The Eleanor Roosevelt Center this week announced 10 honorees for the 2025 Eleanor Roosevelt Awards for Bravery in Literature, including bestselling author Margaret Atwood, who will receive the Eleanor Roosevelt Lifetime Achievement Award, and Texas librarian and freedom to read advocate Becky Calzada, who will receive the Eleanor Roosevelt Literary Freedom Award.
The awards will be presented jointly with PEN America at the Eleanor Roosevelt Banned Book Awards ceremony at the Bardavon 1869 Opera House in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. on October 11, the final night of Banned Books Week 2025. Atwood will be interviewed from the stage, and author and PEN America president Jennifer Finney Boylan will be the keynote speaker.
In addition to Atwood and Calzada, the evening will also honor Malinda Lo for Last Night at the Telegraph Club, Juno Dawson for This Book Is Gay, Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell for And Tango Makes Three, John Green for Looking for Alaska, and Matthew A. Cherry & Vashti Harrison for Hair Love. Deborah Caldwell Stone, director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, and Cameron Samuels, executive director of Students Engaged in Advancing Texas (SEAT) will also speak.
Tickets will be available to the public and go on sale July 24 at Bardavon Box Office.
