SLU Campus Read

The Campus Read is an opportunity for Saint Louis University students, faculty and staff to read a specific work by the incoming St. Louis Literary Award recipient and take part in related activities connected to the book and author. SLU students, faculty or staff can pick up a free copy of the Campus Read book of the year at the front desk of any of the SLU libraries: Pius XII Memorial Library, the Medical Center Library, the Vincent C. Immel Law Library and the library at SLU-Madrid. 

Saint Louis University will honor Marilynne Robinson with the 2027 St. Louis Literary Award during a visit to campus April 1-2. Robinson received the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Gilead, a novel told through an aging Iowa minister’s letters to his young son.

Her novels include Housekeeping, Gilead, Home, Lila, and Jack, this year’s Campus Read selection. Her characters wrestle with questions of faith and family, often struggling to understand the people closest to them. She is also an essayist whose books address religion, American history, education and public life.

Robinson taught for many years at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Among her honors is the 2012 National Humanities Medal, presented by President Barack Obama.

2026-2027 Campus Read

Jack by Marilynne Robinson

In Jack, Marilynne Robinson tells the story of an unlikely courtship in early-1940s St. Louis. Jack Boughton has spent years drifting away from his family and the faith he grew up with. Della Miles, a Black teacher at Sumner High School, sees something in him that he struggles to see in himself. Their growing attachment brings them into conflict with their families’ expectations and the racial restrictions of the time.

Much of the novel unfolds through their conversations, as Jack and Della try to understand each other and imagine a life together. Their story raises questions about faith, race, loneliness, forgiveness and the judgments people make about one another. Its St. Louis setting gives our Campus Read community a chance to consider those questions alongside the city’s history.

Jack is part of Robinson’s Gilead series, but readers do not need to have read the other novels to enjoy it.