Each weekday from October 10th-14th I’ll be posting one or more photos from one of the amazing DC-area independent bookshops to highlight Banned Book Week 2026. Today we’ll travel to Vienna, Virginia.
Jen Morrow founded Bards Alley in downtown Vienna in 2017 to “create a space where individuals young and old can gather to exchange ideas, receive personalized book recommendations, and discover new titles and local authors.” To highlight Banned Books Week 2026, Jen and the staff posted two photos on the store’s Instagram account. The first shows a display of banned books and invites readers to their in-store “Banned Books Read-In” which was held last Sunday. The second features Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred along with the staff admonition to “Read a Banned Book.”
The problem of book bans in schools is growing. PEN America notes that the 2025-26 school year saw the highest number of recorded bans in a single year since the organization began tracking book bans in 2021.
Bards Alley is doing their part to highlight the issue. The store is one of the 30 bookshops I’ve visited as part of my personal 2026 DC Independent Bookstore Crawl. To see the review that came out of the visit my friend Merrill and I made to the shop, check out Installment #20.
Here are the photos I’ve posted to date:
- MONDAY: Solid State Books at National Airport (photo by Tom Mayes)
- TUESDAY: Old Town Books, Alexandria
Keep reading!
More to come . . .
DJB
