Marathon Read returns to Pattee Mall! Join us for the 11th straight year of this community read event on September 21st!

The School of Global Languages, Literatures, and Cultures invites you to participate in the annual Marathon Read, which will take place on Thursday, September 21, from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., in a tent on the Mall in front of Pattee Library. As in previous years, the Marathon Read is a public event that aims to promote the shared pleasure and value of reading by inviting people of all ages to read aloud, in English or another spoken language, for about 5 minutes. This year the event celebrates the theme “Arrivals,” with topics including immigration journeys, arriving at new horizons in actual or imaginary journeys, cultural assimilation and acculturation (or resistance), language learning, and community identity through different types of literary works — graphic novels, speculative fiction, children’s books, poems, plays, memoirs, novels, (auto)biographies. If you don’t have a work on this theme at hand, we’ll gladly supply a brief reading for you. No preparation needed! Instructors, if you’re planning a Fall syllabus that might have room for a work of world literature that deals with Arrivals, we’d be glad to share a list of possibilities that we plan to include in the Marathon Read (you’d be welcome to bring your class).

When: September 21, 2023                                                                    Time: 9:00 a.m. – 9:00 p.m                                                                  Where: Pattee Mall (in between Sparks/Burrowes building)

Marathon Read is free and open to the public. Participants are invited to read out loud for 5-minute intervals. Special guests will also join the reading throughout the day. Food will be provided during the morning, around midday, and after the sun goes down. 

Questions? Email: marathonread@psu.edu