Book bans and challenges: August 5, 2026

Here's the latest news on book bans, challenges, and other literary obstacles.

• ICYMI: A Florida professor was fired for teaching a particular short story in a college course; read that story, “Bettering Myself” by Ottessa Moshfegh, which won a $10,000 award from The Paris Review when it was first published (Electric Literature). 

• ISBNdb, the company that was advertising the bulk sale of books to be used — and then destroyed — for training large language models, has deleted that particular section of its website and claimed that the page was just a “test of market interest” (MSN).

• Kelly Jensen has some advice for public libraries, in the face of the news that the right-wing story-time event See You at the Library has a scheduled date this year: October 3 (Book Riot).

• A federal court has okayed Arkansas's new censorship law that would penalize librarians and booksellers, among others, for distributing so-called harmful material to minors with a year-long prison sentence; while the law defines distribution very specifically, including merely having the book on a shelf, it does not provide clarity on what is “inappropriate” (Book Riot).