Centre County Reads
As part of the Center for American Literary Studies’s commitment to public reading, CALS proudly partners with the Centre County Library system to sponsor a joint CALS/Centre County Reads community read annually. Information about each year’s book choice and events can be found in the links below.
Shared texts constitute a key form of community building. Whether readers agree or disagree about the interpretation of a given text, the act of discussing a text, offering cogent arguments about a text, and negotiating what a text might mean brings them together.
2025 Centre County Reads
For 2025, the Centre County Reads/CALS Community Read features Lynda Rutledge’s novel West with Giraffes. The novel tracks the unlikely journey of a Dust Bowl refugee, a hardened zoologist, a woman photojournalist, and two giraffes from a hurricane-racked New York to a welcoming San Diego zoo. On the road, friendships are formed, deepened, and dissolved.
A roundtable discussion and writing contest organized by CALS will precede a virtual author visit from Lynda Rutledge, to be held via Zoom on March 26.
Details for these and other events (all of which are free and open to the public) are summarized below and can also be found at the Centre County Reads website.
January 2025
Launch of the West with Giraffes Writing Contest
“There is no explaining the world…,” the gruff old man in Lynda Rutledge’s novel West with Giraffes says. “How you come into it. Where you find yourself. Or who your friends turn out to be—be you man or be you beast.”
Enter your best work of writing that centers on a friendship between an animal and a human animal. Submit your piece of 5,000 words or fewer for competition in one of the following categories:
- Short Fiction
- Nonfiction
- Poetry
- Best Entry for a Writer under 18
Submissions are due by March 12, 2025 and may be submitted directly to the CALS team at cals@psu.edu.
February 2025
Roundtable Discussion
Three invited panelists, Neil M. Maher, Randy Malamud, and John Marsh, will consider the context of the Great Depression, the environmental impact of the Dust Bowl, and the ethics of zoos.
Featured Panelists:
Neil M. Maher is a Professor of History and Master Teacher in the Federated History Department at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and Rutgers University-Newark. He is the author of Apollo in the Age of Aquarius and Nature’s New Deal and has written essays and Op-Eds for The New York Times and The Washington Post. Maher’s scholarship and teaching explore how the natural environment has mediated power relationships between people over time. He is currently working on his third book, which is tentatively titled Wasted: An Environmental Justice History of Newark, New Jersey.
Randy Malamud is Regents’ Professor of English at Georgia State University. His specializations are in modern literature, cultural studies, and ecocriticism. He has a particular interest in animal studies and anthrozoology. Malamud has written several books on human-animal relations, including Reading Zoos, Representations of Animals and Captivity; Poetic Animals and Animal Souls; A Cultural History of Animals in the Modern Age; and An Introduction to Animals and Visual Culture.
John Marsh is Professor of English at the Penn State and is the director of the Center for American Literary Studies. His scholarship and teaching focus on modern and contemporary poetry, nineteenth-century American poetry, the 1930s, and the economics, philosophy, and literature of inequality. Marsh has written several books, including The Emotional Life of the Great Depression (2019), which tells the story of the Great Depression through its paradigmatic emotions: despair, anger, sympathy, righteousness, panic, fear, awe, love, and hope. His most recent book, A Rotten Crowd: America, Wealth, and 100 Years of the Great Gatsby, was published in late 2024.
March 2025
An Evening with Lynda Rutledge
7:00 p.m.–8 p.m. | Schlow Zoom | Register here
This event, free and open to the public, will feature a conversation with the author of West with Giraffes, Lynda Rutledge. The event will be moderated by John Marsh, Professor of English at the Penn State and director of the Center for American Literary Studies. Learn more about the event and the author in the official announcement.