PEN America Puts a Fox in the Hen House: Philomena Polefrone, Gramsci, and the 'Freedom to Read'

Philomena Polefrone
photo credit Publishers Weekly

Philomena Polefrone was recently named Senior Manager of PEN America’s Freedom to Read program, according to a July 2026 interview in Publishers Weekly. In that role he oversees research on book bans and educational censorship in K-12 schools and public libraries, helps produce PEN America’s reports on the subject, and works to raise public awareness and mobilize opposition to what the organization terms censorship.¹

Polefrone previously served as Associate Director of the American Booksellers Association’s American Booksellers for Free Expression initiative. He holds a Ph.D. in American Literature from Columbia University, where he taught literature, writing, and political philosophy. Although PEN America’s staff page and Publishers Weekly use she/her pronouns, the biological reality is that Polefrone is male.²

In the Publishers Weekly interview, Polefrone cited the Italian Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci to describe his approach to the work: “Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.” He immediately added: “It’s impossible to ignore how many norms have been shattered, and it feels so much worse to do nothing than to do something.”³

That combination is revealing. Gramsci, a founding figure of the Italian Communist Party, developed the concept of cultural hegemony—the idea that lasting political change requires transforming cultural institutions and the common sense of society, not merely seizing state power. The remark about shattered norms also aligns with a well-documented affinity of Karl Marx himself. Marx’s favorite line from literature, according to multiple accounts, was from Goethe’s Faust (spoken by Mephistopheles): “Everything that exists deserves to perish.” Friends reported that Marx would recite or chant the phrase.⁴

As one critic recently illustrated with a cartoon of a child stomping on a sandcastle while shouting “Stop having a better sandcastle than me,” labeled simply “Socialism,” the impulse to level what already exists is not incidental to this tradition—it is central.⁵

PEN America has been active in litigation and advocacy surrounding school library materials in Escambia County, Florida. The organization is a plaintiff (alongside Penguin Random House, authors, and parents) in a broader federal lawsuit challenging the county’s removal or restriction of numerous books. Separately, the authors of the children’s picture book And Tango Makes Three—which depicts two male penguins raising a chick—sued Escambia County after the school board removed the title. A federal district judge ruled in the school board’s favor in 2025; the authors have appealed. PEN America has publicly supported efforts to restore access to such titles.⁶

Independent journalist and psychologist Dr. Karlyn Borysenko has spent years documenting how far-left and Marxist activists treat libraries, schools, and the “freedom to read” narrative as strategic terrain. Through undercover work at socialist conferences and analysis of primary sources, she has shown how activists discuss using book challenges as an organizing tool, how libraries are framed as sites for socialist work, and how gender ideology functions within a broader project of cultural transformation aimed at children.⁷

While at the American Booksellers Association, Polefrone authored The ABA Right to Read Handbook: Fighting Book Bans and Why It Matters (2024), a practical guide for organizing against book challenges and removals in schools and libraries. The handbook and related ABA materials position resistance to such challenges as essential free-expression work and feature voices from advocacy groups active on these issues.⁸

James Lindsay has argued at length that gender ideology initiatives aimed at young children, including Drag Queen Story Hour, function as tools of Queer Theory intended to reshape children’s understanding of s[*]x and norms. He points to academic literature that openly describes these programs as a means of “bringing queer ways of knowing and being into the education of young children.” In that light, elevating a biological male who identifies as a woman to a senior position at PEN America overseeing school and library materials looks, to many parents, like placing a fox in the hen house.⁹

Parents and local school boards that seek age-appropriate standards for materials available to children now face an advocacy apparatus that frames many such efforts as illegitimate censorship. Whether this leadership choice will ultimately serve the interests of children, or instead intensify institutional pressure to keep contested ideological material on school shelves, remains an open and consequential question.

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Endnotes

1. Claire Kirch, “Defending the Literary Ecosystem: PW Talks with Philomena Polefrone,” Publishers Weekly, July 29, 2026. https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/people/article/100923-protecting-the-literary-ecosystem-pw-talks-to-philomena-polefrone.html
2. PEN America staff profile for Philomena Polefrone. https://pen.org/profile/philomena-polefrone-2/ (Official materials use she/her pronouns.)
3. Same Publishers Weekly interview as Endnote 1. Exact quotation: “It’s impossible to ignore how many norms have been shattered...”
4. Paul Kengor, The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism’s Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration (TAN Books). https://www.amazon.com/Devil-Karl-Marx-Communisms-Infiltration/dp/1505114446 Reporting on Marx’s favorite line from Goethe’s Faust (“Everything that exists deserves to perish”) appears in the book and related interviews.
5. James Lindsay (@ConceptualJames), X post, August 7, 2026: cartoon of a child stomping a sandcastle with the caption “Fig 12.7 – Socialism.” https://x.com/ConceptualJames/status/2085565331620139018
6. Coverage of Escambia County litigation, including the And Tango Makes Three case (Parnell v. School Board of Escambia County) and the broader PEN America / Penguin Random House suit. See, for example: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/01/books/and-tango-makes-three-escambia-county.html
7. Work of Dr. Karlyn Borysenko (Decode The Left / Red Menace Press), including undercover recordings from socialist conferences, analysis of Marxist librarians, and documentation of Queer Marxism. Main sites: https://decodetheleft.com/ https://karlyn.substack.com/
8. Philomena Polefrone, The ABA Right to Read Handbook: Fighting Book Bans and Why It Matters (American Booksellers Association, 2024). See also the ABA Right to Read Toolkit: https://www.bookweb.org/aba-right-read-toolkit https://www.bookweb.org/right-read-handbook
9. James Lindsay, “Groomer Schools 4: Drag Queen Story Hour,” New Discourses, June 27, 2022. https://newdiscourses.com/2022/06/groomer-schools-4-drag-queen-story-hour/ See also Harper Keenan and Lil Miss Hot Mess, “Drag pedagogy: The playful practice of queer imagination in early childhood,” Curriculum Inquiry 50 (2020): 440–461. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03626784.2020.1864621

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