lala, theo, you know how much i love being your dad. class of 2024. show him what you got. make magic. go blue blue.

on we delve into the latest news about the publishing industry with interest in insider interviews with publishing industry experts. we'll also give you updates on current nonfiction authors and books. the latest book reviews and we'll talk about current nonfiction books featured on c-span book tv. and now joining us on booktv v is author jonah winner. he is a children's book author. he's written over 40 children and books. many award winning, mostly published random house topics include ruth bader ginsburg, roberta willie mays, sonia sotomayor. barack obama. muhammad ali.

hillary clinton. thurgood marshall, etc., etc. what of children's books do you write? mr. winter well, i write on about a broad range of topics, but generally what i have been writing about until few years ago, i should say i had been writing about were books about people who don't share my identity. so a lot of books on people of color and books on women books about racial and social justice. i write books about baseball players and artists and musicians. i write children's book, nonfiction picture picture book biographies, picture book nonfiction, specifically and recently the, last few years, i've been writing more fiction for reasons having to do with certain changes in publishing world and in my career. but that's generally the sort of books i've been writing. my first book was the ego about diego rivera, published in 1991

and and that kind of was before there was a category in bookstores, a section in bookstores called picture book biography. so i've been doing this for a while well and recently in the dallas morning news wrote a column. and in that column you wrote, i am acquainted censorship from both political right and left. what were you referring to. well the to begin with the first part of your question the censorship from the political right is covered a lot in the news you see lots of news stories these days about right wing book banning, book banning and right wing school districts in florida. texas even the state where i live in pennsylvania. and so i am i am familiar with that. i've had i've had a few books banned my on roberto clemente was banned last year. that was the reason i was asked to write that piece for the dallas morning news. it was in duval county, florida,

along with a lot of other books. and it became quite a national news story because a lot of people were surprised that a book on roberto clemente, of all people, would be banned. but i also had a book on so to sotomayor, which is banned right here in the state where i live, pennsylvania, in york county. i was on a book tour for my book hillary about hillary clinton in 2016 and was met at the door of two schools there by the principal i spoke to. i was going to be have to go to the principal's office. it was a kind of a tense scene. and was told that i could not present my book hillary to the children in that school, even though those schools, even though i was on on a book tour for that book and they had known advance. so i would count that as in my experience of right wing book banning wing censorship. but the the what i have experienced, the left is is a lot more insidious.

and i would argue a lot more damaging. and it isn't covered as much in the news, or at least not in mainstream news. it's certainly probably covered a lot on fox news and news sources that from right wing places and it's generally referred to as cancel culture. and i have experienced that. i've had a book of piled on. in 2017 for the secret project. i wrote a piece about it in the new york times by left critics. i guess you could call that. well, it's more like a mob now who pounced on my book saying that it was erased native americans. it was book about the making of the atom bomb. i had not erased native americans from this book. but what started as a book that had gotten star reviews and was predicted for caldecott said quickly became a book that was

like kryptonite and that no one, no one wanted to touch it and. it kind of got disappeared. i also had an avid contracts canceled very much when they were canceled. they weren't they weren't news items. this wasn't that was written about in the news. it happened behind the scenes books that two contracts were canceled because my identity did not match the identity of the subject matter. one was a book on contract for, a book on ruth bader ginsburg that the publisher felt that because another book was coming out on this topic by, a jewish woman. my book could not compete with that. in the other instance, there was a book i had written about a white well, a slave owner. our known historic figure who who freed his enslaved and what amounts mattered to the largest emancipation in history. before that, the before the

civil war and this book got canceled simply because the the editor became worried because of various things that were happening. the children's book world became worried about the percent, what the perception would be about a white child, male children's book author writing about a white male slave owner published by a white male editor. and so canceled it well, the book got canceled by that publishing so i want to walk through i want to walk through some of these examples. mr. and let's start with roberto clemente in duval county. jackson ville, florida. when say that book was banned, who banned it and why? well, it was was banned. the school district and. and the answer why is sort of an interesting question. i think. now, look at it from the perspective of one year later, i think that the people who banned

