American Short Fiction Gala Honors Llano Literary Defender
Leila Green Little to receive this year’s Community Star Award for her work defending libraries
By Caroline Drew, Fri., May 2, 2025
Llano mother and intellectual freedom advocate Leila Green Little picked up the pen and the battle to protect First Amendment rights in her hometown nearly four years ago after a censorship battle with the local library. “What happened in Llano is a microcosm of what we’re seeing nationwide,” Little says. “Right now there have been about 30 bills [introduced] that would decimate our public libraries and public school libraries. There are not enough voices like mine and the people who are fighting with me.”
Unyielding dedication to resisting censorship propelled Little through the courts, the news, and a master’s in library science, and now brings her to Austin to receive American Short Fiction’s Community Star Award.
“It’s an incredible honor [and] it’s an incredible privilege,” Little says. “I just hope it can result in greater awareness for this cause and more advocates like myself stepping forward.”
At American Short Fiction’s The Stars at Night gala this Friday at Umlauf Sculpture Garden, Little will be honored along with Michener alumni Carrie R. Moore, Austin author Emily Hunt Kivel, and fiction’s weird aunt, Joy Williams. Previous Community Star recipients are good company for Little – last year’s recipient, former Austin Library Director Roosevelt Weeks, repeatedly compelled Austinites to seriously consider the threat of censorship and the libraries’ role in keeping it at bay. In an interview with Austin Monthly, Weeks said “[This] kind of cultural stuff is not going to stop without someone stepping up and saying: 'Look, enough is enough.’ We could lose our democracy over this.”
As someone who did stand-up, Little says, “I would urge everybody to not take our public and school libraries for granted and to fight for them with everything we’ve got,”
The book-banning movement has had devastating impacts on Llano’s library system. Little campaigned for the protection of Llano’s literate public, eventually leading to a lawsuit, Little vs. Llano County. Little wrote about what she witnessed for Publishers Weekly, comparing the scourge of book banning to censorship associated with the McCarthy era.
In 2024, district courts ruled in favor of Little and her six fellow plaintiffs, demanding defendants return the removed books – which included “fart and butt” books for children like Dawn McMillan’s I Need a New Butt!; young adult books addressing puberty, gender identity, and sexuality; and two books about the history of race in the United States. The decision, still contested, came too late for Llano’s libraries. “Our library is a shell of its former self,” Little says with a sigh. “The other unfortunate thing is that, at this point, our lawsuit, regardless of the outcome, is not going to save our library system. The only thing that could are new elected officials and a new library director.”
Public records support Little’s sentiments, revealing a steep decline in patronage, likely impacted by shorter opening hours and reduced programming – including cutting the summer reading program, a nationwide library staple. The county has not purchased any new books since 2021 and lost their state accreditation in 2023 for the first time in 50 years. Leaders among the group of “concerned parents” who began the call for book removal rode the wave of moral panic into the Llano County Library Advisory Board with help from local politicians.
“Some people have asked me, 'Why are governments, citizens, elected officials able to get away with this unconstitutional behavior?’” Little says. “Our constitutional rights are given to us but they have to be fought for. What happened in Llano County was unconstitutional and it still happened. If we didn’t fight back against it, it would continue to happen. It takes the action and resistance of citizens to protect our constitutional rights. Our democracy depends on everyday citizens.”
American Short Fiction: The Stars at Night Gala
Friday 2, Umlauf Sculpture Garden and Museum
