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UW Tacoma is situated on the land of the Puyallup people. The UW Tacoma Library recognizes the Puyallup Tribe and its elders past and present for their ongoing efforts to sustain tribal sovereignty, preserve their culture, and care for this place.
Books will be provided for students, on a first-come, first served basis. These are yours to keep and do not need to be returned at the end of the quarter. If there are books remaining, faculty and staff are welcome to them.
Emerging Practices Reading Circle for UW Tacoma faculty. Collaboration with the Office of Research.
Staff Reads for UW Tacoma staff
Student Success Reading Group
If you are interested in learning about our work in creating this book club at UW Tacoma, please check out our Open Access book here.
Inspired by the UW Tacoma Strategic Plan, the goals of the Real Lit[erature] are to create a greater awareness and discussion of the experiences that are being had by our students, staff, and community members. By interacting with narratives that reflect different experiences, it will provide opportunities to dialogue with peers about shared and disparate experiences. Additional benefits include creating community by reducing isolation, and enhancing campus education through peer-based discussion groups.
AUTHORS INCLUDE: Schuyler Bailar, Melissa de la Cruz, Sara Farizan, Sharon G. Flake, Eric Gansworth, Malindo Lo, Walter Dean Myers, Daniel José Older, Thien Pham, Jason Reynolds, Aminah Mae Safi, Gene Luen Yang, Nicola Yoon
Author information taken from author's website:
I was born in Chicago, Illinois to Japanese immigrants. We moved to the suburbs when I was three, and I grew up in an almost-all-white town and went to almost-all-white schools. It was actually a very nice life: there was a field with wild strawberries and a pony at the end of my street, and a pond across the street where we caught tadpoles in the summer and went ice skating in the winter. But as one of the only Asian kids in my school, I often felt like an outsider. Also, I was just a weird kid. I spent a lot of time with my head buried in a book, or just in my own imagination.
Speaking of books, I’ve loved reading for as long as I can remember; some of my earliest memories are of poring over the pictures in my Mother Goose nursery rhyme books that my mother read to me so that I would hear English and be ready for nursery school. In first grade, my childhood across-the-street friend introduced me to Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series (which I remember with great fondness, though we now understand them to espouse problematic attitudes about Native Americans), Shel Silverstein’s Where the Sidewalk Ends, E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web, Fred Gwynne’s A Chocolate Moose for Dinner, and to a lovely (now out of print and probably also problematic) book of verse by William Cole, entitled Beastly Boys and Ghastly Girls.
I loved writing, too. My first love was poetry because it was short and it demanded that I pay attention to word choice and rhythm, something I still love to work with when I write. I never wrote stories unless they were assigned, though I did start a chapter book with a friend in fourth or fifth grade; it was inspired by Mary Norton’s The Borrowers, and it was about a group of little dolls who come to life at night and have adventures. My alter ego was Emily, a smart, athletic, popular type with long blond braids and blue eyes, which should tell you quite a lot about who and what I longed to be.
There was a very long period (decades!) when I didn’t see myself as the creative writing type. That period began when I started focusing on taking the right classes to get into a good college and ended when I challenged myself to write a novel at age 46. You hear about writers and artists who say things like, “I write because I have to write. The story/poem demands to be written. The characters demand to be heard.” That has never been me. Ever. I have to choose to write, to force myself to think about who my characters are and what their story is.
Outside of writing, I’ve also always been a swimmer. I joined a swim team when I was eleven, and it took me all the way through college. After college, I went to Japan for three years to teach English at Kobe Jogakuin High School, and then returned to the U.S. to get a teaching certificate and a Masters degree in Education. I taught high school English for several years in Santa Clara, CA before I had kids, took a long hiatus, and decided to try writing a novel. Luckily for me, the author thing worked out, and here I am today, writing my very long bio!
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Elizabeth Acevedo is a New York Times bestselling author. She holds a BA in Performing Arts from The George Washington University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Maryland. Acevedo has been a fellow of Cave Canem, Cantomundo, and a participant in the Callaloo Writer’s Workshops. She is a National Poetry Slam Champion, and resides in Washington, DC.
Winter Quarter 2020
UW Tacoma Library
All meetings take place in SNO 136 unless otherwise indicated.
SKYPE WITH AUTHOR ELIZABETH ACEVEDO!
When: January 15, 12:30-1:00
Where: UW Tacoma, Key 102
EVERYONE IS WELCOME!
Thursday, January 9, 2020
12:30-1:20 p.m.
Meet one another, get your book, read the community agreements, ask your questions
Thursday, January 16, 2020
12:30-1:20 p.m.
Discussion through to page 92
Thursday, January 30th, 2020
12:30-1:20 p.m.
Discussion through to page 181
Thursday, February 13, 2020
12:30-1:20 p.m.
Discussion through to page 270
Thursday, February 27, 2020
12:30-1:20 p.m.
Discussion through the end of the book
Available in English in audiobook CD, book, eAudiobook, eBook, and large print. Also available in Spanish.
Tommy Orange is a graduate of the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. An enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, he was born and raised in Oakland, California.
Friday, September 20 at 6:30 p.m.
