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Billy Merrell

Billy Merrell was born in St. Louis, Missouri, and raised in Jacksonville, Florida. He is a writer of both poetry and prose, coauthoring the New York Times bestselling Spirit Animal series and appearing in several anthologies of poetry. His other works include Talking in the DarkVanilla, the Infinity Ring Secrets series, and The Full Spectrum, which was coedited with David Levithan and recipient of the Lambda Literary Award. Merrell currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his husband, Nico Medina.

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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