BISG to Honor IBPA's Lee Wind as an Industry Champion
BISG's Industry Champion Award, which honors an individual whose efforts have advanced the publishing industry as a whole, will be given to Lee Wind, Chief Content Officer for the Independent Book Publishers Association. Lee will be recognized as part of BISG's annual meeting, scheduled to take place in New York on April 25, 2025.
Lee is being honored for co-creating the national campaign "We Are Stronger Than Censorship", which buys and donates two books to offset every one book challenge. To help go on the offense against book banning, IBPA and the EveryLibrary Institute teamed up to bring inclusive books to readers in communities across the US impacted by efforts to restrict the availability of books featuring Black, Queer, and other under-represented characters and themes.
BISG executive director Brian O'Leary noted, "With the rise in efforts to ban books, a number of organizations have undertaken important efforts to raise awareness, fight local and state decisions to remove books, and make it possible for readers to see themselves in the books they borrow and buy. Lee took it a step further, organizing efforts to donate 2,000 books through multiple regional partners, including the Florida Freedom to Read Project, Texas Freedom to Read Project, and Wisconsin Freedom to Read Project."
The initiative is hardly new territory for Lee, a storyteller working to engage, empower, and hold safe space for communities. As a volunteer, he engages Queer and allied colleagues who work in associations, fellow Queer creators of children’s literature, and the Los Angeles community of LGBTQIA2+ people and those who love them. As Chief Content Officer of the Independent Book Publishers Association, Lee aims to engage, empower, and hold safe space for independent publishers. Lee is also the author of six books for kids and teens, including No Way, They Were Gay? and The Gender Binary Is a Big Lie, that aim to empower readers to be their authentic selves and change the world.
On receiving news of the award, Lee said, "I'm so grateful to BISG for this recognition. As an author with challenged books myself, and having heard from many independent publishers and author friends about the chilling effect of book bans on their sales to schools and libraries, book banning has been feeling like a runaway train. Tasslyn Magnusson and I were brainstorming: How do we pull the emergency brake?"
Lee added, "With We Are Stronger Than Censorship, we came up with a way that authors, publishers, librarians, booksellers, readers – our whole industry – could do something positive, and slow the train down. With the help of more than 50 industry partners (and counting!) we're getting the word out. And the more people participate, the more books we can get into the hands of readers for whom it will mean so much."
BISG introduced its Industry Champion Award in 2014. Recent recipients include the author Walter Mosley, Phil Madans (Hachette Book group), Pat Payton (Proquest, a Clarivate company), Connie Harbison (Baker & Taylor and chair of BISG's subject codes committee), and Janet McCarthy Grimm, formerly with Lindenmeyr Paper and a founder of the New York Book Forum. The award is given annually to a member of BISG.
The BISG annual meeting will take place from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. on April 25 at The Times Center in New York City. The theme of the meeting, "Move Fast and Fix Things," will showcase BISG's leadership in solving problems that affect two or more parts of the supply chain. Tickets are on sale now, and some sponsorship opportunities remain. For more information, visit the event page for this meeting.