This year, the Eta Phi Chapter at Northern Michigan University (NMU) organized a sustained, text-centered engagement with Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones, the 2026 Sigma Tau Delta Common Reader. Our aim was to create a space where students could grapple critically with the novel’s treatment of motherhood, environment, poverty, and myth while cultivating campus community. Throughout the fall semester, we hosted a sequence of book club meetings and a collaborative writing workshop, each designed to extend the novel’s questions into students’ own creative and scholarly practices.
The book club met multiple times over the term, with each session focusing on a different aspect of Ward’s narrative. Early discussions examined how place and landscape shape identity, behavior, and possibility, while later conversations moved toward themes of embodiment, power, and care, focusing particularly on Esch’s pregnancy within a community marked by both scarcity and resilience.
Building on this momentum, we hosted a writing workshop centered on the Common Reader and upcoming Sigma Tau Delta submission opportunities. Students brought drafts across genres to receive feedback from peers and officers, and several members produced work inspired by Salvage the Bones and our preceding conversations. These exchanges affirmed the value of the Common Reader as a shared communal text and a catalyst for individual creative development.
Beyond the chapter book club and writing workshop, Chapter Advisor Kel Sassi made Salvage the Bones one of the literature circle options for her methods class to encourage wider engagement with the novel, also purchasing several copies of the book to give to students who were interested in Ward’s work. Furthermore, the NMU English department has announced the Common Reader at each of its department meetings this year, pushing to integrate the Society Common Reader more fully across the department.
Kailey Buettner
Regents’ Common Reader Award Recipient, 2025-2026
Eta Phi Chapter, President
Northern Michigan University, Marquette, MI
Book Club Kits
Each year, English Honor Societies creates Book Club Kits to help chapters strengthen their bonds and build a sense of community. By reading the same book and engaging with carefully designed activities, chapters can connect in meaningful ways while deepening their ties to the international Society. These kits highlight works by convention and webinar speakers, reframe commonly taught texts through fresh perspectives, and provide thoughtful guides to frequently banned books.
What’s Inside Each Book Club Kit
- Further Reading and Resources: Each kit includes a list of recommended texts and community resources to enrich understanding and inspire further exploration of key themes.
- Discussion Questions: Questions invite participants to actively engage with the text and one another, encouraging lively and meaningful conversations.
- Opportunities for Connection: Prompts guide readers to draw connections between the featured work, other texts in the Book Club Kit collection, and wider literature.
- Literature as Praxis: This section bridges literary study and lived experience, helping readers connect the text to pressing campus- and community-level social justice issues.
Salvage the Bones, by Jesmyn Ward
Jesmyn Ward, born April 1, 1977, in Oakland, CA, is an acclaimed 21st-century writer whose work explores human-animal relationships, environmental crisis, capitalism, Black life in the American South, and the legacies of segregation and slavery. She is the first Black American and woman to win the National Book Award twice (2011, 2017).
Her notable works include Salvage the Bones; Let Us Descend; Sing, Unburied, Sing; The Fire This Time; Mother Swamp; and Where the Line Bleeds.
Salvage the Bones is the 2026 Common Reader. Consider applying for a Regents’ Common Reader Award to fund chapter events featuring Salvage the Bones and plan to attend Ward’s Keynote at the 2026 Convention. See also last year’s Book Club Kit on Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing.
Book Club Kit: Salvage the Bones
Regents’ Common Reader Awards
The Regents’ Common Reader Awards provide an opportunity for individual chapters to organize and host a local event or activity based on the common reader. Chapter members do not need to attend the convention to apply. Contact your Regent and you may receive $100 for your event or activity.
Application Guidelines
Organize and host a local event or activity based on this text and apply for award money after your event. Submit to your Regent via email the Regents Fund Request form as well as the following materials in a single PDF:
- A cover letter, signed by the Chapter Advisor (or sent from the Advisor’s email address), confirming that the activity or event took place
- A narrative, not to exceed 500 words, describing the activity or event
- A list of all participating persons or groups
- Pertinent supplemental materials (event program, flyers, website, social media posts, campus news story, etc.)
The Regents’ Common Reader Award is open to all chapters of Sigma Tau Delta. It is completely separate to convention submissions. The Regents hope this award will be a way for chapters in each region to share a convention-related experience even if they are not able to attend the convention. We hope it will encourage relative, text-based activities and events. And, lastly, we hope it will give space to reflect on the power of language both in our own lives and in the lives of others.
Sigma Tau Delta
Sigma Tau Delta, International English Honor Society, was founded in 1924 at Dakota Wesleyan University. The Society strives to
- Confer distinction for high achievement in English language and literature in undergraduate, graduate, and professional studies;
- Provide, through its local chapters, cultural stimulation on college campuses and promote interest in literature and the English language in surrounding communities;
- Foster all aspects of the discipline of English, including literature, language, and writing;
- Promote exemplary character and good fellowship among its members;
- Exhibit high standards of academic excellence; and
- Serve society by fostering literacy.
With over 900 active chapters located in the United States and abroad, there are more than 1,000 Faculty Advisors, and approximately 9,000 members inducted annually.
Sigma Tau Delta also recognizes the accomplishments of professional writers who have contributed to the fields of language and literature.
