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The Wisconsin Experience: Go Big Read Author Visits UW–Madison

Photo of Bucky Badger helping to  distribute complimentary copies of "A Tale for the Time Being" following the Chancellor's Convocation at the Kohl Center.

Each year UW–Madison’s Go Big Read program selects one book that engages the campus community in reading, talking, and sharing their reactions and opinions. This year’s book, A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki, is doing just that.

Ozeki tells a powerful story of the right book falling into the right reader’s hands. A novelist on a remote Canadian island finds a diary, written a decade earlier by a troubled teenage girl in Tokyo, when it washes ashore following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan. The book’s inventive narrative alternates between the two characters, examining the relationship between writer and reader, past and present, fact and fiction.

More than 5,000 new freshmen received a copy of the book at the Chancellor’s Convocation this fall. Discussions about the book are being held in residence halls, 50 courses across the disciplines, and throughout the community.

Ozeki will visit campus for a public presentation on Monday, October 28, at 7 p.m. in Union South’s Varsity Hall. Parents are also welcome to attend this free event; tickets are not required. The event will be live web-streamed from the Go Big Read program’s website and will be archived shortly thereafter.