Library celebrates Banned Books Week, Intellectual Freedom Festival in September

In 1995 the Iowa City Public Library established the Carol Spaziani Intellectual Freedom Festival to honor Carol for her 26-year career and for her life-long commitment to the freedom of ideas. As Justice Potter Stewart wrote, 'In order to be responsible citizens who have the ability to self-govern, we must be well-informed.”

The festival coincides with Banned Books Week, an annual event celebrating our freedom to read. Banned Books Week brings together the entire book community - librarians, booksellers, publishers, journalists, teachers, and readers of all types - in support of the freedom to seek and to express ideas, even those some consider unorthodox or unpopular.

Festival highlights include the screening of 'State Fair” (1933) on Sept. 24. Directed by Henry King, and starring Janet Gaynor, Will Rogers, Lew Ayres, this was the first film version of the 1932 novel of the same name by Philip Strong. Nominated for an Academy Award for best picture, this film would run afoul of the newly created Motion Picture Production Code the following year. Corey Creekmur, an associate professor in the University of Iowa's Departments of English, and Cinema and Comparative Literature, will introduce the film and provide background behind the Motion Picture Code.

Members of the Iowa City Johnson County Senior Center's Reading Aloud group will present Poets on the Barricades - Voices of the Oppressed from noon to 1 p.m. in Meeting Room A on Sept. 29. This event will feature poetry from those imprisoned or having served time read aloud.

We will host a discussion of 'Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption” by Bryan Stevenson, the 2015 One Community, One Book, at 7 p.m. Wednesday, September 30, in Meeting Room A. The discussion will be led by the University of Iowa College of Law Associate Dean Emily Hughes, and Adrien Wing, associate dean for International and Comparative Law Programs at the University of Iowa and director of the University of Iowa Center for Human Rights.

For more information about the Iowa City Public Library's Carol Spaziani Intellectual Freedom Festival, visit icpl.org/iff, or call the library at (319) 356-5200.

' Maeve Clark is adult services coordinator at the Iowa City Public Library.