Sammy Harkham, author portrait

Sammy Harkham

SAMMY HARKHAM is an award-winning cartoonist and editor, born and raised in Los Angeles. He studied at the California Institute of the Arts and the Mayanot Institute in Jerusalem, where he created the ongoing comics anthology Kramers Ergot, considered to be one of the most influential publications of its kind. His first collection of short comics stories, Everything Together, won the 2012 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Best Graphic Novel. Harkham’s work has been published in The Best American Comics, The New York Times, Vice, and McSweeney’s, among many other publications. He divides his time between Los Angeles and Sydney.

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 286 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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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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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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