Subject Matter announced their first grants of 2025 today, awarding $25,000 to Kim A. Snyder’s film The Librarians which will world premiere in the Premieres category at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. In addition, a $25,000 grant will go to PEN America, a 103-year-old writers’ organization that defends free expression.
As an unprecedented wave of book banning is sparked in Texas, Florida, and beyond, librarians under siege join forces as unlikely defenders fighting for intellectual freedom on the front lines of democracy in Kim A. Snyder’s The Librarians.
PEN America has documented the rise of book bans and educational gag orders erasing subject matter in public schools since 2021. The organization has documented more than 15,000 instances of book bans during these years, censorship not seen since the Red Scare period of the 1950s. The most frequently targeted books are those that have long fought for a place on shelves–books by authors of color, LGBTQ+ authors, and women, which examine racism, sexuality, gender, and the history of marginalized groups. PEN America has mobilized the public against this censorship and the intolerance and exclusion that undergird it.
Subject Matter’s grant will help PEN America leverage its expertise to connect, support, and protect brave librarians fighting for intellectual freedom.
