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Charlayne Hunter-Gault

Charlayne Hunter-Gault is a journalist and former NPR correspondent. She chronicled her experience as one of the first two black students to enroll in the University of Georgia in her memoir In My Place. Hunter-Gault also received two Emmys and a Peabody for her work on the NewsHour series, Apartheid's People. Her other works include To the Mountaintops: My Journey Through the Civil Rights Movement and New News Out of Africa: Uncovering Africa's Renaissance.
In My Place

Books

In My Place

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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