Freedom to Read

The Texas Book Festival supports the freedom to read without restriction or censorship. The heart of our mission is to connect authors and readers, support Texas public libraries, and celebrate the joy of reading. We stand for the right of readers everywhere to have unfettered access to books and information. We stand with authors, who in the variety and creativity of what they write, represent the full range of the human experience. We stand with librarians who work to meet their reading communities’ collection needs through informed deliberation. We stand with teachers and respect their expertise and discretion in educating their students. The freedom to write, read, and think freely is the cornerstone of our democracy and we will always
champion that right.

The Texas Book Festival endorses the propositions in The Freedom to Read Statement by the American Library Association and the Association of American Publishers, first adopted in 1953 and most recently amended in 2004, a comprehensive explanation about why the freedom to read must prevail over efforts to suppress.