TJ Klune on the Power of Words and Kindness Amidst Chaos
Rural Oregon in the 80s and 90s was exactly as hard as you would expect for a closeted queer kid with undiagnosed ADHD in a hellfire-and-brimstone religious family. But at least TJ Klune could ride his bike to the Douglas County Library in the summer.
Growing up in dire poverty and raised with roiling bigotry, Klune describes his childhood with two stereotypes: the kid reading under a blanket with a flashlight, and the kid riding his bike five miles to the library and staying there from open till close, all summer long, every summer.
“That was my escape. That was the only thing that made me feel safe.”
When you grow up with parents who make fun of you for reading, for writing, for loving books, a library is a sanctuary.
Before he became the award-winning author of The House in the Cerulean Sea, the kid who “became gay because of Fox Mulder” had never been told he was good at anything. He’d only been told that gay people go to hell. Until two middle school English teachers found a writing assignment of his uncontrollably funny.
Mrs. Bentz and Mrs. Pfeiffer were the first people to ever tell Klune he was good at something. And that something was writing.
"I go to war for nurses, librarians, and teachers," he said to another burst of applause at my hometown public library, where more than 200 people came to hear the celebrated author speak.
Why do stories matter?
“That was the very first time in my life that I understood that the written word has power,” Klune remembers. “That it can make people happy, that it can make people laugh. Words can start religions, wars, relationships, cults. They can end all of those same things, too.”
Do you know what epistemicide means?
Dr. Dana Crawford is a clinical psychologist with a passion for advocacy and teaching. In a video going viral, she explains that epistemicide is “the killing, silencing, annihilation, or devaluing of a knowledge system.”
Attacking education didn’t start with Reagan privatizing public higher education in California in the 60s.1 And it won’t end with MAGA threats to the Department of Education.2
One of the myriad Project 2025 executive orders3 written for Trump to Sharpie called for eliminating the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS): “to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.”
No sooner was Keith Sonderling appointed acting director of the IMLS did he put the entire staff on administrative leave.4 Remember his name. Real people are making real choices. People who get up in the morning, get dressed, and drink coffee are choosing to dismantle American democracy.
Sonderling then issued official notices to libraries across the country that their congressionally appointed and legally binding federal grants were being slashed, effective by April 1st.
Because what better day to target the power of knowledge and information.
At only .003% of the federal budget, terminating the annual $294.8 million allocation to state and territory library administrative agencies throughout the country “directly violates the agency’s legal responsibilities under federal law...and will create sudden, significant shortfalls in nearly every state library budget.”5
Why attack libraries?
Because libraries aren’t just community centers, they are radically democratizing institutions that create access to information and education regardless of your race, religion, politics, income, or sexual identity.
Budget cuts are the modern bigots’ weapon.6 It is long-game eugenics.
On April 3rd, the IMLS posted infographics that illegally terminated staff member Tamika Cornish called “beyond misleading and disgusting”. The caption reads, “The era of using your taxpayer dollars to fund DEI grants is OVER.”7
The tone is always We own you.
The egregious taxpayer-funded expenditures were not multimillion-dollar weekend golf trips for one man8 but social justice programming, studies of racism in libraries, and various other LGBTQ literacy initiatives.
“Allowing the IMLS to be defunded, and thus to disappear, would leave millions of Americans without access to the books, tools, and other resources required to participate in the modern world. Shuttering IMLS would be an act of monumental neglect, violating the very foundation of America and what it stands for as a country. It would undermine the tenets of our democracy and our citizens’ right to read, think, and learn freely.”9
To read, to think, to learn freely. The inoculation against fascism.
To defund libraries is to cut lifelines. And that, dear reader, is most assuredly the point.
Anyway, author T.J. Klune is riotously funny, and literature is not dead yet. How do you get hilarious revenge against homophobic bigots? You’ll have to go to Klune’s next reading to find out.
He is a natural-born storyteller with a remarkable gift for arc, snark, and authenticity. And the possibility of restorative justice from being “a petty bitch”.
For an hour, an eternity in the information age, not a single person of any age or demographic checked their phone. We were rapt. Laughing. Gasping. Clapping. Cheering. For more than 60 entire minutes, only two phones were even visible, and both were to take brief snapshots of Klune before they disappeared from whence they came.
Can you think of a more modern metric for captivating? Do you know how engaging and relevant you have to be in the era of Beyoncé’s internet for hundreds of people to give not one fuck about their phone? Of course, a fantasy writer can make us time-travel with him.
In one of his many full-circle tales, he recounted the first novel he ever read with a queer character. Who, of course, dies.
Patricia Nell Warren wrote The Front Runner in 1974. It was the first work of gay fiction to be ranked on the New York Times bestseller list. And in a serendipitous-ish turn of events, she reached out to Klune after he became an NYT bestselling author to tell him how much she loved his work. And to apologize when she found out he had read hers.
He is now creating living worlds where relatable queer and trans characters aren’t just the magical sidekicks who teach straight main characters valuable lessons by dying.
Queer and trans characters are the main characters.
What Klune is creating, others are destroying.
