Banned Books Week is taking place Oct. 1-7, 2023. The theme of this year’s event is “Let Freedom Read!”

The initiative is to bring together the entire book community, including librarians, educators, authors, booksellers, and publishers, to draw attention to the "harms of censorship."

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Literary advocate, Reading Rainbow star, and Hollywood actor LeVar Burton is leading this year’s Banned Books Week as an honorary chairman.

"Books are under attack. They’re being removed from libraries and schools. Shelves have been emptied because of a small number of people and their misguided efforts toward censorship," Burton said in a statement.

He added, "Public advocacy campaigns like Banned Books Week are essential to helping people understand the scope of book censorship and what they can do to fight it. I’m honored to lead Banned Books Week 2023.”

The Banned Books Week will conclude with "Let Freedom Read Day" on Saturday, Oct. 7, a day that activists are being called on to "take action against censorship," according to the American Library Association.

The ALA is one of the founders of Banned Books Week, which was originally launched in 1982, and the weeklong event is supported by the Banned Books Week Coalition.

The ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom has compiled a list of books that are allegedly being removed or restricted, including Gender Queer, All Boys Aren't Blue, Lawn Boy, and This Book is Gay. They are among the most challenged books submitted by librarians and teachers across the country.

ALA President Emily Drabinski recently came under fire for declaring herself a "Marxist lesbian" in a tweet.

"I just cannot believe that a Marxist lesbian who believes that collective power is possible to build and can be wielded for a better world is the president-elect of @ALALibrary," Drabinski wrote on social media in April 2022.

Over the summer, numerous state libraries, including in Montana, Missouri, and Texas, have pulled out of the ALA over the organization's push for prioritizing LGBT and racially divisive themed books for children in libraries. Numerous other states are looking into withdrawing their libraries from the ALA relationship.

Washington, D.C., libraries have created their own Banned Books Week theme this year, calling it "Freedom is Not Guaranteed."

"Book challenges are surging across the country, threatening the very existence of free and independent public libraries,” Richard Reyes-Gavilan, executive director of the D.C. Public Library, said.

In a release from the D.C. Public Library, the library system referred to this week as a "call to action" as attempts to "ban books, especially those with LGBTQIA+ themes and that tell the experience of communities of color, have increased significantly in the past year."

This year, the Banned Bookmobile Tour 2023 will make a stop in Washington, D.C., to "give away free books and information on banned books." The bookmobile initiative has the support of the New Republic magazine, the American Federation of Teachers, the African American Policy Forum, and Boonsboro, Maryland-based bestselling author Nora Roberts.

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"Do you smell something burning?" the Washington Post's book reporter Ron Charles wrote in his newsletter on Monday about Banned Books Week.

He called Banned Books Week "the literary community’s chance to re-energize the fight against this bigotry, anti-intellectualism and cultural desecration."