Ken Ilgunas, author portrait
© Cadence Cook

Ken Ilgunas

Ken Ilgunas has worked as an elementary school tutor, an Alaskan tour guide, and a backcountry ranger at the Gates of the Arctic National Park. He has hitchhiked 10,000 miles across North America and paddled 1,000 miles across Ontario in a birch-bark canoe. Ilgunas has a B.A. from SUNY Buffalo in history and English, and an M.A. in liberal studies from Duke University. The author of the travel memoir Walden on Wheels, he is from Wheatfield, New York.
This Land Is Our Land
Trespassing Across America

Helping the environment must be a cultural movement | Author Ken Ilgunas

Books

This Land Is Our Land
Trespassing Across America

Media

Helping the environment must be a cultural movement | Author Ken Ilgunas

What Students Will Be Reading: Campus Common Reading Roundup, 2026–27

With the fall semester in full swing, colleges and universities across the country have announced their Common Reading books for the 2026–27 academic year. We’ve compiled a list of over 250 programs and their title selections, detailed below. We will continue to update this listing to provide the most comprehensive record of programs available anywhere

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2027 Catalog for First-Year & Common Reading

We are delighted to present our new First-Year & Common Reading Catalog for 2027! 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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Videos from the 2026 First-Year Experience® Conference are now available

We’re pleased to share videos from the 2026 First-Year Experience® Conference. Whether you weren’t able to join us at the conference or would simply like to hear the talks again, please take a moment to view the clips below.   Penguin Random House Author Breakfast Monday, February 17th, 7:15 – 8:45 am PST   This

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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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