# Ira Wells

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/what-happened-next-a-podcast-about-newish-books-6367402/ira-wells
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/what-happened-next-a-podcast-about-newish-books-6367402/ira-wells.md
Podcast: [What Happened Next: a podcast about newish books](https://stenobird.com/podcast/what-happened-next-a-podcast-about-newish-books-6367402)
Published: 2026-04-27T08:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://shows.acast.com/what-happened-next-a-podcast-about-newish-books/episodes/ira-wells
Audio file: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/67f6cc8f0c09f66202906ee8/e/69e8da5907ecece42a66fad1/media.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/what-happened-next-a-podcast-about-newish-books-6367402/episodes/ira-wells
Duration seconds: 2079

## Resource

My guest on this episode is Ira Wells. Ira’s work has appeared in The Guardian , The New Republic , The Walrus , The Globe and Mail , Literary Review of Canada , Los Angeles Review of Books , and many other publications. His books include Fighting Words: Polemics and Social Change in Literary Naturalism and Norman Jewison: A Director’s Life . His most recent book is On Book Banning: Or, How the New Censorship Consensus Trivializes Art and Undermines Democracy , published by Biblioasis in 2025. That book is a finalist for the 2026 Writers’ Trust Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing. Quill & Quire called it “a testament to the life-altering power of books and ideas.”   Ira and I talk about the sense of cultural fear and helplessness that seems to be behind the resurgence of book banning, about how his book was inspired, not by a conservative drive to ban books, but by a so-called “library audit” at a school in the heart of progressive Toronto, and about his return to biography for his next book project. This podcast is produced and hosted by Nathan Whitlock , in partnership with The Walrus . Music: "simple-hearted thing" by  Alex Lukashevsky . Used with permission. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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## Transcript

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