The first week of October was National Banned Books Week — an event that aims to bring people together in shared support of the freedom to seek and express ideas. The event was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in libraries, bookstores and schools, according to the Banned Books Week Coalition. This year’s theme is “Let Freedom Read!” and hopes to bring national attention to the harms of censorship.
In this episode of "Island Interviews," author Ray Hudson joins the show. Hudson lived in Unalaska from 1964 to 1991. He taught at Unalaska City School and has written many books about Unalaska and the Aleutians, and is perhaps best known for the 1998 Unalaska classic, “Moments Rightly Placed: An Aleutian Memoir.”
Hudson sat down with KUCB to discuss the impacts of book bannings in schools, bookstores, and libraries and how censorship affects the author-reader relationship.
This interview originally aired on KUCB on Oct. 5, 2023.