Events

Free and open to the public, the UCLA English Department Marathon Reading is an annual event that brings together the campus and the wider Los Angeles community to celebrate great works of literature spoken aloud.

Hundreds of volunteers take turns, relay-style, to recite an entire novel in a 24-hour stretch, creating the experience of a live, crowdsourced audiobook.  The audience is free to join or leave at any point in the performance. We will have food trucks, a used book sale, and other booths and activities.

This year we will work our way through  Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, and Octavia Butler’s Earthseed Series. Join us on May 9-10, 2019, from 12 p.m.-12 p.m., in the Powell Library Courtyard on UCLA’s beautiful campus. Sign up for a daytime reading slot here and for a nighttime reading slot here

Any donations made in honor of the event go to support summer research fellowships for students in the UCLA English Department. In our current environment of decreased funding for education in the humanities fields, please consider supporting the Marathon Reading! Donate here