SOOOO, I wrote a petition, and I’d love for you to sign it. I acknowledge that this petition is localized to Pennsylvania, but every signature matters and starting at a local level proves a better success rate.

Let’s be proactive and get the ball moving on bills that prohibit book bans (rather than reactive once access is already stripped).

Sign my petition here and read the full petition below.

THE ISSUE

I love my home state of Pennsylvania and along with many other residents, I do not want it to be remembered as an early center of book censorship. Rather, it should become the state that proves freedom-to-read protections can pass anywhere.

As a debut author of my poetry book, Once Upon a Midnight Scroll, this is a topic that hits close to home. My poetry touches on themes of politics, feminism, and the lived experience as a woman, which (unfortunately) are topics that often land books on restricted literature lists.

While many people associate book bans with explicit content that parents might not want their children reading, more and more book bans are censored for ideas that challenges the status quo and offer dissenting perspectives from societal norms. In 2025, 92% of all book challenges were initiated by pressure groups, government officials, and decision makers, while less than 3% originated from individual parents.

Currently, my book is at no risk of being banned, but Pennsylvania has already seen how quickly access to books can disappear. In a nine-month 2021–22 national snapshot, Pennsylvania recorded the country’s second highest number of school book-ban instances. In 2023, the state’s own Right to Read Act memo cited 56 attempts to ban 302 unique titles. The vast majority of those books were written by or about LGBTQIA+ people or Black, Indigenous, and other people of color.

Senate Bill 1103—the Pennsylvania Right to Read Act—would require the State Librarian and local libraries receiving state aid to adopt the American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights and a written policy prohibiting book bans. Libraries that refuse would lose state funding. The bill also addresses the removal of instructional and voluntary-reading materials in public schools.

But SB 1103 has been sitting in the Senate Education Committee since December 4, 2025. It has received no committee meeting and no vote. Senator Lynda Schlegel Culver chairs that committee, which means she can give the bill a public path forward. The Senate returns to session on September 28, 2026.

Pennsylvania is exactly where this victory would matter nationally. The state backed a Democratic presidential candidate in 2020 and a Republican candidate in 2024. Passing a strong freedom-to-read law here would show that protecting library access is not a “blue-state” preference. It is a constitutional and community value capable of crossing party lines.

We demand that Senator Culver:

- Publicly announce a hearing and voting date for SB 1103 by August 26, 2026.
- Hold that hearing and committee vote no later than September 30, 2026, immediately after the Senate reconvenes.
- Protect the bill’s core safeguards against removals based on partisan or ideological disapproval.
- If the bill advances, publicly urge Senate leadership to schedule a full floor vote before the current legislative session ends.

Parents should make reading decisions for their own children. No individual, political group, or government official should decide which lawful ideas every Pennsylvania family is allowed to encounter. Differing perspectives are GOOD for the American public, and we should be able to rightfully and easily access them. Artists should not fear their work being censored for simply offering their lived experience.

Sign and share this petition. Pennsylvania can remain an example of how book bans spread, OR it can become the state that proves the freedom to read can win anywhere. Senator Culver, schedule the vote.

Please note, this originated as a paid partnership with Change.org, but this article does not fulfill the content expectations of the contract. I’m sharing the petition here because I believe in it and want to see it succeed!

The concept has been around for some time, but its toxic virus has hit the mainstream, infecting the social media feeds with its sickening expectations. Similarly, skinny girl content flows in an unnerving abundance, often under the aesthetic guise of self-care and wellness.

Between the unsettling technical vocabulary of looksmaxxers that have people analyzing their faces like mathematical equations, the dwindling away of women in Hollywood, and the harsh language of militant skinny influencers that loudly and proudly advise girls to “stop acting like fat pigs and take only one, chic bite of things,” I’d venture to claim there is substantial evidence to support that humans were never meant to see their own reflections this much.

Maybe, we could use a collective zooming out, which is the inspiration behind my spoken word poem, The Booming Business of Being Hot. Please enjoy the written form below, and I’ll gladly welcome analyzations and dissections when it comes to this.

