Shaka Senghor, author portrait
© Aaron Jay Young

Shaka Senghor

Shaka Senghor is the New York Times bestselling author of Writing My Wrongs: Life, Death, and Redemption in an American Prison, a leading voice on criminal justice reform, a tech investor, a lecturer at universities, and the head of Diversity, Equality & Inclusion at TripActions, a travel management and expense start-up. Senghor is a former MIT Media Lab Director’s Fellow, a former fellow in the inaugural class of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation Community Leadership Network, and a member of Oprah Winfrey’s SuperSoul 100. In the decade since his release from prison, he has started and worked with nonprofits seeking to lift people up, visited the White House, been interviewed by Trevor Noah and Oprah Winfrey, and given award-winning TED Talks, all with the goal of building a more inspired, just, fulfilling future.
Letters to the Sons of Society
Writing My Wrongs

Fixing our prison system | Author Shaka Senghor

Books

Letters to the Sons of Society
Writing My Wrongs

Media

Fixing our prison system | Author Shaka Senghor

Register for the 2026 Penguin Random House First-Year Experience® Conference Author Events!

Penguin Random House Author Events at the 45th Annual First-Year Experience® Conference February 15-18, 2026 Seattle, Washington Hyatt Regency Seattle Click Here to RSVP A complimentary meal and a limited number of books will be available to attendees. Each event will also be followed by an author signing. Interested in hosting one of these authors at

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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

We are delighted to present our new First-Year & Common Reading Catalog for 2026! From award-winning fiction, poetry, memoir, and biography to new books about the environment, current events, history, public health, science, social justice, student success, and technology, the titles presented in our common reading catalog will have students not only eagerly flipping through

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You’re Invited: Join Us for a Big Ideas Night on the Crucial, Timely Topic of Criminal Justice Reform

Join us on Wednesday, October 21 at 8:00 PM ET on Zoom for a crucial, timely Big Ideas Night on Criminal Justice Reform with a panel of expert authors: Brittany K. Barnett, attorney, entrepreneur, and author of A Knock at Midnight: A Story of Hope, Justice, and Freedom; Emily Bazelon, New York Times Magazine staff writer and author of Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End

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