Videos from the 2022 First-Year Experience® Conference are now available

We’re pleased to share videos from the 2022 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 Saturday Event Saturday, February 12, 2022 | 8:00 – 9:30 pm EST

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U.S. News & World Report Recommends 9 Penguin Random House Titles in Their List of “10 Books to Read Before College”

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

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Talking about the Hard Stuff:
How to Lead a Summer Reading Discussion about a Difficult Topic

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

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Megha Majumdar’s debut novel A BURNING is an urgent story of class, fate, corruption, and justice

 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

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Register for the 2019 Penguin Random House First-Year Experience® Conference Author Events!

 Penguin Random House Author Events at the 38th Annual First-Year Experience® Conference Las Vegas, NV, February 16-19, 2019 Click Here to RSVP Interested in hosting one of these authors at your school? Click their name below to learn more! Clemantine Wamariya Casey Gerald Abdi Nor Iftin Scott Harrison Zachary Wood

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On a “Shared Reading Scheme,” by Dr. Alison Baverstock (Kingston University)

Did we steal or borrow the idea of common reading? A publisher and long-term believer in the power of the book to connect communities, it was at an academic conference in Boston in 2006 that I spotted a paper on the practice of ‘common reading’. What a great idea I thought, and I pondered long

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Letter from Shawn Achor, Author of BIG POTENTIAL

A message from Shawn Achor: My parents are educators of first-year students. My father taught freshman Introduction to Psychology for 39 years at Baylor. My mom taught freshman English for 30 years. And I spent eight years as a first-year proctor at Harvard, where my job was to counsel freshmen students through their transition. Long

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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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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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Penguin Random House Confirms Author Line-up for 2017 First-Year Experience® Conference

Penguin Random House Academic Resources is pleased to announce the author line-up for the 2017 First-Year Experience® Conference (February 11-14, Atlanta, GA).  Featuring books on social justice, identity, fiction, economic inequality, and more, we have a book and an author that are perfect for your school.  Click here to RSVP to our events. Our author lineup

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