In 1999, the Reedley College Speakers Series began with an appearance by local peach farmer and author David Mas Masumoto. In subsequent years, the series has hosted such writers as Tobias Wolff, Philip Levine, Charles Baxter, Bernard Cooper, Joyce Carol Oates, Jane Smiley, Richard Blanco, Meg Wolitzer, Richard Rodriguez, Brian Turner, T. C. Boyle, Manuel Munoz, and Timothy Egan, to name just a few.
In 2016, the RC Literary Arts adopted the 1Book/1College program, hoping to create a college- and community-wide conversation around a single work in the belief that a shared experience leads to deeper and more meaningful engagement and connection. That first 1B/1C selection was Richard Rodriguez’s Hunger of Memory followed by T.C. Boyle’s The Tortilla Curtain. For 2018, our common read was The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, featuring members of the Lacks family as our guests. In 2019, we hosted Meg Wolitzer, author of The Female Persuasion, and in 2020, we read Susan Orlean's The Library Book. 2021 brought Tommy Orange and his novel, There, There. Timothy Egan joined us in 2022 to discuss his book, The Big Burn and Sonia Segovia was with us in 2023 with her novel The Murmur of Bees. In 2024, we welcomed Javier Zamora as he spoke about his journey to the United States as detailed in his memoir, Solito. For 2024-2025, the College is reading the celebrated Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin who will be at Reedley College in May 2025.
Many instructors incorporate the One Book into their courses and/or encourage students to participate in a series of free events to encourage college-wide conversation, creativity, and community.
On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn’t heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. They borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo: a game where players can escape the confines of a body and the betrayals of a heart, and where death means nothing more than a chance to restart and play again. This is the story of the perfect worlds Sam and Sadie build, the imperfect world they live in, and of everything that comes after success: Money. Fame. Duplicity. Tragedy.
Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, games as artform, technology and the human experience, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before.
One of the best books I’ve ever read. ”
—John GreenFrom the New York Times best-selling author of The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry—a glorious and immersive novel about two childhood friends, once estranged, who reunite as adults to create video games, finding an intimacy in digital worlds that eludes them in their real lives.
Maia Gonzalez - author of The Elote Man Goes to College
Located in the Reading and Writing Center
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Lee Herrick - author of In Praise of Late Wonder: New and Selected Poems
Located in the RC Forum Hall
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Mark Arax - author of The Dreamt Land: Chasing Water and Dust Across California
Located in the RC Forum Hall
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