The associate director of the American Booksellers for Free Expression initiative of the American Booksellers Association joined the ABA in 2023, three years after receiving a PhD in English and comp lit from Columbia University. She talked with PW, where she once worked as a digital production assistant, about how her academic background influences her advocacy, and what the stakes are for booksellers and readers in the current political climate.
What’s a typical day for you?
It depends. When state legislatures are in session, I’m tracking bills that could impact bookstores and readers and organizing a response. When the regional bookseller associations are having their fall shows, I’m on the road. When we have institutes, I’m answering questions at our Ask Advocacy desk, and usually preparing for a panel or two. Around Banned Books Week, I’m setting up programming to raise awareness.
Some things are consistent. I usually have education panels or webinars to prepare for, resources to create based on what stores are dealing with, or long-term projects like the ABA Right to Read Handbook. I have regular meetings with coalition allies, internal meetings with the ABA team, or meetings with booksellers fighting book bans or dealing with harassment. I make social media posts for the @ABFEFreeExpression Instagram. And if there’s time left, I dig through my zillion Google alerts to see what is happening day-to-day with book bans.
How does your time in academia influence your ABFE work?
I taught a survey of political philosophy at Columbia for four years and could not have imagined that all the stuff we were talking about in theory would feel so close to hand, but I’m not sure a week goes by when I don’t think of something John Stuart Mill or Michel Foucault or Kimberlé Crenshaw wrote in relation to the current political situation. But the classroom doesn’t give you a sense of political tactics or how to advise someone who just had a bomb threat called in. Those are things I’ve been learning on the fly from people who’ve been doing the real work for a long time. I do think my background as an educator is helpful in being able to talk to people about complicated things in a way that hopefully isn’t totally mind-numbing.
What motivates you to protect the freedom to read?
This is such a cliché, but books have changed my life. When you find an unexpected part of yourself reflected back to you in a book, it can be transformative. That scares the people who want to ban books. It’s harder to narrow someone’s world when they have access to such a multitude of experiences. Those are the stakes, and I feel them deeply. Sometimes too deeply, which is when I need to take a walk.
Less abstractly, I work with incredible people. My ABA colleagues are some of the most supportive people I know, and the community of free expression advocates has been so generous in showing me the ropes and letting me find my place in the work. Finally, I’m low-key obsessed with booksellers: they are the coolest people—the way they show up for each other, for their communities, for their principles is amazing. Coming from the often siloed, wonky world of academia,
it’s such a welcome change.
You’ll be offering an educational session on the First Amendment during Children’s Institute. How will this address the unique challenges facing children’s bookstores?
We’re living through an inflection point for free expression in this country. People are being taken off the streets because of things they’ve written. Lies about books and the people who circulate them have stirred some people into a frenzy. Ideological funding cuts are eroding the infrastructure that writers depend on. It’s important that booksellers understand what is protected, why, and how to respond if and when those rights are challenged. It’s particularly urgent for children’s bookstores because there is a concerted effort to control the ideas and identities represented in children’s and YA books, as though they have no First Amendment protections. Well, they do, and booksellers need to know those protections inside and out.
Philomena Polefrone’s presentation, “Know Your First Amendment Rights,” will be held in Room B113–114, Floor 1, on Friday, June 13, 9:30–10:30 a.m.
