Philadelphia is an apt location for the American Library Association’s 2025 Annual Conference, which will bring upwards of 10,000 library professionals to the Pennsylvania Convention Center later this month. The city was home to the first American lending library, established in 1731, and nearly three centuries later, librarians will gather to discuss the freedom to read and the values enshrined in the U.S. Constitution—which was written and signed in Philly—at the most precipitous moment for the profession in modern memory.
“I’m sentimental,” says ALA president-elect Sam Helmick. “We’re coming up on our 250th birthday as a country, the association’s about to turn 150, and we’ll be meeting in our nation’s first capital. It feels momentous in a way that I’m not sure it would have in a different year.”
Given the “chilling effect” of book bans and ongoing threats to funding at federal and state levels, Helmick says, “there are going to be members of certain states that do feel like going to their national conferences is almost an act of resistance, of civil practice.” Helmick adds that they look forward to exercising their First Amendment right to assemble, in the city where it was codified as law. (For PW’s q&a with Helmick, see p. 45.)
Current ALA president Cindy Hohl concurs. “Americans do want to live in healthy communities. Not everyone went to library school to be defenders of thought, but we must stand firm in our core values.”
Hohl says it is imperative for library workers to uphold intellectual freedom, “because the day libraries close in America is the day democracy dies. When books are removed from shelves and readers can no longer select the materials they want to read, that’s no longer America.” She notes that ALA’s leadership rejects anti-democratic policies that result in “disparities, marginalization, silencing of voices, and removal of funding. It doesn’t make sense.”
Sense or no sense, the attempts to control which titles libraries stock, and the efforts to whittle down the funding libraries receive, continue nationwide. Many local and state-level battles around book bans and removals, including in Florida, Iowa, and Texas, appear likely to advance to the conservative-majority Supreme Court. And Helmick points to efforts in states including Alabama, Missouri, and Montana “to eliminate the Library Bill of Rights and even defund libraries that would hold ALA memberships.”
Hohl notes that several conservative states have indeed branded the ALA as too liberal and challenged the Library Bill of Rights in recent years. Yet she adds that individual libraries can join or partner with the ALA, regardless of how their state leans. “Whenever I’m speaking at state chapter conferences, whenever I have a platform, I remind everyone that we’re all free to make our own decisions,” Hohl says. “It’s really important that Americans continue to lean into their freedoms and understand there are choices available, whether their state library agency renews an institutional membership or not.”
One choice the ALA recently made is to up the ante on the fight for intellectual freedom. On April 7, the ALA partnered with the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees to file a complaint in federal court, opposing the White House’s gutting of the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the cancellation of IMLS’s statutory and competitive grants. That case, ALA v. Keith Sonderling, has moved through the courts alongside Rhode Island v. Trump, a lawsuit filed in April by 21 states’ attorneys general. While a federal judge has so far denied ALA and AFSCME a preliminary injunction, the latter case has resulted in the restoration of funds and positions at the agency, at least for now. The IMLS has been omitted entirely from the administration’s fiscal 2026 budget proposal, and ALA is lobbying a Republican-led Congress to fund libraries.
ALA also has rallied against the April firing of Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, whose role has been taken on by acting librarian Robert Newlen, recipient of the 2016 ALA Medal of Excellence, in spite of efforts by President Donald Trump to install a loyalist in his stead. Library of Congress staffers will attend the 2025 ALA conference as usual, and Hayden herself is scheduled for a Saturday afternoon Main Stage conversation with Newbery Medalist Kwame Alexander and a Fireside Chat that evening.
To develop programming for the 2025 show, Hohl and ALA’s conference organizers reviewed feedback from 2024’s conference in San Diego, Calif., which drew 13,523 attendees. Hohl says she is eager “to focus on literacy, learning, leadership, and the overall customer experience” and that information about artificial intelligence is “at the top of our list,” with about 30 AI-related sessions in 2025.
Ahead of the exhibition hall opening on Saturday, June 28, the Independent Book Publishers Association will host a Library Insights Summit on Friday tailored to publishers interested in growing their library market sales. The meeting includes education options for established publishers and self-published authors, a talk by information science scholar Sandra Hirsh, and closing remarks from Baker & Taylor chairman and group CEO Aman Kochar.
Also on Friday, ALA members can advocate for resourcing Philadelphia public schools, which serve approximately 118,000 students but employ only a handful of full-time librarians. The Philadelphia Alliance to Restore School Librarians will lead a silent “read-in” from 1 to 1:45 p.m. at the school district building on 440 North Broad Street. PARSL asks attendees to bring books and read quietly, as “a public show of support for student literacy, digital media literacy, and the joy of reading without protest signs or chants, just books.”
On the Main Stage
ALA’s speaker program starts on Friday, with all of the perennially packed main stage keynotes taking place in the PCC Terrace III–IV Ballroom. Opening the show is Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, who will be touting a YA edition of her memoir, True Gretch: Lessons for Anyone Who Wants to Make a Difference (Atheneum, out now). The Democratic legislator is known for her feminist stance, snappy sense of humor, and resilience despite a 2020 domestic terror plot against her.
On Saturday morning, LGBTQ+ activist, Star Trek alum, and Allegiance star George Takei will introduce his graphic memoir, It Rhymes with Takei (Top Shelf Productions, out now). Takei coauthored his latest book with Steven Scott, Justin Eisinger, and illustrator Harmony Becker, the team he worked with on 2019’s They Called Us Enemy, recounting his incarceration as a child at an internment camp for Japanese Americans during WWII. It Rhymes with Takei chronicles Takei’s public coming out as gay at age 68 and offers wisdom the now-octogenarian has to share about claiming identity and fighting for intellectual freedom.
