Bryan Washington has been named the 2020 Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize winner for his story collection LOT. In LOT, Washington explores his hometown of Houston—a sprawling, diverse microcosm of America—where the son of a black mother and a Latino father is coming of age. He’s working at his family’s restaurant, weathering his brother’s blows,

Colson Whitehead has won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel, The Nickel Boys. This is his second Pulitzer Prize (his novel The Underground Railroad won in 2017) and he is only the fourth writer—alongside Booth Tarkington, William Faulkner, and John Updike—to win two Pulitzer Prizes each in the Fiction category. Winner, ALA Alex Award In

Through two literacy-based grant programs, Penguin Random House, in partnership with the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), is thrilled to recognize the nation’s most dynamic and resourceful teachers who use their creativity to inspire and successfully instill a lifelong love of reading and poetry in students.   The National Teacher Award for Lifelong

  “Readawoke Community of Readers Challenge” Named a 2019 Library Journal Mover and Shaker and Georgia Library Media Specialist of the Year, Cicely Lewis is a school librarian with a passion for creating lovers of reading. In 2017, she started the Read Woke challenge in response to the shootings of young unarmed black boys, the

  “Speak Yo’ Peace” Rick’s passion and commitment to educational equity have taken root over the course of his 14-year career as a middle school ELA teacher in the Chicago Public Schools. He has developed his activist stance through doctoral work at the University of Illinois of Chicago, where he studies culturally sustaining pedagogy, disciplinary

Arriving May 6 on Netflix, Becoming is a documentary feature film following Michelle Obama during the worldwide book tour for her bestselling memoir of the same name. Produced in association with Barack and Michelle Obama’s Higher Ground Productions and Big Mouth Productions, the documentary is directed by Nadia Hallgren and provides an up-close look at

In 1942, 22 year-old Franci Rabinek arrived at Terezin, a concentration camp and ghetto 40 miles north of her home in Prague. It would be the beginning of her three-year journey through four different camps. Her memoir, Franci’s War, offers her intense, candid account of those dark years before her liberation in 1945. Before that,

By Tim Beedle The creators of Diana: Princess of the Amazons want kids to know that even Wonder Woman had trouble making friends. As one of the most popular superheroes in the world, that may seem hard to imagine, but let’s not forget that Diana grew up on an island where she was the only child. Loneliness

John Warner has more than two decades of experience teaching writing, from composition, fiction, and narrative nonfiction to technical and humor writing. But when he sat down to turn his course into his book The Writer’s Practice, he was met with the same challenge teachers find themselves faced with in the wake of the COVID-19

Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s debut story collection Sabrina & Corina is now available in paperback wherever books are sold. Spotlighting Latina characters of indigenous ancestry and the land they inhabit in and around the author’s native Denver, Colorado, these short stories take stock of both the challenges these women face—from misogyny to gentrification—and their joy, fiercely claimed

Dear Reader, This story is fiction. But it also tells the truth. All stories start with a seed and for me that seed was planted years ago when I first crossed paths with Lord Byron’s epic poem, The Giaour, along with his deeply ingrained Orientalism and sexism. In college, I took a class that centered around

Each year, Penguin Random House Education hosts two scholarship essay contests for high school students: The Signet Classics Essay Contest and the Penguin Classics Essay Contest. The Signet Classics Scholarship Essay Contest, established in 1996, is open to qualifying high school juniors and seniors. In 2018-2019, students were asked to respond to questions about The