Challenges to Materials, Challenges to Diversity: Pennsylvania Stories |
Panelist Biographies
Heather Panella is the director of Moon Township Public Library in Moon Township, PA, where she began as the Teen Librarian in 2008. Heather specializes in working with young adults in grades 6-12 & is passionate about building & advocating for diverse, inclusive collections & displays that represent the entire community & create a safe environment where all feel welcome.
In December 2021, Moon Township Public Library Children's Department Facebook page posted a photo for our Picture Book of the Day series featuring The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish, Swish, Swish. That post was shared on a community Facebook page by a patron who believed Moon Library should "do better," resulting in shares across the country, social media comments & phone calls advocated for violence against library staff, doxing, accusations of child grooming, & reprimands & threats of funding cuts by local authorities.
Jeffrey Swope has been the Executive Director for the Bosler Memorial Library in Carlisle, PA since 2013. Swope previously served for three years as the Youth Services Programming & Outreach Coordinator for the Dauphin County Library System & for twelve years as the Assistant Youth Services Coordinator, Youth Services Coordinator, & Assistant Director at the James V. Brown Library in Williamsport, where he stewarded the design & construction of a three-story children’s wing.
Over the last year, the Bosler Memorial Library has experienced the theft of all of the books on its Pride display by a man armed with a knife, community controversy over the use of the library’s meeting room space by a local group to provide a drag queen family storytime, & most recently two material challenges. These situations have challenged the library staff, administration, & Board to examine its policies to ensure that they will provide the necessary structural foundation for upholding the library’s mission to provide a space for intellectual freedom & information access for all members of the community.
Patricia A. Jackson is a 30-year veteran in education. She spent the first half of her career as an administrator & teacher in the School District of the City of York. The latter half has been teaching World Literature & Creative Writing at Central York High School. A fierce LGBTQIA+ advocate, Ms. Jackson facilitates The Beautiful People, a student-run club that creates safe spaces for teens within the school community. When the school board voted to ban hundreds of books based on race & sexual orientation, she joined the Panther Anti-Racist Union as co-advisor to assist the successful fight to overturn that ruling. Ms. Jackson is a published author. Her fantasy novel Forging a Nightmare debuted in November, 2021 from Angry Robot Books & her latest Star Wars story is slated to appear this summer in the From a Certain Point of View: Return of the Jedi anthology.
Ben Hodge is the founder & faculty advisor of the Panther Anti-Racist Union (PARU). He is 43 years old & has been teaching Theatre classes at CYHS for 20 years. He also serves as the Artistic Director for CYPA. Ben has also been involved with Diversity programming at CYSD since 2006 with a focus primarily on education, mediation, story-telling & social emotional awareness. After the murder of George Floyd, he wanted to create a safe & courageous space where students could come together and create meaningful discussions and action around social justice initiatives outside of his regular classes. With that, the Panther Anti-Racist Union was born. Since 2020, PARU has helped educate the community about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion while successfully protesting to reverse two separate attempts to ban books by Diverse aut