Kiese Laymon, author portrait
© John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

Kiese Laymon

Kiese Laymon is a Black Southern writer from Jackson, Mississippi. He is the author of the novel Long Division, the essay collection How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America, and the award winning Heavy: An American Memoir. Laymon, named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow in 2022, is the Moody Professor of English and Creative Writing at Rice University. Visit him online at KieseLaymon.com.

What Students Will Be Reading: Campus Common Reading Roundup, 2025-26

With the fall semester in full swing, colleges and universities around the country have announced their Common Reading books for the upcoming 2025-26 academic year. We’ve compiled a list of over 284 programs and their title selections from publicly available sources, which you can download here: First-Year Reading 2025-26. We will continue to update this

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2026 Catalog for First-Year & Common Reading

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