CHAUTAUQUA — Books can be silenced, banned, and ultimately disappear.

According to National Public Radio’s book critic Maureen Corrigan, book censoring continues as she spoke recently about book banning and challenges during the weeklong lecture series A Life of Literature.

Corrigan said there is an ongoing attempt to restrict literature in the world of books.

“The vast majority of the over 2,500 books targeted for censorship last year, were written by LGBTQ-plus people and people of color. So to a certain extent, the fact that these books often deal with social proof problems make them an especial target of censorship. As many of you know, 2022 saw the highest number of attempted book bans,” she told an Amphitheater audience at Chautauqua Institution.

She said since the American Library Association began compiling data about censorship in libraries more than 20 years ago, there were 1,200 demands to censor library books and resources in 2022, which is nearly double the number of the previous year.

“So this year promises to top that figure. Certainly, as more people are feeling empowered to write about social issues in America, there’s an accompanying pushback, a very strong pushback, to silence those voices,” Corrigan noted.

Corrigan has been the weekly book critic on NPR’s Peabody Award-winning “Fresh Air” for more than 30 years. A regular contributor for the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, Corrigan is the Nicky and Jamie Grant Distinguished Professor of the Practice in Literary Criticism in the Department of English at Georgetown University.

Corrigan said school boards and library boards often come up with lists of books to be banished. But, she added, most of the time the members of those boards have not read any of the books that they propose to ban.

She recalled a time that a former student of hers quit reading Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling because of Rowling’s comments about transgender women. Corrigan said her former student began writing her own Harry Potter books, a practice known as fan fiction — when people take characters, and stories created by another author, and extend the story and change the characters.

“In the case of this student, she was changing Rowling’s characters and situations at Hogwarts to accord with her own political beliefs, her own identities. I thought that was chilling. I thought that was a way of censoring the original and making it more in accord with that student’s own world. The way that student was using fan fiction made me feel like in a way, this was a quiet way of banning the word of Rowling,” Corrigan said.

The critic noted the situation went against Corrigan’s reasoning as to why people read: to enter into worlds that are not our own or maybe encounter points of view that we disagree with, but we’re willing to hear, and to get away from what we think is right, or what we happen to like, or what we feel comfortable with.

“One positive way to think about these challenges these bannings in our current time, is that they do affirm the power of books. They affirm the power of books to get into our heads, to disrupt our worlds, maybe even to change our minds. That’s why books are dangerous. They do have that power. Reading is pushing back against darkness against ignorance against limitations,” Corrigan added.

Corrigan is an associate editor of and contributor to Mystery and Suspense Writers, which won the 1999 Edgar Award for Criticism, presented by the Mystery Writers of America; the winner of the 2018 Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing, from the National Book Critics Circle; a juror and panel head for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for two consecutive years; and was a juror for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. She served as a curator and continues to serve as an Advisory Board member and video exhibit guide for the American Writers Museum in Chicago, advisor to the National Endowment for the Arts’ “Big Read” Project, and on The Usage Panel of The American Heritage Dictionary. She is the author of the memoir Leave Me Alone, I’m Reading, and So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures. She recently wrote and filmed “Banned and Burned Books,” a 24-lecture course released by Great Courses/Wondrium in March 2023.