Summer can be a perfect time to read. The day’s light is long. Vacations are scheduled. Hammocks, beach chairs, garden benches, and screened-in porches make ideal spots to settle in with a literary delicacy. In honor of that summer tradition of trying to whittle down the stack of books you said you’d get around to reading someday, we are dedicating the month of August to the inimitable joy of diving into someone else’s universe through the paper page.
While Conway has long provided a recommended reading list to incoming classes, this year is the first time students are being assigned a specific book to read over the summer, something the faculty decided to do for several reasons. First, it provides an opportunity for the new cohort to bond over shared knowledge and experience, a process that will become extremely familiar to them throughout the year. Second, we are fortunate to be hosting the author to speak at Conway this fall.
The required reading selection for the 2025-26 cohort is Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden by Camille T. Dungy. She is currently a University Distinguished Professor in the English Department at Colorado State University, and serves as the poetry editor for Orion magazine. You can view her complete bio here.
This book – which received the 2024 Award of Excellence in Garden and Nature Writing from The Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries and was a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Award – functions at the nexus of nature writing, environmental justice, and prose to encourage you to recognize the relationship between the peoples of the African diaspora and the land on which they live, and to understand that wherever soil rests beneath their feet is home.
We invite you to read along with the class, and to attend Camille’s virtual talk on October 16th. Please save the date, and pick up a copy of the book.
In the meantime, we will continue to share our other summer reading selections on our Facebook and Instagram. We also love to receive recommendations from our Conway community, so please send us your summer reading picks!
