Former Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden cheered as she wins Authors
Guild honor
[April 21, 2026]
By HILLEL ITALIE
NEW YORK (AP) — Nearly a year since she was abruptly fired by President
Donald Trump as librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden stood before
hundreds of cheering members of the literary community as she received a
Champion of Writers Award from the Authors Guild on Monday.
Hayden, 73, who headed the Library of Congress from 2016-2025 and worked
in libraries for much of her adult life, cited her profession as a vital
bridge between writers and the general public.
“Libraries are where storytelling meets opportunity,” she told the
audience gathered for the Guild's annual dinner-gala, held at Cipriani
Wall Street. “They are where a child discovers a first favorite book,
where a new American finds language and belonging and where research
uncovers hidden history, and where communities see themselves in the
pages of literature. Libraries do more than house books. You know that.
They connect people to ideas, to knowledge, and to one another. They
ensure that storytelling is not reserved for the few, but shared by
all.”
Hayden, was among three honorees, along with Pulitzer Prize-winning
novelist Percival Everett and “The Joy Luck Club” author Amy Tan.
Hayden, the first woman and first Black person to be appointed Librarian
of Congress, didn’t refer to Trump or her ouster during her brief
remarks. But her speech was an implicit rebuttal to Trump's attacks
against what he calls “woke" culture that have been directed at her and
at such cultural institutions as the Kennedy Center and the Smithsonian
Institution.
She praised libraries as “engines of accessibility and inclusion” and as
havens for free expression at a time of record-high book bans.
“In many places today, librarians are under attack for believing in the
power of the written word and in the principle that free people should
be able to read freedom,” she said. “Yet librarians remain steady and
hopeful.”
The gala was a forum for opposing bans and for other causes crucial to
the Guild and to the thousands of published writers its represents.
Author David Baldacci was among those who denounced AI, which has been
the subject of various lawsuits filed by writers against
Microsoft,OpenAI and other companies that alleges their work had been
used without their permission for AI generative programs. Baldacci was
among several writers present who have been plaintiffs in legal action,
and his name was invoked later in the evening: It was attached to the
prize given to Everett, the Baldacci Award for Literary Activism.
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Dr. Carla Hayden speaks at the Authors Guild Foundation Gala at
Cipriani Wall Street on Monday, April 20, 2026, in New York. (Photo
by Andy Kropa/Invision/AP)
 Everett, 69, whose “James” won the
Pulitzer and the National Book Award, is a prolific author and
longtime academic who joked that receiving an honor for activism was
like being called an athletic chess player. His books are known for
their cutting and provocative takes on racism and other subjects,
and he referred indirectly to Hayden's departure by picturing a
future — one he finds all too plausible — in which the only kinds of
works available at the Library of Congress are the writings of Ayn
Rand and other conservative favorites.
“That is where we are, and I can't tell you how sad
I am about this,” Everett said.
Tan, 74, was cited for Distinguished Service to the Literary
Community. Besides writing “The Joy Luck Club” and such novels as
“The Kitchen God's Wife” and “The Bonesetter's Daughter,” she also
has a long history of supporting emerging writers and for helping
young people pay for treatment for Lyme disease, which she has
suffered from for decades.
Tan offered a deeply personal account of the importance of writing,
thinking and how she came to think of herself, and other writers, as
“political.” As a girl, she was chastised by a minister for reading
the allegedly immoral “The Catcher in the Rye.” The minister then
assaulted her, an attack that left her devastated, an “unwanted life
lesson" that made her question everything and set her on a path to
storytelling that was compassionate and intrinsically “political”
because of its power to change minds.
“Books, by their nature, have far reaching consequences regardless
of our conscious intentions. Books have readers, readers have
reactions and what they do with those reactions is of consequence,”
said Tan, a daughter of Chinese immigrants who summarized herself as
a “writer, an American writer, an American who uses her freedom of
expression."
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