Indiana University Northwest will host a reading and Q&A conversation with award-winning author Percival Everett at 6 p.m., Thursday, March 13, 2025. Everett, an American writer and Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California, will join the conversation virtually.
The conversation will center on Everett’s best-selling novel, James, which was selected as the campus’s One Book, One Campus, One Community reading selection for the 2024-2025 academic year.
James, was featured as No. 1 New York Times Bestseller, winner of the 2024 National Book Award and 2024 Kirkus Prize for Fiction and featured on the six-author shortlist for the 2024 Booker Prize. Recently, Universal Pictures acquired feature film rights to James to produce an adaptation by Steven Spielberg through his company, Amblin Partners.
The One Book Committee invites community members to participate in the conversation and then discuss the book afterward by joining us in person in the John W. Anderson Conference Center (room 105) located on the IU Northwest campus at 130 W. 35 th Street, Gary, IN 46408.
This event is free and open to the public.
About the novel: James
A brilliant re-imaging of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the story is told from the perspective of Huckleberry’s friend on his travels, Jim, who has escaped slavery.
When Jim overhears that he is about to be sold and separated from his wife and daughter, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his death to escape his violent father, who recently returned to town.
Thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive promise of the Free States and beyond.
While many narrative set pieces of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remain in place, Jim’s agency, intelligence and compassion are shown in a radically new light.
About the One Book, One Campus, One Community program
IU Northwest’s One Book, One Campus, One Community reading program is intended to build an intellectual and social rapport among students, staff, faculty and community members. It does this through the collective experience of reading, thinking about and discussing challenging ideas and themes in pursuit of intellectual and cultural diversity.
A common book is chosen annually to enrich perspectives and to invite conversations from across different fields of interest.