Later on Saturday, Angeline Boulley, an enrolled member of the Sault Sainte Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, previews her forthcoming YA novel, Sisters in the Wind (Holt, Sept.). Boulley, a former director for the Office of Indian Education at the U.S. Department of Education, was honored in 2022 with a Printz Award, a Walter Dean Myers Award, and an Edgar Allen Poe Award for her debut, Firekeeper’s Daughter. Her new book concerns an Ojibwe teenager running from the foster system and seeking extended family from her early childhood.
Sacramento district attorney Thien Ho, who served as lead prosecutor in the 2020 Golden State Killer murder trial, will appear on Sunday morning to discuss his insider perspective in the case, as chronicled in The People vs. the Golden State Killer (Third State, Nov.).
Standup comic Roy Wood Jr., whose credits include hosting Comedy Central’s The Daily Show and CNN’s Have I Got News for You, will share anecdotes on Sunday afternoon from The Man of Many Fathers: Life Lessons Disguised as a Memoir (Crown, Oct.). Wood reflects on losing his own father at age 16, relying on tricksters and Hollywood A-listers as mentors, and becoming a father himself.
Later on Sunday afternoon, the ALA Awards Presentation and President’s Program will spotlight Brené Brown, who examines vulnerability, shame, and bravery in such bestselling self-help titles as Daring Greatly and Atlas of the Heart. Brown’s frank, perceptive examinations of human flaws and potential have made her a sought-after guest, and ALA president Hohl says Brown’s approach to empathy and courage is ideal for our moment. “There hasn’t been a more important time to bring in a speaker who can inspire us to stick together, to really lean into our feelings and express our needs,” she adds.
Occult fantasy readers can look forward to a talk by Joe Hill on Monday. Hill’s forthcoming King Sorrow (Morrow, Oct.) features a rare book library and a bloodthirsty dragon summoned by a magical journal—fare tailor-made for the ALA crowd’s dark academia wing.
Also on Monday, Grace Lin, recipient of the 2022 ALA Children’s Literature Legacy Award, will tell attendees about The Gate, the Girl, and the Dragon (Little, Brown, out now), a middle grade fantasy with elements from Chinese folklore. Lin has also received a Newbery Honor, for Where the Mountain Meets the Moon in 2010, and a Caldecott Honor, for A Big Mooncake for Little Star in 2019.
ALA’s main stage closer will be Oscar-winning actor and producer Geena Davis. Davis, who founded and chairs the Geena Davis Institute to champion diverse and inclusive media representation, will talk about writing and illustrating a picture book, The Girl Who Was Too Big for the Page (Philomel, out now).
Exhibits, Live Stages, and More
ALA has lined up more than 650 exhibitors and more than 700 authors, plus more than 200 education sessions. Among the attractions in the exhibit hall, live stages let audiences sit in on authors’ podcast recording, explore diversity in publishing with content specialists, and get a crash course in comics at the Graphic Novels and Gaming Stage. Saturday will be Indie Day on the PopTop Stage, where presenters from IngramSpark, IBPA, and small independent publishers will discuss self-publishing, metadata, and marketing.
For the past two years, Unite Against Book Bans and anti-censorship allies have held a Rally for the Right to Read at the ALA Annual Conference. In 2025, the equivalent of that gathering will be a screening and organizing party on Saturday, featuring the filmmakers and student activists of the documentary Banned Together.
Throughout the conference, the ALA screening room will feature documentaries about Black poet Nikki Giovanni, beat writer Jack Kerouac, film and theater star Liza Minelli, and Hollywood hummingbird rehabber Terry Masear; other documentaries in the lineup provide an account of contemporary Lebanon (In the Shadow of Beirut) and a window on Black history (Are You a Librarian? The Untold Story of Black Librarians).
Ticketed celebrations are scheduled throughout the show. The Young Adult Library Services Association and Booklist will present the Michael L. Printz Awards on Friday night; ALA fetes authors Percival Everett and Kevin Fedarko for their Andrew Carnegie Medals for Fiction and Nonfiction on Saturday; and the Coretta Scott King Book Awards Breakfast will be emceed by award chair Janice Newsum Sunday morning. Award winners will speak at the Association for Library Service to Children’s Newbery, Caldecott, and Legacy Awards Banquet Sunday night.
Threading the Needle
Given the current political turmoil, Hohl encourages ALA attendees to imagine librarianship “with a global view.” She says “information is the thread” connecting humanity, and librarians and library workers are the “top practitioners and the experts of that information field.”
“I’m a traditional Dakota woman, and I make sure that my indigeneity leads who I am,” Hohl continues. In a time of political turmoil and dire threats to libraries’ materials and very existence, she also encourages library workers to focus on continuity and knowhow. “I don’t get mired down in the chaos. With leadership and foresight, we are going to sustain each other through these times. I’m looking forward to seeing what the next decade brings us.”
Read more from our ALA 2025 Show Guide feature.
ALA 2025: Leading from the Heartland: PW Talks with Sam Helmick
ALA 2025: Don’t Give in to FOMO: PW Talks with Brandie Nonnecke
Correction: An earlier version of this article said that former Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden would speak on the main stage on Friday. Both of Hayden’s events are on Sunday.