who who removed this and 273 other titles books from the shelves in the schools in that district i think they were doing it as a form of creative protest to ron desantis new governor ron desantis, his new new law that sort of the the anti woke law that was put into place making it a crime to present books on certain topics that covered say sexuality, gender identification, racism and so they removed all of these books that for i think probably for the purpose of drawing attention to that at the time it seemed like they were doing this simply they were being good soldiers and just following law and and removing all the books that needed to be removed. but certainly their impetus for doing this was legitimate. i mean, desantis was making it crime and still is to present books on. the topics i mentioned to

children in public schools. so that was the reason. and when you say banned, they were removed from the libraries correct. yeah, i mean that's it's an interesting distinction when you hear this talked especially in right wing contexts there's always this distinction made between banning and removing book from the shelves. my my attitude is that if you remove book from the shelf from a bookshelf in a public school for ideological reasons, that amounts to banning a lot of people define the word banning in a more strict way to say banning can only be done by country. outlawing specific titles. but yes, that's what i'm referring to. so in duval county when this happened, this made the news correct that there was a lot of media about this. there was i mean, to the point where and when one pointed

hakeem's praise the house minority l was holding the book in house chambers, waving in the air as an example of of how the overreach of of of the right wing and censoring censoring books for kids because of a book by roberto clemente could be banned and anything could be banned. so yeah it became a it became a pretty big news item. what happened to the sales of the book? well, for that period they went up i mean the you know, i went on to amazon to check the sales rank and it was it was as if the book was had just come out and were a bestseller. i, you know, and i was being contacted by various news people, various states and and various organizations where in talking to me and people were saying they were to buy hundreds of these books, distribute, distribute to schools. you know that that banned books. so it was it provided a lot of

free publicity and and it did so almost 20 years after its publication date. i mean, it's stayed in print and done really well. the years. it's a common core book and it's it's survived. but that was really a shot in the arm. joan, a winner, i want to go back to your dallas morning news and quote again, what hurts a book or an author is the far more effective culture of the left who've commandeered both liberalism in general and the publishing world, specifically, often using their power to attack well-meaning authors in the form of social media pile ons and the resulting cancel lations. could you explain how this impacted you personally? well, as mentioned earlier, you know, it impacted me with the book i wrote called the secret about the making of the atom bomb, that a book i an

experience i wrote about in the new york times book review it as much the book had been getting rave and then suddenly it got attacked by a very popular social media who had a lot of followers who kind of piled on and and joined in the in the condemnation of this book, if you want to call it that. and after that one, no one wanted to touch this book. it was you know, it had been predicted for a caldecott well wasn't going to get one anymore. the publisher really didn't wasn't interested in promoting it anymore at that point because it was it had been at the center of a social media firestorm. so you know, after i wrote a piece about this in the new york times two years later, i myself experienced the joys of more pylons. i was singled out on a website

reading while wild white is a website run by left wing white people who like to attack and pile on other left wing right people, white people such as myself and they me on a sort of blacklist after that in my new york times piece came out and accusing me and authors of race in words, works and deeds well. i mean, i've devoted my life to educating children about racism and to promoting racial justice through my book. so was you know, i was, i was pretty upset about this. but then, you know right around that same time, i was told by my main editor at random house that she could no publish any more books by me on, people of color, women. and of course not, on white men, because no one wants any books about white men anymore. that was the implication there.

and she said, i get it, jonah, you're totally. and then she used the i can't use on tv, but those are some of the examples ways i've been impacted by this and contracts canceled also you know because because identity did not align with the subject matter and you talk in your column about two terms lived experience ences and own voices. what does that mean? well, own voices, the original term that came along in 2015 to promote the idea that people, writers should stay in their lane, they should not write outside their own experiences, and specifically writers from, quote unquote, empowered culture, whatever that culture might be, should not write about people from the marginalized culture. and so this this this became, this own voice. it became a very popular term. and in fact, it was used in some

