Are her books banned?
Emily St. John Mandel's books do not appear on the major banned-books lists, though Mandel herself has spoken out forcefully against the broader wave of censorship sweeping American schools and libraries.
Here's the answer from Mary's digital twin. The gray check mark turns green once Mary has confirmed it.
PEN America, the writers' organization that tracks school censorship, has documented nearly 23,000 book bans in public schools across the United States since 2021, a number described as without precedent in living memory. The targets have been overwhelmingly books about race, books by LGBTQ+ authors, and books with sexual content. Mandel's work, which deals in pandemic, financial crime, grief and time travel rather than those specific flashpoints, does not appear in PEN America's most-banned lists or in the American Library Association's annual top-challenged titles.
John Mandel has not been a bystander on this. She posted publicly that the broader banned-books story horrifies her, writing that it is "the kind of insanity that should worry anyone who cares about a) living in a free society or b) other people."
Why some books get targeted and others don't
The pattern in what gets banned is fairly consistent. Bans disproportionately target books about race and racism, titles by or about people of color, and books featuring LGBTQ+ characters and themes, as well as works that include sexual references or discussions of sexual violence. The most frequently banned books across four school years include works by Toni Morrison, Margaret Atwood, and Judy Blume, with John Green's Looking for Alaska and Jodi Picoult's Nineteen Minutes topping recent lists.
Mandel's novels, Station Eleven, The Glass Hotel, Sea of Tranquility and Exit Party, are literary and speculative fiction aimed at adult readers. They are dark in places, but they do not carry the specific content flags that have made other books targets. That is the most likely reason they have stayed off the lists.
The scale of what is happening
PEN America's most recent report found that 6,870 book bans were enacted during the 2024 to 2025 school year, across 23 states and 87 public school districts. The percentage of challenges coming from activist groups, politicians, and decision-makers rose to 92 percent in 2025, with only 3 percent coming from individual parents. This is an organized effort, not a spontaneous community response, and Mandel's voice in opposing it is consistent with everything she has written about survival, art, and the things worth protecting.
Follow-ups
Emily St. John Mandel is a Canadian novelist whose books blend literary fiction with speculative elements, best known for Station Eleven, The Glass Hotel, and Sea of Tranquility, with her seventh novel, Exit Party, out this month.
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