Stephen King Most-Targeted Author Amid 6,870 School Bans

PEN America's “Banned in the USA” report found 6,870 instances of books temporarily or permanently removed from U.S. schools in 2024–25 across 23 states and 87 districts, down from more than 10,000 the prior year but still far above pre-2021 levels and bringing total removals since July 2021 to nearly 23,000. The most-targeted author was Stephen King — 87 titles removed totaling 206 removals — followed by Ellen Hopkins, Sarah J. Maas, Jodi Picoult and Yūsei Matsui, while Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange was the single most-banned work. Roughly 80% of the bans were concentrated in Florida, Texas and Tennessee, where new laws and political pressures expanded grounds for removals. PEN America says censorship now takes many forms — laws, directives, “do not buy” lists and mislabeled “explicit” lists — and commonly cites LGBTQ+ themes, race, violence and sexual content as reasons for pulling books. The group warned this “everyday banning” has normalized censorship, reduced student access to literature, and harmed authors’ incomes and creative freedom, and Stephen King urged readers to pick up his banned titles.