Winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature

The Swedish Academy has announced the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded to the English author Kazuo Ishiguro “who, in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world.”   The newest Literature Laureate mentioned to the BBC that he hoped the Nobel prize would

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Sady Doyle, Author of TRAINWRECK, Pens a Letter to Readers

Dear Readers, When I first met Mary Wollstonecraft, the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women, I was 18. She was presented to me in a women’s studies class as a rational, respectable figure: A “proto-feminist” whose revolutionary ideas had included letting women vote (horrors!), get educations (gasp!), and, most controversial of all,

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Dayton Literary Peace Prize Finalists

Recognizing the power of literature to promote peace and reconciliation, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation has announced the finalists for the 2017 Dayton Literary Peace Prize in fiction and nonfiction. Inspired by the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords that ended the war in Bosnia, The Dayton Literary Peace Prize is the only international literary peace

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New Titles for August!

As the summer winds down we wanted to highlight our titles that have just been added to the Common Reads site. If you’re looking for some inspiration to get outdoors in the final weeks of the season, consider reading Trespassing Across America, by Ken Ilgunas. Or if you’re considering fiction titles for a younger audience, Indie Next

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A letter from Nadia Murad, author of THE LAST GIRL

My name is Nadia Murad. I am Yazidi, a member of a small, monotheistic religious community whose holy temples and homelands are located in northern Iraq. Early in the morning of August 3, 2014, militants with the Islamic State attacked Kocho, my small village, and from that moment on my life—as well as the lives

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Khary Lazarre-White, Author of PASSAGE, Shares a Letter to Readers

Passage is the story of a young man’s journey. Warrior, the protagonist, is surrounded by deep family love and a sustaining connection to his history—connections that arm him as he confronts both spiritual and human forces that seek his destruction. It is, in part, an allegory, and a poetic narrative that allows you to experience

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What Students Will Be Reading: Campus Common Reading Roundup, 2017-18

With the fall semester just weeks away, colleges and universities around the country have announced their Common Reading books for the upcoming 2017-18 academic year.  We’ve compiled a list of over 440 programs and their title selections, which you can download here: First-Year Reading 2017-18. We will continue to update this listing to provide the most comprehensive

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A message from the author of HOW TO THINK

Across the political spectrum, people agree on one point and one point only: our public sphere is a great big mess. Mistrust of our neighbors, anger at their folly, inadvertent or deliberate misunderstanding of their views, attribution of the worst possible motives to those whose politics we despise: these are the dissonant notes we hear

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