Drinking from the Firehose: Announcing the first annual CCOM Reads event! (Win a Kindle!)

Jason would like to hold a community book club on Tinkers with the Flocks Community on 3/22/2011.

This would be during lunch hour.

Dr. T

From: Lewis, Jason T (UI Health Care)
Sent: Monday, March 07, 2011 1:47 PM
To: OSAC All Students
Subject: Announcing the first annual CCOM Reads event! (Win a Kindle!)

Students,

This April we have a special opportunity: The reigning Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction, Paul Harding, will be the featured speaker at the Examined Life Conference. Leading up to the conference, the Writing and Humanities Program and the CCOM Communities are organizing the inaugural CCOM Reads event. (This link above takes you to a NY Times article on the story of how Tinkers came to be published. Very interesting story.)

The idea is simple: we buy copies of Paul's novel Tinkers for you to read over Spring Break or in the weeks leading up to the conference. As the conference approaches, I'll host reading groups over lunch in each of the communities and then when Paul's here he'll lead a Master Class Q&A on the book for the students who've read it. He'll most likely even sign your copy for you.

Ask yourself, when will you next have the chance to sit in a room with a Pulitzer Prize winner and have the chance to hear him talk about his work in a small-group setting? Maybe never.

As if that's not enough, you'll also have the chance to WIN AN AMAZON KINDLE (or one of two gift cards to Prairie Lights).

Here's how you enter to win the prizes: After you read the book, go to http://tinyurl.com/4u67zbo, write in a Tweet-sized reflection based on the prompt we provide, we put the reflections on display in MERF, and then you sit back and wait to see if you've won. If you've already read the book, ENTER NOW!

So let's recap:

You pickup your book in 1191 MERF after Tuesday, 3/08/11.
You read said Pulitzer Prize-winning novel (and it's short—191 pages) over Spring Break or in the moments before you drift off to sleep.
You write a 129-character reflection on the book: http://tinyurl.com/4u67zbo
You maybe win a Kindle. Drawing to be held on 4/22 at Paul's keynote event. You have to be there to win.
You have the chance to commune with your peers and discuss the book with me.
You sit and ask questions of a Pulitzer Prize winner and get his autograph.

(Rules for the drawing and the winning of prizes are contained on the linked page. Please read the rules.)

Did I mention you could win a Kindle?

Who's in? The books'll be here TOMORROW. Respond now to reserve yours.

XO,

Jason