In Solito, a young poet tells the inspiring story of his migration from El Salvador to the United States at the age of nine.   Winner of the Los Angeles Times Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiography Winner of the American Library Association Alex Award Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence and the PEN/Open Book Award Finalist for

Two-time world champion debater and former coach of the Harvard debate team, Bo Seo tells the inspiring story of his life in competitive debating and reveals the timeless secrets of effective communication and persuasion.   1. Topic How to find the debate On a Monday morning in January 2007, a couple of months after my graduation

The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka has been chosen as the 2023 selection for Seattle Reads. The Seattle Public Library provides information on the program: “Founded in 1998, Seattle Reads is a city-wide book group, where people are encouraged to read and discuss the same book. Originally called ‘If All of Seattle Read the Same Book,’

Kabul-born novelist Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, is known for his evocative storytelling deeply rooted in Afghanistan’s history and culture. Like so many of us, he watched Afghanistan fall to the Taliban with profound sadness. In the wake of these events, Penguin Random House has updated the educator’s guides for Hosseini’s

U.S. News & World Report, which publishes the most widely quoted annual set of rankings for American colleges and universities, recently shared their list of “10 Books to Read Before College.” Describing these books as “assigned texts [that] are regularly used in freshman-level classes and offer students a chance to come together to discuss a

Research shows the benefits incoming students glean from participating in a common academic experience as they join a new campus community (Hunter, 2006; Mintz, 2019). These findings have led many institutions to develop Common Reading programs for new members of their campus communities. These programs, centered around a group of faculty, staff, and students selecting

Benjamine Spencer was convicted of murder in 1987—a crime he did not commit. Due to the tireless advocacy of Centurion Ministries over the past twenty years, his conviction has finally been reevaluated, and he is expected to be released after 34 years. His case is one of several that is profiled at length in Jim

Transcendent Kingdom, Yaa Gyasi’s stunning follow-up to her award-winning novel Homegoing is a powerful, raw, intimate, deeply layered story about a Ghanaian family in Alabama.   Transcendent Kingdom Gifty is a sixth-year PhD candidate in neuroscience at the Stanford University School of Medicine studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and

 A Burning is a novel about three unforgettable characters who seek to rise—to the middle class, to political power, to fame in the movies—and find their lives entangled in the wake of a catastrophe in contemporary India. Jivan is a Muslim girl from the slums, determined to move up in life, who is accused of

It may not be surprising to hear that Hank Green—brother to John Green and co-creator of Vlogbrothers, Crash Course, and SciShow—thinks about the Internet a lot. It makes plenty of sense, then, for his debut novel to ask some big questions about how we connect online. “Sparkling with mystery, humor and the uncanny, this is

On the University of Oregon campus, incoming students are reading Under the Feet of Jesus as part of the Common Reading program. Written by Cornell Professor Helena María Viramontes, Under the Feet of Jesus tells the story of the men, women, and children who labor under dangerous conditions as migrant workers in California’s fields. At the center

Author Sharmila Sen discusses the process of assimilation and the significance of race in America. About Not Quite Not White: Winner of the ALA Asian/Pacific American Award for Nonfiction At the age of 12, Sharmila Sen emigrated from India to the U.S. The year was 1982, and everywhere she turned, she was asked to self-report her