Rialto Theater
Free registration required
Fall Quarter 2019
UW Tacoma Library
This fall the UW Tacoma Library and Center for Equity & Inclusion's Real Lit[erature] diversity book club will participate in Tacoma Reads, a local community reading program that seeks to unite the community in dialogue around contemporary themes through reading a common text.
Author Tommy Orange is a member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, a united Nation of two tribes with distinct cultures, traditions, social dances, ceremonies, and languages.
Available in English in audiobook CD, book, eAudiobook, eBook, and large print.
Adib Khorram is the author of Darius the Great is Not Okay. If he's not writing (or at his day job as a graphic designer), you can probably find him trying to get his 100-yard Freestyle under a minute, learning to do a Lutz Jump, or steeping a cup of oolong. He lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where people don't usually talk about themselves in the third person. You can find him on Twitter (@adibkhorram), Instagram (@adibkhorram), or on the web at adibkhorram.com.
Awards for Darius the Great is Not Okay
Thursday, April 4, 2019
12:30-1:20 p.m.
SNO 270 (Chihuly Room)
Meet one another, get your book, read the community agreements, ask your questions!
Thursday, April 11, 2019
12:30-1:20 p.m.
SNO 270 (Chihuly Room)
Discussion through to page 71
Thursday, April 25, 2019
12:30-1:20 p.m.
SNO 270 (Chihuly Room)
Discussion through to page 159
Thursday, May 9, 2019
12:30-1:20 p.m.
SNO 270 (Chihuly Room)
Discussion through to page 239
Thursday, May 16, 2019
12:30-1:20 p.m.
SNO 270 (Chihuly Room)
Discussion through to the end of the book
Thursday, May 23, 2019
12:30-1:20 p.m.
SNO 136 (Library 1st Floor)
Skype discussion with author Adib Khorram
UW Tacoma offers free counseling to currently-enrolled UW Tacoma students and consultation to faculty and staff. Visit the Student Counseling Center website for more information: tacoma.uw.edu/studentcounseling​
Print, English: King County Library System | Pierce County Library System | Tacoma Public Library
CD audiobook, English: King County Library System
eBook, English: Pierce County Library System | King County Library System | Tacoma Public Library
eAudiobook, English: King County Library System
How to get a public library card: King County Library System | Pierce County Library System | Tacoma Public Library
Dashka Slater has written many books, including Escargot which won the Wanda Gag Book Award, Baby Shoes, The Antlered Ship, which was a Junior Library Guild Selection and received four starred reviews, and Dangerously Ever After. Her non-fiction young adult novel The 57 Bus won the Stonewall Book Award and was a YALSA finalist. She lives in California. Find her at dashkaslater.com.
Thursday, January 17, 2019
12:30-1:20 p.m.
SNO 270 (Chihuly Room)
DISCUSSION GROUP
Part 1: Sasha
Discussion theme: Gender identity
Thursday, January 31, 2019
12:30-1:20 p.m.
SNO 270 (Chihuly Room)
DISCUSSION GROUP
Part 2: Richard
Discussion theme: Hate crimes and bias
Thursday, February 14, 2019
12:30-1:20 p.m.
SNO 270 (Chihuly Room)
DISCUSSION GROUP
Part 3: The Fire
Discussion theme: Restorative justice and criminal justice/prison-industrial complex
Thursday, February 28, 2019
12:30-1:20 p.m.
SNO 270 (Chihuly Room)
DISCUSSION GROUP
Part 4: Justice
Discussion theme: Support and allyship
Wednesday, March 13, 2019
12:30-1:20 p.m.
SNO 136
SKYPE CALL WITH AUTHOR DASHKA SLATER
Pronouns: What are pronouns and why are they important?
UW Tacoma Center for Equity & Inclusion
Imagining Transgender 'Inclusion' in Libraries
by Sunny Kim, Micah Kehrein, Reed Garber-Pearson, and Bean Yogi
Presentation at 2017 WLA Conference, November 2017
Pro/Con: Can restorative justice help victims and rehabilitate criminals?
by Christina L. Lyons
"Restorative Justice" in CQ Researcher
Find The 57 Bus at your local library:
Print, English: King County Library System | Pierce County Library System | Tacoma Public Library
Print, English, large print: King County Library System
eBook, English: Pierce County Library System | King County Library System
Audiobook, English: King County Library System
How to get a public library card: King County Library System | Pierce County Library System | Tacoma Public Library
Part 1: Sasha
Part 2: Richard
Part 3: The Fire
Part 4: Justice
Angie Thomas was born, raised, and still lives in Jackson, Mississippi. A former teen rapper, she holds a BFA in creative writing from Belhaven University. Her award-winning, acclaimed debut novel, The Hate U Give, is a #1 New York Times bestseller and major motion picture from Fox 2000, starring Amandla Stenberg and directed by George Tillman, Jr. Her second novel, On the Come Up, is on sale now.
We at the UW Tacoma Library stand in solidarity with our Black community and other communities of color. We condemn police brutality. We are committed to doing the anti-racist work that needs to be done — including dismantling the ways libraries, universities, and our own institution have been complicit in anti-blackness and institutionalized racism.
To read more, please see our blog.