Every year in September, Cast of Wonders celebrates Banned Books Week, an annual international event celebrating the freedom to read and raising awareness of the immense social value of free and open access to information.
We will be opening to submissions for Banned Books Week 2025 in the second half of May 2025. Watch this space for details on the theme and guest editor!
Submissions should follow all of the standard Cast of Wonders guidelines.
2024’s theme is Unwanted, Unheard: Challenging the Silence
…stories that challenge collective silence, that show the risks and consequences of inattention and inaction. We want the voices of the silenced and unwanted to be centered, in stories that demand to be heard.”
Episodes:
Forthcoming this September!
2023’s theme was Guiding Sparks Between Worlds: How Stories Illuminate the World Around Us
…stories of discovery, of learning, of misconceptions unraveled, and how stories can serve as a guiding light to help us understand a new perspective, or to teach us valuable lessons when all other methods fail us.
Episodes:
2022’s theme was To See Yourself in Pages, Paragraphs, Sentences, and Words: Books, Stories, and Representation
…stories that show how books and stories serve as a beacon for identity, serving to draw peoples and communities together; books that make the statement: “This is who I am, this is who we are, and we will be heard!”
Episodes:
2021’s theme was Books Unite Us, Censorship Divides Us
Have you ever made friends with someone who loved the same book you did? You started the conversation as strangers, but you feel so passionately about the ideas expressed in this book that you end as comrades in arms?
It’s a book that speaks to shared experience, shared pain—and therefore lights the way to shared learning, shared hope, and shared healing.
Episodes:
2020’s theme was Lifelines: books that help us get through periods of isolation.
“Books” can be any one-way form of communication: a box of letters, a podcast, skywriting — anything the recipient can’t easily reply to. “Isolation” can be either physical or social: an astronaut alone in a spaceship; a person in a place where no one speaks their language; someone in prison.
Episodes:
2019’s theme was Censorship Leaves Us in the Dark. Turn the Light On!
Oppression wants to cover our lives in a blanket of darkness, but each small act of resistance, each defiant moment of hope, brings light to our shared spaces.
Episodes:
2018’s theme was Libraries.
“With a library you are free, not confined by temporary political climates. It is the most democratic of institutions because no one – but no one at all – can tell you what to read and when and how.” – Doris Lessing
“People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.” – Saul Bellow
A good library can give you answers to the questions you never knew you had. A good librarian can open doors to worlds you never knew existed.
Episodes:
2017’s theme was Text Against Tyranny: the stories some would silence, and the power of literature, in all its forms, to enlighten humanity’s darkest hours.
Episodes:
Cast of Wonders 214: The Price of Stories by Shannon Connor Winward, narrated by Katherine Inskip
Cast of Wonders 215: Problematic by Brian Lawrence Hurrel, narrated by Tatiana Grey
Cast of Wonders 216: This Story Begins With You by Rachael K. Jones, narrated by Jen. R. Albert
The following episodes are examples of the type of stories we have run for prior Banned Books Week events: