excerpt from “First Night of Shiva, 11/6/2024” by Arne Weingart

“She had forgotten what an attractive thing the world is, and it was coming over her that somehow she had for the best years of her life been cheated of it.” —Henry James, “The Aspern Papers”

“An impulse to laugh rose in her—the way he said ‘Great Spirit’ seemed ridiculous; just say God, she thought, if you want to talk about God.” —excerpt from “Have You Met Esther” by Jackie Thomas-Kennedy

“There is a beginning in every grain of sand, there is an origin in the night wind, and the caves with their many moments of history hold all that we need to speak from.” —Romeo Oriogun, “Someday the Desert Will Sing”