Booker Prize-winning author George Saunders will speak at Northwestern's Cahn Auditorium on Thursday, Nov. 19, and Evanston residents can attend for free.
The keynote is a fall highlight of Northwestern’s new Campus Reading Program, which selected Saunders’ novel “Vigil” for the 2026–27 academic year. Northwestern selected it to launch its new Campus Reading Program this academic year, according to the university.
Free tickets are available through the Norris Box Office. Remaining tickets were opened to Evanston community members on Nov. 5, according to Northwestern.
The Campus Reading Program, hosted by the Litowitz Center for Enlightened Disagreement at the Kellogg School of Management, carries on the tradition of One Book One Northwestern. The program aims to spotlight themes related to enlightened disagreement. Saunders' supernatural tale tackles greed, relationships, climate change and mortality, according to the university.
Since the book's selection, the campus community has participated in readathons, themed dinner discussions and a campus ghost tour.
Eli Finkel, faculty co-director of the Litowitz Center and professor of psychology in Northwestern's Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, said the program addresses a gap in shared culture. "In a fractured media environment, we have fewer common touchstones for shared exchange," Finkel said. He added that a common read "brings the community together for meaningful, shared engagement with a serious text."
Saunders teaches creative writing at Syracuse University. He won the Man Booker Prize for fiction in 2017 for his novel "Lincoln in the Bardo." He has also received the MacArthur Foundation's "Genius" Award and the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction, according to Northwestern.
All first-year and transfer students, along with those enrolled in the center's residential certificate program, received customized copies of "Vigil." Electronic and physical copies are also on reserve at Northwestern Libraries.
Next year's pick
The university is already looking ahead. Northwestern students, faculty and staff can suggest books for the 2027-2028 Campus Reading Program through Monday, Nov. 30.
Nour Kteily, the center's other faculty co-director and a professor of management and organizations at Kellogg, said the program pushes readers to think more carefully. "Research tells us we overestimate our own understanding," Kteily said. He said the selected book should expose undergraduates to stories that raise questions and reveal tensions they might not otherwise encounter.
A selection committee of faculty, staff and undergraduate fellows will review suggestions, read books during winter quarter and then recommend a pick.
