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THE REAL STORY BEHIND
THE METAL CHILDREN:
CENSORSHIP AND LITERATURE

FRIDAY, JUNE 11 | 6:00 PM | FREE

Barnes & Noble Union Square
4th Floor Event Space
33 East 17th Street (Union Square North)

Using Adam Rapp’s personal experience as a starting point — Muhlenberg High School’s school board confiscated and removed his young adult novel “The Buffalo Tree” from the curriculum in 2005; an event that became the inspiration for his play, THE METAL CHILDREN — Joan E. Bertin of the National Coalition Against Censorship, NYU Professor Brett Gary and Mr. Rapp himself, with moderator Jeremy McCarter of Newsweek, will discuss the larger implications of censoring literature both in the classroom and beyond..

About the panelists

Joan E. Bertin (Executive Director of the National Coalition Against Censorship) is a graduate of NYU Law School, where she was a fellow in the Arthur Garfield Hays Civil Liberties Program. After law school, she spent seven years representing indigent clients as a legal services lawyer, and more than a dozen litigating civil rights and civil liberties cases at the ACLU. She has taught at Columbia University, where she remains on the faculty, and at Sarah Lawrence College, where she held the Joanne Woodward Chair in Public Policy, but prefers activism to academia. She frequently speaks and writes on legal and policy issues, and is the author of more than 30 chapters and articles in professional books and journals.     
 
Brett Gary is a cultural historian and Associate Professor in the Department of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University. He is the author of “The Nervous Liberals: Propaganda Anxieties from World War I to the Cold War” (Columbia University Press), and is currently writing “Bad Books, Birth Control, and Bolsheviks:  Morris Ernst and the Liberal Anti-Censorship Tradition.” He lives in New York City.

Adam Rapp (Playwright and Director) is an Obie-award-winning playwright and director. He is the author of numerous plays, which include NOCTURNE (American Repertory Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop), FASTER (Rattlestick), ANIMALS & PLANTS (A.R.T.), FINER NOBLE GASES (26th Humana Festival, Rattlestick), STONE COLD DEAD SERIOUS (A.R.T., Edge Theatre), BLACKBIRD (The Bush, London; Edge Theatre), GOMPERS, (Pittsburgh City Theatre), ESSENTIAL SELF-DEFENSE (Playwrights Horizons/Edge Theatre), AMERICAN SLIGO (Rattlestick), BINGO WITH THE INDIANS (The Flea), KINDNESS (Playwrights Horizons), and RED LIGHT WINTER (Steppenwolf, Scott Rudin Productions at Barrow Street Theatre), which was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He has published seven novels for young adults, including “The Buffalo Tree” (Front Street Books, 1997), which was struck from the curriculum at Muhlenberg High School in Reading, Pennsylvania in 2005, and “Punkzilla” (Candlewick Press, 2009), which was recently named a 2010 Michael J. Printz Honor Book. He is also the author of the adult novel, “The Year Of Endless Sorrows” (Farrar Strauss & Giroux, 2006), and the graphic novel, “Ball-Peen Hammer” (First Second Books, 2009). His playwriting honors include The Helen Merrill Award, The 2006 Princess Grace Statue, a Lucille Lortel Playwright’s Fellowship, and The Benjamin H. Danks Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. This summer he will direct a workshop production of his new play, WELCOME HOME DEAN CHARBONNEAU, at Seattle Rep.

Jeremy McCarter is a senior writer for Newsweek, where he covers culture and politics. He is the editor of “Bite the Hand That Feeds You: Essays and Provocations” by Henry Fairlie, which was published by Yale last year.