Dolen Perkins-Valdez

With the fall semester in full swing, colleges and universities around the country have announced their Common Reading books for the upcoming 2024-25 academic year. We’ve compiled a list of over 340 programs and their title selections from publicly available sources, which you can download here: First-Year Reading 2024-25. We will continue to update this

We are delighted to present our new First-Year & Common Reading Catalog for 2025! From award-winning fiction, poetry, memoir, and biography to new books about science, technology, history, student success, the environment, public health, and current events, the titles presented in our common reading catalog will have students not only eagerly flipping through the pages,

Common Reads presents a list of classic and contemporary dystopian fiction with offerings for all-ages, ideal for use in both first-year and community reads.

“I believe that in order to heal, we must remember. Once we remember, we acknowledge. Once we acknowledge, we can take more significant action.”   Watch Dolen Perkins-Valdez discuss her inspiration for writing Take My Hand:   Montgomery, Alabama, 1973. Fresh out of nursing school, Civil Townsend intends to make a difference, especially in her African