First Year Experience and Common Reads
 | Diana Abu-Jaber
Author │ Journalist │ Essayist
"I grew up inside the shape of my father’s stories. A Jordanian immigrant, Dad regaled us with tales about himself, his country, and his family that both entertained us and instructed us about the place he’d come from and the way he saw the world. These stories exerted a powerful influence on my imagination, in terms of what I chose to write about, the style of my language, and the form my own stories took.
Selected Books: Origin, The Language of Baklava, Crescent
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 | Ana Castillo
Author │ Essayist │ Poet
“An always skilled storyteller, [Castillo] grounds her writing in . . . humor, love, suspense and heartache–that draw the reader in.”
–Chicago Sunday Sun-Times
In novels, short stories, poems, and essays, Castillo explores what Ibis Gomez-Vega has called “those segments of the American population often separated by class, economics, gender, and sexual orientation.” Castillo’s works nevertheless transcend boundaries of politics, class, and gender, making her “one of a few Mexican American writers who have attracted the attention of the mainstream reading public” (Ibis Gomez-Vega). Castillo’s prose blends elements of oral history and established literary tradition with innovation and experimentation: she has been called “the most daring and experimental of Latino novelists” (Ilan Stavans).
Selected Books: The Guardians, So Far From God
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 | Elizabeth Gilbert
Bestselling Author │ Short Story Writer │ Memoirist
Oprah Winfrey calls her a “rock star author.” Annie Proulx calls her “a writer of incandescent talent.” A New York magazine editor calls her the “Queen of Quirk,” and goes on to say, “She has an awful lot of humor and charm, and she’s one of those few writers who writes the way she talks.” And talks the way she writes, we might add—with intelligence, wit and not just a shade of the performer behind her expressive and insightful presentations.
Selected Books: The Last American Man, Eat Pray Love, Committed
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 | Jeff Goodell
Author │ Investigative Journalist │ Energy & Environment Expert
“The greatest danger we face is not technological hubris, but human apathy.”
—Jeff Goodell
Through years of research, acclaimed author and investigative journalist Jeff Goodell has established himself as an expert on the coal industry and now geoengineering--which offers the most ambitious solutions to our planet’s environmental crises. As the price of oil soars and energy independence and global warming become ever more urgent political and ecological priorities, Goodell offers a vital perspective on what the stakes are and how to stem the tide of environmental disaster.
Selected Books: Big Coal, How to Cool the Planet
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 | Sue Monk Kidd
Bestselling Author │ Novelist │ Essayist
Sue Monk Kidd’s stunning bestselling debut novel, The Secret Life of Bees (2002), has enchanted critics and readers alike, bringing her literary renown and establishing her as one of the most popular writers working today. Taught widely in colleges and high schools, The Secret Life of Bees is Southern storytelling at its finest and is fast becoming a modern classic. The novel has spent more than two and a half years on the New York Times bestseller list, sold six million copies, and been translated into 23 languages. It was produced onstage in New York and was made into an award-winning movie released in the fall of 2008. Barnes and Noble listed The Secret Life of Bees as the sixth bestselling book of the decade.
Selected Books: The Secret Life of Bees, The Mermaid Chair
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 | Tracy Kidder
Bestselling Author │ Journalist │ Essayist
"A lot of the job of a person trying to write stories that are true is to make what’s true believable. It isn’t enough to say, well, it actually happened. You have to make it believable on the page; you have to bring people to life and scenes to life."
—Tracy Kidder
Over his long career, Kidder’s writing has been prolific and outstanding. The Soul of a New Machine—a book celebrated for its insight into the world of high-tech corporate America—earned him a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award in 1982. Other bestselling works include House (1985), Among Schoolchildren (1989), Old Friends (1993) and Home Town (1999).
Selected Books: Mountains Beyond Mountains, The Strength in What Remains, The Soul of a New Machine
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 | Alex Kotlowitz
Bestselling Author │ Journalist │ Race & Poverty Commentator
Alex Kotlowitz is an award-winning journalist whose bestselling book, There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America (Doubleday, 1991), garnered national recognition for its compassionate and unflinching portrait of Pharoah and Lafeyette Rivers and their lives growing up in a public housing project in inner city Chicago.
