Brit Bennett, author portrait
© Emma Trim

Brit Bennett

Born and raised in Southern California, Brit Bennett graduated from Stanford University and later earned her MFA in fiction at the University of Michigan. Her debut novel, The Mothers, was a New York Times bestseller and a finalist for both the NBCC John Leonard First Novel Prize and the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction. Her second novel, The Vanishing Half, was an instant #1 New York Times bestseller, longlisted for the National Book Award, a finalist for the Women’s Prize, and named one of the ten best books of the year by The New York Times. Bennet has been named a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree, a NAACP Image Award Finalist, and one of Time’s Next 100 Influential People. Her essays have been featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, and Jezebel.

The Vanishing Half
The Mothers

Two books that impacted author Brit Bennett

Brit Bennett (author of The Mothers) | 8 Great Questions

Books

The Vanishing Half
The Mothers

Media

Two books that impacted author Brit Bennett

Brit Bennett (author of The Mothers) | 8 Great Questions

What Students Will Be Reading: Campus Common Reading Roundup, 2024-25

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, which you can download here: First-Year Reading 2024-25. We will continue to update this listing to provide the

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2025 Catalog for First-Year & Common Reading

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,

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Videos from the 2017 First-Year Experience® Conference Are Now Available

  If you were one of the many in attendance at the First-Year Experience® conference in Atlanta this past  February, you might have joined us at one of our events showcasing authors and books ideal for common reading. If you or your colleagues didn’t make it, or if you would like to watch the talks

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