Khodi Dill is a writer, anti-racism educator, public speaker, and spoken word artist in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. His debut picture book, Welcome to the Cypher, was a finalist for the David Booth Children's and Youth Poetry Award. His activist board book, Little Black Lives Matter, shares inspiring, life-affirming rhyming couplets and triplets about Black heroes for the littlest readers.
Written for a young adult audience, Khodi Dill's powerful non-fiction work stay up: racism, resistance, and reclaiming Black freedom was recently included on list of 596 books banned by the U.S. Department of Defense for use in its schools.
We caught up with Khodi Dill to ask him about challenging book censorship and making your voice heard.
stay up is a mix of memoir, criticism, and theory. How do you describe the book in your own words?
stay up, to me, is all these things plus maybe a manifesto. It’s a declaration of my deepest thoughts, values, and observations about race relations in our time and in our place.
There are moments of tenderness, moments of anger, and moments of hope and resolve for what we can accomplish together as awakened people who stand for justice, if we are willing to put in the work. That means learning, unlearning, resisting, and undoing. stay up is a guidebook for how to accomplish these aims.
How did you learn stay up was being banned by Department of Defense Schools and what was your reaction?
My editor, Khary Mathurin, at Annick Press sent me an email shortly after the banned list became public. He also offered support on behalf of Annick, and we will be making a plan around how to respond to the ban as time allows. There are other Annick titles as well as other Canadian titles on the list, most of them by authors from marginalized backgrounds.
When I first read the news about the ban, the thing that shocked me was who was doing the banning. I had a feeling the book would be banned in some capacities and in some places, but a federally sanctioned ban on the title in all US military schools was not on my 2025 bingo card.
Among the banned titles are books about race, racism, gender, stereotypes and social justice. Why do you think it’s important for young people read about these topics?
Whether young people are experiencing marginalization or not, learning about how systemic oppression works is key for both personal well-being and a healthy society. Understanding how certain groups either benefit from or experience disadvantage as a result of oppression allows young people to either understand the social obstacles they may be facing, which are often invisible, or to see the impact of their own privilege and take responsibility for confronting and ending unjust systems.
For young people who do face racism and other forms of oppression, understanding how these complex systems work helps prevent serious mental health problems whose roots may lie in their experiences with oppression. The importance of learning about these topics is paramount.
Book bans are discouraging but they are not the end of the story. What would you like to tell the students, teachers, and librarians at schools where stay up has been removed?
Go read it at the public library! There is a reason the folks in power don’t want you reading and teaching critical titles; because they will awaken you to the injustices that they themselves are perpetrating. They know that knowledge is power, and that words have the potential to change lives and society itself. If you want to be a part of that change, go seek out these titles wherever they are available. Don’t let them narrow your mind or your focus, or stifle your response to social injustice.
For school staff especially, consider booking a social justice author into your school to speak to students or to staff about how to respond to systems of oppression, of which book bans are a part.
Book bans are on the rise in Canada. How would you encourage Canadians to defend the freedom to read?
Share your favourite banned titles widely. Celebrate the authors whose work you know is impacted. Tell your friends and family about the books you know and love, and share them on social media. Better yet, use the tools and knowledge you’ve learned from reading critical titles to educate others directly. Let’s hear your take on things in your reels and your posts online, at your dinner table conversations and grocery store encounters, and in your collegial discussions. Let’s help wake each other up in spite of those who would try to keep us asleep.
Now's the time to speak louder. What can you tell us about your next book?
My next work is tentatively titled The Flying Africans, and Other Mystical Tales of Black Resistance and will be published by Kids Can Press in 2028. I’m so excited about this project, which will be illustrated and which collects three stories of Black resistance with ties to the supernatural! I’m also polishing up a coming-of-age novel draft that I’m really looking forward to submitting for review this fall.
Stay tuned to Khodi Dill on Instagram, follow @KhodiDill.
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Written by Spencer Miller