BookPeople in Austin, Tex., has teamed up with the Austin Public Library to run Banned Camp, a summer event program focused on banned and challenged books. One of the first Banned Camp events was a talk with George M. Johnson, author of All Boys Aren't Blue, held at the Carver Branch of the Austin Public Library on June 16. On June 26, drag queen Miss Kitty read The Return of Thelma the Unicorn by Aaron Blabey at Austin's Pease Park.
The Banned Camp program came about as a response to the ongoing right-wing effort to ban books dealing with sexuality, gender identity and race. Charley Rejsek, BookPeople's CEO, told NBC News: "Our local community members reached out to us to see what we could do, what voice that we had in preventing this from happening in our local schools?”