No other book, no movie, no TV show so powerfully portrays the children and families who are outside the American dream."
—New Leader
Selected Books: There are No Children Here, Never a City So Real
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 front.jpg) | James Howard Kunstler
Novelist │Urban Planning Advocate │Journalist │Social Critic
James Howard Kunstler had written eight novels and countless articles and essays when the scene outside his window, on his street—on most of the cities and streets in America—caught his attention: "the tragic landscape of highway strips, parking lots, housing tracts, mega-malls, junked cities, and ravaged countryside that makes up the everyday environment where most Americans live and work."
Selected Books: Geography of Nowhere, The Long Emergency
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 | Christopher Phillips
Bestselling Author │ Founder, Constitution & Socrates Cafés │ Social Entrepreneur
“To date, Phillips has orchestrated discussions on … Solomonic topics at nursing homes, maximum-security prisons, churches, homeless shelters, bookstores and coffeehouses across the country, gently prodding students, urban professionals, unreconstructed slackers, street people and others to share their worldviews and scrutinize their most basic assumptions.”
–Los Angeles Times
Christopher Phillips has a passion for inquiry. A foremost specialist in the Socratic Method, he reminds us that we ought to ask questions – “not about any chance question,” as Socrates put it in Plato’s Republic, “but about the way one should live.”
Selected Books: Constitution Café, Six Questions of Socrates, Socrates Café.
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 | David Oliver Relin
Bestselling Author │ Journalist │ Human Rights Advocate
"We Americans need to learn from our mistakes, from the flailing, ineffective way we, as a nation, conducted the 'war-on-terror' after the attacks of 9/11, and from the way we’ve failed to make our case to the moderate, peace-loving majority of people at the heart of the Muslim World. If we want to heal the wounded relationship between Islam and the West, we have to learn how to wage peace as aggressively as we wage war."
—David Oliver Relin
Selected Books: Three Cups of Tea, See How They Shine (Random House, forthcoming 2011)
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 | Rebecca Skloot
Bestselling Author │ Journalist │ Educator
Bestselling author Rebecca Skloot spent over ten years doggedly
uncovering the truth about the life, death and ultimate "immortality" of
a poor black tobacco farmer named Henrietta Lacks. On a tumultuous
educational path until a community college biology instructor utter the
words "Henrietta Lacks," Skloot—with remarkable focus and tenacity—set
off on a trajectory that would shine the national spotlight on both and
become the phenomenal book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.
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 | Krista Tippett
Author │ Radio Show Host │ Journalist
“It’s always been very important to me to enlarge imaginations about how this part of life we call religious and spiritual actually works in real, far-flung, 21st-century lives.”
—Krista Tippett
Peabody Award winning broadcaster Krista Tippett grew up in Oklahoma, attended Brown University, and spent most of the 1980’s in divided Germany. She was The New York Times stringer in Berlin and also reported for Newsweek, The International Herald Tribune, the BBC, and Die Zeit. Later she served as a special political assistant and chief Berlin aide to the U.S. Ambassador to West Germany.
Selected Books: Speaking of Faith, Einstein's God
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 | Norah Vincent
Bestselling Author │ Cultural Critic │ Journalist
Norah Vincent is a freelance journalist by trade. In 2003, she took a leave from writing her nationally syndicated political opinion columns in order to write her New York Times bestselling book Self-Made Man, the story of a woman living, working, and dating--all while disguised as a man.
Shrewd, sympathetic, and courageous, Self-Made Man is one woman’s take on just how hard it is to be a man, even in a man’s world. With an ever-present five o’clock shadow, a crew cut, wire-rimmed glasses, and her own size 11½ shoes, Norah Vincent spent a year and a half as her male alter ego, Ned, and reported back what she observed incognito. Narrating her journey with exquisite insight, empathy, and humor, Norah ponders the many remarkable mysteries of gender identity as she explores firsthand who men really are when women aren’t around. As Ned, she joins a bowling team, takes a high-octane sales job, goes on dates with women (and men), visits strip clubs, and even manages to infiltrate a monastery and a men’s therapy group. Absolutely engrossing in its reporting and surprising in its analysis, Self-Made Man is a thrilling tour de force of immersion journalism.
Selected Books: Self-Made Man, Voluntary Madness
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