Stephen King is the most banned author in US schools, PEN report says
[October 02, 2025]
By HILLEL ITALIE
NEW YORK (AP) — A new report on book bans in U.S. schools finds Stephen
King as the author most likely to be censored and the country divided
between states actively restricting works and those attempting to limit
or eliminate bans.
PEN America’s “Banned in the USA,” released Wednesday, tracks more than
6,800 instances of books being temporarily or permanently pulled for the
2024-2025 school year. The new number is down from more than 10,000 in
2023-24, but still far above the levels of a few years ago, when PEN
didn’t even see the need to compile a report.
Some 80% of those bans originated in just three states that have enacted
or attempted to enact laws calling for removal of books deemed
objectionable — Florida, Texas and Tennessee. Meanwhile, PEN found
little or no instances of removals in several other states, with
Illinois, Maryland and New Jersey among those with laws that limit the
authority of school and public libraries to pull books.
“It is increasingly a story of two countries,” says Kasey Meehan,
director of PEN’s Freedom to Read program and an author of Wednesday’s
report. “And it’s not just a story of red states and blue states. In
Florida, not all of the school districts responded to the calls for
banning books. You can find differences from county to county.”
King’s books were censored 206 times, according to PEN, with “Carrie”
and “The Stand” among the 87 of his works affected. The most banned work
of any author was Anthony Burgess’ Dystopian classic from the 1960s, “A
Clockwork Orange,” for which PEN found 23 removals. Other books and
authors facing extensive restrictions included Patricia McCormick’s
“Sold,” Judy Blume’s “Forever” and Jennifer Niven’s “Breathless,” and
numerous works by Sarah J. Maas and Jodi Picoult.
Reasons often cited for pulling a book include LGBTQ+ themes, depictions
of race and passages with violence and sexual violence. An ongoing trend
that PEN finds has only intensified: Thousands of books were taken off
shelves in anticipation of community, political or legal pressure rather
than in response to a direct threat.
“This functions as a form of ‘obeying in advance,’” the report reads,
“rooted in fear or simply a desire to avoid topics that might be deemed
controversial.”
The PEN report comes amid ongoing censorship efforts not just from
states and conservative activists, but from the federal government. The
Department of Education ended an initiative by the Biden administration
to investigate the legality of bans and has called the whole issue a
“hoax.” PEN’s numbers include the Department of Defense’s removal of
hundreds of books from K-12 school libraries for military families as
part of an overall campaign against DEI initiatives and “un-American”
thinking.
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PEN America literary service award recipient Stephen King attends
the 2018 PEN Literary Gala on May 22, 2018, in New York. (Photo by
Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)
 In Florida, where more than 2,000
books were banned or restricted, a handful of counties were
responsible for many of the King removals: Dozens were pulled last
year as a part of a review for whether they were in compliance with
state laws.
“His books are often removed from shelves when ‘adult’ titles or
books with ‘sex content’ are targeted for removal — these
prohibitions overwhelmingly ban LGBTQ+ content and books on race,
racism, and people of color — but also affect titles like Stephen
King’s books,” Meehan says. “Some districts — in being overly
cautious or fearful of punishment — will sweep so wide they end up
removing Stephen King from access, too.”
PEN’s methodology differs from that of the American Library
Association, which also issues annual reports on bans and
challenges. PEN’s numbers are much higher in part because the free
expression organization counts any books removed or restricted for
any length of time, while the ALA only counts permanent removals or
restrictions.
Both organizations have acknowledged that because they largely rely
on media reports and information that they receive directly, their
numbers are far from comprehensive. Stephana Ferrell, director of
Research & Insight at the Florida Freedom to Read Project, wrote in
an email this week that total bans are “likely much higher” than in
PEN's snapshot analysis, based on the Project's ongoing public
records requests.
The PEN report includes no banning data from Ohio, Oklahoma,
Arkansas and other “red” states because researchers could not find
adequate documentation. Meehan adds that PEN also doesn’t know the
full impact of statewide laws.
“It’s become harder and harder to quantify the scope of the book
banning crisis,” Meehan says. “In a state where a banning law is
passed, we don’t have the data to know whether every school in that
state had the books affected. Our data is snapshot. It’s what we
were able to collect through what’s publicly reported or on websites
or what journalists have uncovered.”
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AP writer Kate Payne in Tallahassee, Florida, contributed to this
report.
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