Stephen King — whose psychological thrillers have long dominated The New York Times bestseller list and inspired blockbuster films — is the latest author to see a book banned from all Utah schools.
King’s 1998 horror novel “Bag of Bones” was added Friday to the growing list of now-23 titles prohibited in public schools.
The book follows Mike Noonan, a widowed author suffering from writer’s block. After a series of nightmares about his lake house, he decides to visit it in an attempt to write again. But he soon becomes embroiled in a legal battle with a local woman and her influential father-in-law.
The book was adapted into a 2011 A&E miniseries starring Pierce Brosnan.
King is no stranger to book-banning: Schools have removed his works many times throughout his roughly 50-year career.
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) People read in protest of Utah's sensitive materials law during Let Utah Read's annual read-in at the Capitol in Salt Lake City on Friday, Feb. 13, 2026.
In 1992, after a Florida school banned two of his titles — “The Dead Zone” and “The Tommyknockers” — King penned a guest column about book bans for The Bangor Daily News.
In it, he advised kids to avoid protesting, rallying or “arguing” with those who removed books.
“Instead, hustle down to your public library, where these frightened people’s reach must fall short in a democracy, or to your local bookstore, and get a copy of what has been banned,” King wrote. “Read it carefully.”
To parents, King posed a question:
“There are people out there who are deciding what your kids can read, and they don’t care what you think because they are positive their ideas of what’s proper and what’s not are better, clearer than your own. Do you believe they are? “
More recently, a report from literary and human rights organization PEN America named King the No. 1 banned author in U.S. schools for the 2024-25 school year.
King shared his thoughts about it on social media platform X in September:
“I am now the most banned author in the United States — 87 books,” King wrote. “May I suggest you pick up one of them and see what all the pissing & moaning is about?”
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) People hold up the books they brought to read in protest of Utah's sensitive materials law during Let Utah Read's annual read-in at the Capitol in Salt Lake City on Friday, Feb. 13, 2026.
Utah released its initial list of banned titles in August 2024, in accordance with a law passed by the Utah Legislature that year.
The law requires that a book be removed from all public schools in the state if at least three school districts (or at least two school districts and five charter schools) determine it amounts to “objective sensitive material” — pornographic or otherwise indecent content, as defined by Utah code.
“Bag of Bones” was officially banned Friday after the Davis, Granite, Jordan and Tooele County school districts removed the title. That same day, hundreds of Utahns packed into the state Capitol to protest the state’s sensitive materials law.
State officials typically do not cite the details of a book’s content when placing it on the statewide banned list.
The book’s removal comes a little over a month after a group of bestselling authors sued the state, arguing the sensitive materials law that led to their books being banned is unconstitutional.