Celebrate Banned Books Week with Drag Queen Story Hour in San Francisco!
What better way to celebrate Banned Books Week than with Drag Queen Story Hour! The Banned Books Week Coalition presents this special event on September 28 at The Bindery (1727 Haight Street, San Francisco), The Booksmith’s multi-purpose events space.
Join some of San Francisco’s most glamorous drag queens as they read challenged and banned picture books to entertain children of all ages! Doors will open at 2:00 p.m., with the reading to start at 2:30 p.m. The event is free and open to the public, but priority will be given to parents with their children.
Drag Queen Story Hour, which presents readings and workshops to kids of all ages in public libraries, has faced repeated challenges to its programming across the country in the past two years. By partnering with the Banned Books Week Coalition, both organizations aim to highlight the real dangers of allowing stories — and the real lives they represent — to be erased. Telling kids and readers of all ages which stories are valuable and which are not can have lasting and devastating effects. The September 28 event is a celebration of expression, inclusion, and diversity.
Banned Books Week is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read. It was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in schools, bookstores, and libraries — challenges that still happen today! The 2019 celebration will be held September 22 – 28. The theme of this year’s event proclaims “Censorship Leaves Us in the Dark,” urging everyone to “Keep the Light On.”
LGBTQ-inclusive children’s books are among the most challenged and banned titles each year. In the last few years, acclaimed picture books like A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo by Jill Twiss and EG Keller; This Day in June by Gayle E. Pitman and Kristyna Litten; And Tango Makes Three by Peter Parnell, Justin Richardson, and Henry Cole; and I Am Jazz by Jessica Herthel, Jazz Jennings, and Shelagh McNicholas have appeared on the annual Top 10 Most Challenged Books List from American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom.
Join Banned Books Week and Drag Queen Story Hour at The Bindery in San Francisco for a fabulous celebration of reading, 2:30 – 4:00 p.m., September 28! The event also features facepainting for kids and a cash bar serving beer, wine, and cocktails for anyone 21+. RSVP on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/events/1093204637543051/
Find Banned Books Week events around the world at https://bannedbooksweek.org/events/
Learn more about the most challenged books at ala.org/bbooks/top
ABOUT THE BANNED BOOKS WEEK COALITION
The Banned Books Week Coalition is an international alliance of diverse organizations joined by a commitment to increase awareness of the annual celebration of the freedom to read. The Coalition seeks to engage various communities and inspire participation in Banned Books Week through education, advocacy, and the creation of programming about the problem of book censorship.
The Banned Books Week Coalition includes American Booksellers Association; American Library Association; American Society of Journalists and Authors; Association of University Presses; Authors Guild; Comic Book Legal Defense Fund; Dramatists Legal Defense Fund; Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE); Freedom to Read Foundation; Index on Censorship; National Coalition Against Censorship; National Council of Teachers of English; PEN America; People For the American Way Foundation; and Project Censored. It is endorsed by the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress. Banned Books Week also receives generous support from DKT Liberty Project and Penguin Random House.
https://www.facebook.com/bannedbooksweek/
Twitter: @BannedBooksWeek
ABOUT DRAG QUEEN STORY HOUR
Drag Queen Story Hour/SF (DQSH/SF) contracts with professional drag queens who are experienced youth performers and educators. They capture the imagination and gender play of childhood and give kids glamorous, positive, and unabashedly queer role models, all while promoting early childhood education and inclusive family programming. In spaces we create, kids are able to see beyond gender restrictions and imagine a world where everybody is safe and welcome and dress up is real. DQSH Queens are ambassadors for equity diversity and inclusion in family programming. Created by Michelle Tea and RADAR Productions in San Francisco, DQSH now happens regularly in L.A., New York, and San Francisco, and events are popping up all over the country and the world!
https://www.dragqueenstoryhour.org/
https://www.facebook.com/dragqueenstoryhour/
https://www.instagram.com/dragqueenstoryhour/?hl=en
ABOUT THE BINDERY
The Bindery is a multi-purpose events space and bookstore, a satellite project of independent bookstore and San Francisco legacy business The Booksmith. The events parlor has a beer, wine, and cocktail bar and hosts all manner of events, literary and otherwise, public and private. It’s home to the experimental keystone, The Arcana Project: a deep, highly inclusive array of books — fiction and nonfiction, from all over the world — presented in chronological order by the date they were written.
https://www.booksmith.com/Bindery