rejection letters i got for a manuscript wrote about colin kaepernick and one of the editors said, i have a hashtag own voices problem with this manuscript, meaning i'm not allowed to write about this. and in fact, another editor just came out and said, no, this, this subject matter does not belong to you. you don't get to write about that. so that's what own voices mean, that the reason i'm not quite sure why that term was abandoned, but various people who were promoting the term said it was being weaponized against the people it was supposed to help. so they it was not a useful term anymore. and it got replaced by lived experience, which i have to say i don't think just just linguistically, i don't that's an improvement because the term lived experience implies that you have to, as an author, have lived the experience you're writing about in order to have the right to write about that, which means that nobody gets to write about anything except for

themselves except memoir. i mean, if you're going to follow logic of that term to its illogic code conclusion, you would have to say that a contemporary black would not be allowed to write about slavery because they didn't live that experience. so that that those those are those are those two terms. and the one lived experiences that went far more favor right now. where do you think the lived own voices movement came from? well, it came from an idea that well i would say it came from a sort of pseudo marxist idea about subject matter belonging to certain people and and literature being a power struggle in which certain subject matter like cultural subject matter, has been appropriated by those people in power. so the idea was that these these

new rules and by the way they are rules that are generally in place in the publishing industry right now, the publishers have been pressured into putting them into place. but these new rules were supposed to correct that injustice by by deciding who gets to about what. so that's why they were that's why they were created. i mean, i must add to that though that creating rules about what authors can and can't write about creates a kind of totalitarian of things because. when you start doing that, when you start limiting authors can write about you're you're you're bacally ering towards the stalinist soviet union where where only certain can get talked about and who break the rules get sent away. jonah winter do you consider to be politically liberal? extremely. i am. i have been i am a lifelong. i've been a liberal. my whole life. and i i as much i don't find

these these new developments at all liberal. i would call them illiberal. and but but yes, i mean, i you know, in first grade, i got in trouble in my school, which was in a right wing school district for wearing a piece button on my lapel. i been going to demonstrate and since i was since i was in high school anti-war protests, i am always voted democrat. i have devoted i would say my career is a children's book author to to the liberal cause of getting across information about people of color about justice, about women, people from all over the world that might be excluded from the curriculums in the schools across this country. yes, i am a i am an unabashed liberal. where did you grow up? well, i grew up in dallas, which is what a big part of what turned me into a liberal,

because, you know, i was i was you know, i was born born in 1962. i was on my father's shoulders when the day kennedy came to dallas and was assassin hated. so i grew up in the shadow that and in the era the john birch society, it was dallas, which has become apparently quite a left leaning city at this point. it was not that when i was up there and the particular where i grew up was just as racist and right wing as it could be and intolerant of any kind of nonconformity which made my life kind of kind challenging at times, growing up there. but it also helped shape i am i mean, i, you know, i'm a liberal and i'm a nonconformist and that shaped a lot of a lot of what i've devoted life to and who i am as a person. so how did you become a children's author? was it total accident? actually, i gone to graduate

school study poetry. i write poetry for adults when i'm not writing children's books and my mother is a children's book illustrator and author and she has been this children's book illustrator since i since i was six years old. so i knew about this business. i had actually my first job out of college was in the publishing world, you know, working as a children's book, editorial assistant and assistant editor. but what got me into writing children's books is a poetry reading i gave in which i was presenting these kind of i write a lot of kind of silly poems for adults. and one of them was a series of book reports from the point of view of a misinformed, illiterate ten year old boy. and one of the book reports that i that i read was on diego rivera, which my mother was trying to write a book about at the time, and struggling because she written books at that point. and this was 1989, 1990.

so she asked me to write the text for this and did, and it got published and it did really well. it's still in print and. and so it was kind of an accident really. okay. well, i want to talk a little bit about social media and its impact. you wrote a column in the wall street journal regarding experiences as well, and want to quote from that. what mattered was that a social media mob could force major publishers to stop distributing a book. my career will likely suffer damage because of what i've written here, so be it. the impact of social media. mr. winner. well, i would argue that it's been horrible and it has been it has led to various kinds of censorship, self-censorship, authors and editors now live in fear of being on social media.

