There has never been an era when it has been particularly easy to be an author in America.

The current point in time, however, is specifically difficult. Writers must contend with everything from the consolidation of publishers to the pirating of ebooks to school board meetings in Leander, Texas.

Wait. What?

“Oh, yeah,” says Jonathan Evison. “I just woke up one morning with a bunch of threats on Facebook. I was like, ‘Well, something weird’s going on.’”

And just like that, one of our region’s most successful contemporary authors was sucked into the political whirlwind that is the modern book ban.

Evison lives on Bainbridge Island with his wife and three children. He is that increasingly rare species in modern America: a professional author. He does not teach at a school. He does not charge for coaching services. He writes books. Really good ones. All About Lulu — his debut novel — won the Washington State Book Award in 2009. Another of his books, The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving, was made into a movie starring Paul Rudd. His eighth novel, Again and Again, was published earlier this year.

In September 2021, a parent in a small Texas town just north of Austin spent the three minutes she was allotted at a school-district meeting to complain about the content of Evison’s novel, Lawn Boy. Specifically, she said her 10-year-old son had come home with it. She counted the number of expletives included in the book. After the meeting, three people went so far as to file reports with the local police.

A couple of things that are worth noting here:  Lawn Boy was published in 2018. Its protagonist, Mike Muñoz, is 23, Chicano, and gay. It was written for adults both in terms of language and content. It deals with issues of sexuality and identity, and was in no way intended for a 10-year-old reader.

The objections to the book centered around the reference to a sexual encounter the protagonist had at the age of 10, which he reflects on as an adult. This wasn’t a discussion about context, though. Or literature. The book is not pornographic, and it is not in any way about pedophilia. It was, however, a useful prop for conservative political activists who’ve increasingly used books with mature content as entry points to complain about the American educational system.

The complaints themselves are not new. The systemic way in which they are being made, however, is.

In 2019, there were 377 titles that were challenged, according to the American Library Association. This means that a total of 377 different books had content in them that someone considered offensive enough that they petitioned to have that book excluded from a library’s collection. Most of these complaints were made about a specific book.

In 2022, 2,571 titles were challenged. Most of these challenges included multiple titles. Of those titles, Evison’s Lawn Boy had the seventh-most challenges. He’s in good company, though. Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye ranked fourth.

The objections to the content of Evison’s book resulted in a number of absolutely awful accusations he received on social media. He received threats as well, and was also the victim of identity theft. In October 2022, Evison participated in a public debate at Georgetown University that was part of the school’s Free Speech Project. He was unmistakable in his vest and fedora, pointing out the fact that the majority of the books that were being challenged featured protagonists who were either not white or were LGBTQIA+.

“It’s an important conversation,” Evison says. It’s just not one he was necessarily expecting to have when he woke up to a bunch of vitriol in his inbox.

And then Evison discovered something that is kind of reassuring, but also frustrating: Not much of the discussion relates to the actual book.

There might be some people who huff and puff about what’s appropriate for children without acknowledging the reality that this is a book that is written for adults with adult language and content. There might also be insinuations that this material is being given to younger students, when in fact the question should be is whether the book is included in a library’s collection.

“It’s all just kind of a big political straw man,” he says. “They start to argue, and it doesn’t really become about the book. It’s all pretty much manufactured.”

Which makes it really odd for someone like Evison, whose life is entirely about books, and in some ways always has been. Evison arrived on Bainbridge Island at the age of 9, the youngest of six children whose overwhelming energy made him something of a menace in Mrs. Hanford’s third-grade class.

“I was swinging from the rafters,” Evison recalls. “I was a big disruption, but she saw me and the potential and she just kind of let me write.”

The complaints themselves are not new. The systemic way in which they are being made, however, is.

The result was The King Without a Crown, a children’s book published by Seattle Pacific University Press in 1976.

“I was doing it for escapist purposes,” he says. “I like to write first and foremost as an exercise in imagination, and it remains that way.”

Evison’s path to publishing was anything but straightforward. He graduated from Bainbridge High School, attended community college, but never earned a degree. He didn’t take writing classes, either. He just read a ton and wrote. He completed five novels in his 20s, and despite his attempts to get agents and/or publishers interested, couldn’t get a foot in the door of the industry. He was part of the punk band March of Crimes. He worked as a radio host as well, and tried film before recommitting himself to writing in his mid-30s. He held a variety of jobs ranging from landscaping to caregiving to literally picking out rotten tomatoes as a fruit sorter.

Now 55, he has threaded the needle, becoming a true working writer in a time when that has become increasingly difficult because of everything from declining sales to politics. Oh yeah, about that.

Turns out there’ve been multiple printings of Lawn Boy since that school board meeting in Texas. The attention made people aware of what is a very thoughtful and uplifting book about a young man from a working-class background who’s trying to find his place in the world. That’s a story everyone should be able to get behind.