Keisha N. Blain, author portrait
© Chioke I’Anson

Keisha N. Blain

Keisha N. Blain, a 2022 Guggenheim Fellow, is an award-winning historian, professor, and writer. She is the author of the multi-prize-winning book Set the World on Fire and co-editor, with Ibram X. Kendi, of the #1 New York Times bestseller Four Hundred Souls. She is a professor of Africana Studies and History at Brown University and a columnist for MSNBC. Her most recent book is Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer’s Enduring Message to America.
Four Hundred Souls

Books

Four Hundred Souls

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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