they live in fear of the social media mob. and at this point, i would say most the lessons taught to us by the social media mob have been absorbed so that now the publishers have these rules in place like lived experience for instance and authors are self-censoring. i mean, there's also been examples of self cancellation to social media pressure. but, but i think the even more dangerous effect the symptom of of social media involvement in the children's book world is the self censorship the the notion that you always have of this this censor on your shoulder looking every word that you're typing and oh, am i allowed to say that? could i say, no, i'm not allowed to say that. and. you know, that is not a way that good literature happens and that

that that is that for literature to happen, for any literature to happen, authors have to be free to, say whatever they want to say without fear of reprisal, without fear, of. career ruination, without fear of getting attacked and becoming so unpopular that no publishers want to touch them. that and that's what to happen. social media. i think is the people are using social media for this purpose is responsible for so much of what has happened in the children's book world. i mean, there are a lot of people who believe that what's happened in the book world is wonderful i'm not one of these people. obviously. have you found yourself self-censoring? oh, sure. absolutely not in the essays that i write mean, i pretty much decided that in the essays i write, i'm just to say exactly what i think and hope that someone publishes them. but in my children's book manuscript, i mean, i look to like i often keep index cards full of ideas for children's

books and i go through that list to think, now how do that get? no, no one's going to publish that. no, too dark. no no. you know, to get i'm not allowed to say that problematic so absolutely i mean i have you know i've tried to come up with manuscripts that i think could possibly that i would be allowed publish. but but but then sometimes i don't even send those out because i don't see. the point is. it's is it safer as a children's to write about animals? yes. in fact, one of my one, my former main editor, that's what she highly wrote, the one who told me she was couldn't publisher books by people of color of women or white men. so you should really think about writing about animals and specifically she said she suggested the follow topic the last white rhinoceros, which she suggested without a trace of irony. and i burst out laughing, which

they suggested this, but it wasn't a joke. i mean, to me it sounds like i really like almost satirical name for a really sad memoir, but the last white rhinoceros jonah tells his story. but yeah, i. i've been told that i should write about animals and in fact i have started writing about animals. i have a coming out about birds this next month called bird or soul, which i, i think i have a copy of right. and an and this this is a manuscript i wrote kind of in response all of this. i mean, i thought, well, if i can't write about people i love birds, i'm going to write about, and i so i sent manuscript out to a couple of my former agent, sent this out to a couple of editors who didn't quite it enough to publish it. and then she kind of got cold feet about sending it out anymore. and she showed it to her assistant who looked at this manuscript that is just birds to

see, you know, what might be wrong with it. it hasn't gotten published yet. and he he you know, it's just about birds and bird songs. but he was looking through it and saying and i saw his thoughts this he said, you know, i kept thinking that maybe the diversity equity and inclusion theme would arise in this book about birds and and then there was a bird on a telephone wire. and i and i thought, oh, maybe there's going to be environmentalist theme that's going to hold this together. no, it's just about birds. well, long story short, i insisted that we keep sending this manuscript out, and an editor did publish. but one of the first things she did before publishing it was suggest that i take out all the text, all my writing, except for the bird songs, which i did. now, the only text in this book is like the chicken lady in car. and and you know what? i think that was the most brilliant suggestion that could have been made in regard to this

book. i'm very happy that this was published. the illustrations are beautiful it was illustrated by my and former collaborator stacey interstate and he and i collaborated on the ruth bader ginsburg book, which finally did get published by abrams who also came out with this book. and i couldn't be happier. maybe i'll just be publishing books about, i don't know, i again like birds. well, jonah, when are you you also talk about the industry, the publishing industry and the heresy press newsletter you wrote. fear has prompted publishers to avoid taking chances on any potential controversial books. this is a major departure since books were first published, publishers took chances on books that might offend certain people and often these books have helped move forward. yes, well, that's that is that

is that is the history of literature right there. i mean, ulysses, what if a publisher would have said, well, i don't know there's no book like this out really. you know, where's the precedent for this? and this is going to offend. so i don't know. i mean, that the right to offend is a fundamental right a it's a foundation for freedom of speech. and it's the foundation for a lot of literature. i mean, books in most books are going to offend someone. i think especially in this day and age, this is the age of getting offended by things. and the idea of not publishing a book because it might offend someone is, is enormous. it's a well, it's a sea change in how books published a word winning children's author jonah winter author of over 40 children's books. we appreciate your time on book tv. thank you very much.