Ira Wells

About this episode

Ira Wells discusses his recent book on book banning and the cultural implications of censorship.

My guest on this episode is Ira Wells. Ira’s work has appeared in The Guardian , The New Republic , The Walrus , The Globe and Mail , Literary Review of Canada , Los Angeles Review of Books , and many other publications. His books include Fighting Words: Polemics and Social Change in Literary Naturalism and Norman Jewison: A Director’s Life . His most recent book is On Book Banning: Or, How the New Censorship Consensus Trivializes Art and Undermines Democracy , published by Biblioasis in 2025. That book is a finalist for the 2026 Writers’ Trust Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing. Quill & Quire called it “a testament to the life-altering power of books and ideas.”   Ira and I talk about the sense of cultural fear and helplessness that seems to be behind the resurgence of book banning, about how his book was inspired, not by a conservative drive to ban books, but by a so-called “library audit” at a school in the heart of progressive Toronto, and about his return to biography for his next book project. This podcast is produced and hosted by Nathan Whitlock , in partnership with The Walrus . Music: "simple-hearted thing" by  Alex Lukashevsky . Used with…

People in this episode

Host: Nathan Whitlock

Guest: Ira Wells

Topics covered

• book banning
• censorship
• cultural fear
• literary criticism
• biography

Keywords

• book banning
• censorship
• Ira Wells
• Nathan Whitlock
• literature
• political writing
• cultural fear

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: The Guardian, The New Republic, The Walrus, The Globe and Mail, Literary Review of Canada, Los Angeles Review of Books, Biblioasis

Books & works: Fighting Words: Polemics and Social Change in Literary Naturalism, Norman Jewison: A Director’s Life, On Book Banning: Or, How the New Censorship Consensus Trivializes Art and Undermines Democracy

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