Common Read
The annual Common Read is designed to give students new to Mount Holyoke College their first intellectual dialogue based on a shared text. New students start to explore the selected text during Orientation and continue the discussion into their fall classes and throughout the year.
Open to the entire College community to read and discuss — staff on campus and alum groups across the country discuss the book — the Common Read sets the tone and frame discussions for the upcoming academic year.
Current and prospective students, faculty, staff, alums and trustees are invited to participate.
Happening at Mount Holyoke
The Common Read in the news
“Parable of the Sower” is the 2025 Common Read
Mount Holyoke College has selected “Parable of the Sower” for its Common Read for the 2025–2026 academic year. The New York Times named the novel a Notable Book of the Year for its prescient treatment of racial justice, climate collapse and fascism.
Alum Earl Wren ’24 receives AHEAD Student Recognition Award
Mount Holyoke College alum Earl Wren ’24 is the recipient of the AHEAD Student Recognition Award for their work amplifying student-led networks of accessibility and disability support and providing critical feedback to the Disability Services office.
Managing difficult conversations as a life skill
Marcella Runell, vice president of student life and dean of students at Mount Holyoke College, spoke to The Boston Globe about fostering the skill of having difficult conversations.
Common Read selections
| Year | Author | Title |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 | Octavia E. Butler | "Parable of the Sower" |
| 2024 | Mónica Guzmán | "I Never Thought of It That Way" |
| 2023 | Written by people with disabilities and edited by disabled activist and writer Alice Wong | “Disability Visibility” |
| 2022 | Robin Wall Kimmerer | “Braiding Sweetgrass” |
| 2021 | Jesmyn Ward | “The Fire This Time” | Library guide for “The Fire This Time” |
| 2020 | The New York Times Magazine | “The 1619 Project” |
| 2019 | Tommy Orange | "There, There" |
| 2018 | Cristina Henriquez | “The Book of Unknown Americans” |
| 2017 | Claudia Rankine | “Citizen: An American Lyric” |
| 2016 | Ta-Nehisi Coates | “Between the World and Me” |
| 2015 | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie | “Americanah” |
| 2014 | Piper Kerman | “Orange is the New Black” |
| 2013 | Junot Díaz | “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” |
| 2012 | Jhumpa Lahiri | “The Namesake” |
| 2011 | Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn | “Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide” |
| 2010 | List of readings | |
| 2009 | Anne Fadiman | “The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures” |
| 2008 | Danzy Senna | “Causasia” |
| 2007 | Elizabeth Kolbert | “Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change” |
| 2006 | Tracy Kidder | “Mountains Beyond Mountains” |
| 2005 | Ruth L. Ozeki | “My Year of Meats” |
| 2004 | Azar Nafisi | “Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books” |
| 2003 | Barbara Kingsolver | “The Poisonwood Bible” |
| 2002 | Barbara Ehrenreich | “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America” |
| 2001 | Julia Alvarez | “How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents”
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| 2000 | Terry Tempest Williams | “Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place” |