If you enjoyed this, please consider pre-ordering my debut book of poetry, Once Upon a Midnight Scroll, that tackles similar topics (and a lot more!).

Watch the poem and follow for more on Instagram:

I’m Heidi, and I imagine the headline of my past year of life might read something like: HOW ONE WOMAN BECAME AN ACCIDENTAL POET AND NOW PUBLISHED AUTHOR BY SHARING CHRONICALLY ONLINE SKITS FROM HER PARENTS’ LIVING ROOM

I’ll admit the headline needs a little workshopping and trimming prior to publication, but I think it represents the beautiful, messy scatter plot of a story my life has been. So, let’s rewind a bit for one of those cliche ‘but how did we get here’ moments.

After about seven years working in public relations in NYC and DC, I had an itch to explore something creative of my own, and that something was opening a vintage and secondhand clothing store in my hometown. I lived what looked like a small-town Hallmark dream, heading into my shop every day in a castle-like building after grabbing coffee from the ladies at the local shop next door. However, with things like this, there always seems to be a but. My but was simultaneously working a full-time remote public relations job that made it difficult to balance my Hallmark vintage store owner life with my big city corporate 9-5 life. Safe to say, I overloaded myself by playing ALL the roles in my Hallmark one-woman show. After about six months of seven days a week of work, I decided the thing I wanted to let go of was not my creative side gig, but my full time job.

Lucky for me, at the same exact time I decided to quit, my TikTok popped off. I started posting as a way to promote my store and secondhand shopping. In doing so, I strung together a bunch of the current trends to point out the overconsumption of fast fashion and beauty products rampant on social media. I hashtagged slam poetry, one thing led to another, and soon enough I became what I like to call “an accidental poet.”

With a cracked iPhone, a journal scribbled with scripts, and an observant eye on the chaos of our fast-paced culture, I’ve continued to evolve my writing and content. It still sounds surreal to say, but I’ve amassed over half a million followers across Instagram and TikTok as a result of my high-speed monologues, satirical skits, and spoken word poems.

With this growth, I’ve since shut down my vintage store, which was only supposed to be a temporary endeavor to begin with. To be completely honest, I didn’t love it. But only through taking the leap of opening the store would I have discovered it wasn’t quite the dream I was searching for. Thankfully, this leap landed me in a space with a different view that opened my eyes to a new dream.

I’m loving my current view, but I’m grateful for that initial leap because it landed me a book deal with publisher Andrews McMeel. In November 2024, a literary agent (shoutout Kelly) emailed me asking to chat about a potential book idea. It took one person to see me and believe in me, and with fresh inspiration and plenty of ideas, I pinned down a concept and wrote a 60 page poetry book proposal that was accepted by Andrews McMeel a few months down the line.

I spent last summer and fall writing new pieces and editing years of poetry in my docs, journals, and notes app. Now, here we are, just about two weeks from the release (July 28, 2026) of my debut poetry book, Once Upon a Midnight Scroll (AHHH!).

Now, let’s dig into the book: With themes of self-worth, identity, love, and connection, my words explore the anxieties of today’s youth through the all-too-familiar nostalgia that hits during a midnight scroll, when eyes glaze over while watching beauty and fitness routines, war footage, celebrity gossip, wildfires, relationship tips, and ad after ad after ad.

In both my book and my content, I like to break down the high-speed hypnotics of the scroll, encourage critical thinking without blind acceptance, document the socio-culture of the 2020s, and remind people they are not alone in feeling lost. Yet while I write this, I can’t shake the feeling that I come across as arrogant. Just another social media personality turned self-proclaimed prophetic Instagram poet. My fingers itch to type the words “I’m sorry for selling myself like this,” but my hands are better served digging into the systems that fill us with this need to apologize for being too much, too little, or simply who we are.

So, what’s next? While I don’t have a straight answer myself, I do have high hopes to leave an impact with more books following my debut as an author. If you have any questions about my journey, the book, or the publishing process, please drop them below!

Note: If there are typos or incorrect grammar, please forgive me, I am human and did not check this with ai. Typos are chic!