The Office of the Under Secretary of Defense issued a memo to senior Pentagon officials stating that, “the Secretaries of the Military Departments and other DoD Component heads must: (1) promptly identify any Department MEI library materials potentially incompatible with this core mission; (2) appropriately sequester those materials; (3) confirm the initial characterization through a deliberate review; and ( 4) determine an appropriate ultimate disposition for those materials. The first two steps must be completed no later than May 21, 2025.”10
To determine which books and materials should be “appropriately ultimately disposed of”, the Department of Defense is using the Academic Libraries Committee Universal Search Term List below.* If you’ve read this far, you can already guess what terms are grounds for disposal.
According to the memorandum, “the ALC will take a viewpoint neutral approach and apply the definitions of ‘discriminatory equity ideology’ and ‘gender ideology’ from Executive Order 14168, ‘Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,’ January 20, 2025, and any other terms determined sufficient and necessary to evaluate material that does not focus on educating warfighters.”11
Before we unlearn the definition of the word ‘neutral’, let’s please take a moment to recognize the impossibility of employing a “viewpoint-neutral approach” in applying the completely subjective and biased definitions put forth in an executive order wholly formed by the far-right Project 2025 of The Heritage Foundation.
In the latest age of book banning —and there will be more—supporting authors, public libraries, and literacy is non-violent resistance.
Support public libraries. Vote for the levies and bond measures that fund them at the local and regional level. Use them so their data reflects community need and engagement. Attend events when they host authors. Check out their calendar. Go with friends from your book club and laugh and cry with strangers. Or be brave and go by yourself. Maybe you’ll meet like-minded people.
Sign up for a Libby account with your public library card so you can rent ebooks and audiobooks instead of buying them through Bezos. If your library card has expired, renew it. Use it.
Buy banned books. The U.S. Naval Academy removed 381 books from its library on April 1st, 2025, to comply with MAGA initiatives to end programs or resources under the DEI umbrella. Not surprisingly, books like The Last White Man and How to Be an Anti-Racist were on the “Don’t Educate On Me” list. And has been widely criticized, Hitler’s autobiography, Mein Kampf, remains on the shelves where we train our nation’s military.
Shop local and independent booksellers. Most book lovers cherish their local bookstores. You know who they are, you know where they are. They always promote and host local and regional authors. Some host musicians, too. They are community pillars as both job providers and taxpayers, but, more importantly, as purveyors of culture and knowledge.
Support publishing houses that politically advocate for literacy. Twenty-one states have filed lawsuits but as journalist John Maher reported, “Four of the Big Five publishers—Hachette Book Group, Macmillan Publishers, Penguin Random House, and Simon & Schuster—and Sourcebooks sent a letter to Congress on April 3 expressing ‘deep concern’ over the state of the nation’s libraries following a week of unprecedented turmoil at the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the agency responsible for distributing federal funding to libraries.”12
Advocacy must come from all directions.
“Whatever the President’s policy preferences, he cannot override the congressional enactments that authorize federal agencies, appropriate funds for them to administer, and define how they must operate,” plaintiffs argue in their filing, noting that the closures violate the Administrative Procedure Act. “If permitted to stand, the shredding of these statutorily mandated agencies will inflict immediate and irreparable harms on the Plaintiff States, their residents, and the public at large.”13
These are Orwellian times, friends.
Keep reading. Keep learning. Keep advocating.
We’re in this together.
*Affirmative Action Programs -- Law and Legislation
Affirmative Action Programs
Affirmative Action
Allyship
Anti-Racism
Critical Race Theory
Discrimination -- Law and Legislation
Diversity in the Workplace
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Gender Affirming Care
Gender Dysphoria
Gender Expression
Gender Identity
Gender Nonconformity
Gender Transition
Transgender Military Personnel
Transgender People
Transsexualism
Transsexuals
White privilege (Social structure)
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/from-master-plan-to-no-plan-the-slow-death-of-public-higher-education/
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/20/us/politics/trump-education-department.html
https://www.project2025.observer/
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/libraries/article/97476-publishers-ask-congress-to-defend-libraries-as-federal-library-grant-funding-ends.html
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/libraries/article/97476-publishers-ask-congress-to-defend-libraries-as-federal-library-grant-funding-ends.html
https://www.pennlive.com/news/2025/03/donald-trumps-new-golf-tab-for-taxpayers-hits-incredible-milestone.html
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/libraries/article/97476-publishers-ask-congress-to-defend-libraries-as-federal-library-grant-funding-ends.html
https://media.defense.gov/2025/May/09/2003707607/-1/-1/1/REVIEWING-THE-DEPARTMENTS-MILITARY-EDUCATIONAL-INSTITUTION-LIBRARY-COLLECTIONS.PDF
https://media.defense.gov/2025/May/09/2003707607/-1/-1/1/REVIEWING-THE-DEPARTMENTS-MILITARY-EDUCATIONAL-INSTITUTION-LIBRARY-COLLECTIONS.PDF
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/libraries/article/97493-21-states-sue-trump-administration-over-scuttling-of-imls-other-agencies.html
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/libraries/article/97493-21-states-sue-trump-administration-over-scuttling-of-imls-other-agencies.html