One Book

2018-19 One Book selection announced

“The Handmaid's Tale,” a book set in a dystopian future in which the U.S. government has been overthrown by an authoritarian regime that uses fertile women as handmaids to bear children for the ruling class, is Northwestern University’s One Book One Northwestern all-campus read for the 2018-19 academic year. The author of “The Handmaid's Tale,” Maragret Atwood, will deliver a keynote address Oct. 30 at Northwestern on both campuses. All first-year students are given a copy of the One Book each year.

A Note from Gerry Cadava, One Book One Northwestern Faculty Chair

Two weeks ago, on the first day of spring quarter, the acclaimed author Roxane Gay was on campus. Her visit was co-sponsored by One Book One Northwestern.

Gay is the author of the best-sellers Bad Feminist and, most recently, Hunger. She has more than 450,000 followers on Twitter. That’s a lot of human beings, she said. Gay had a lot to say about the recent explosion of African American artistic production, from Issa Rae’s The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, to Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther.