Book Club Kits

Sigma Tau Delta is now creating Book Club Kits! These kits are designed to bring chapters closer together by creating activities for them to participate in together. They also provide opportunities for chapters to feel more connected to the international Society through the feeling of unity reading the same book can provide.

Themes: Every kit contains four pages that focus on one theme or element each. Chapters can discuss all four or pick which ones they would like to use.
Engagement Prompts: Each of these theme sheets includes discussion questions, interactive activities, and sparks to inspire service-related conversations.
Community Resources: At the back of the kit, there is a list of community resources for chapters interested in pursuing service projects related to the collection’s themes.

Service Projects

We encourage chapters to consider service projects related to book club conversations. Each kit will provide valuable resources for how to better understand many of the issues addressed in contemporary literature. Chapter members should consider the many ways that these resources may inspire individual or chapter actions. Remember: no project and no action is too small! Volunteering time and skills is also a valuable resource. Hosting open discussions about issues raised in Book Club is a way of serving individuals, groups, and communities. Service through words is an important part of raising awareness.

You might also consult various Literacy Programs and Literacy Councils in your community. Valuable resources can also be found by visiting the websites of some of our Society’s sponsors and partners, including:

Book Club Service Award

Any chapter that completes a service project is eligible for a Book Club Service Award of $200. These awards will be distributed after service projects have been completed by chapters. Chapters can be funded for one project within the award period.

Application Guidelines

Organize and host a service project based on a book club kit and apply for award money after your activity has been completed. Submit to the Service Committee via email (sigmatdapply@niu.edu) the 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 service project and its relation to the Book Club Kit
A list of all participating persons or groups
Pertinent supplemental materials (event program, flyers, website, social media posts, campus news story, etc.)
Contact Information:
- Advisor Name
- Advisor Email
- Chapter/School
- Payee Name
- Payee Mailing Address

However you choose to build your book club experience, don’t forget to share it on social media with Sigma Tau Delta! We love to see all the wonderful things you put your mind to!

Kits

One of Ours, by Willa Cather

This kit contains a variety of sheets to be used for discussion. It begins with an introduction to Willa Cather and a discussion of the novel’s context to jumpstart book club conversations. Willa Cather wrote One of Ours, her fifth novel, in 1922, in the wake of the First World War. Inspired by one of her cousins and her time living on the plains, the book follows Claude Wheeler, a discontented Nebraskan who longs for a greater purpose. Over the course of several years, we see Claude go from a young man from a rural farming family to a soldier overseas. Cather’s book would go on to receive the 1923 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel, cementing her as a celebrated author and key figure of American regionalism.

Willa Cather is the 2025 Spotlight Author and her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel served as inspiration for the 2025 Convention Theme: One of Ours.

Book Club Kit: One of Ours

When My Brother Was an Aztec, by Natalie Diaz

This kit on our 2025 Common Reader contains a variety of sheets to be used for discussion. It begins with an introduction to Natalie Diaz and a discussion of poetic form to jumpstart book club conversations. Natalie Diaz’s debut poetry collection When My Brother Was an Aztec was published in 2012. Among the many stories woven through the collection, it portrays a sister’s struggle with her brother’s drug addiction. Fraught with the tensions of her past and present, the collection also pays homage to Diaz’s childhood in the Fort Mojave Indian Village in Needles, California and her professional basketball career, which she pursued before returning to school for her MFA in poetry and fi ction. Diaz won the Pulitzer Prize in 2021 for her second poetry collection, Post-Colonial Love Poem, and is renowned for her unapologetic exploration of fear and desire.

Also consider applying for a Regents' Common Reader Award to help fund supplemental activities related to your chapter's study of When My Brother Was an Aztec.

Book Club Kit: When My Brother Was an Aztec

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

This kit contains a variety of sheets to be used for discussion. It begins with an introduction to Benjamin Alire Sáenz and a discussion of the novel’s context to jumpstart book club conversations. In Benjamin Alire Sáenz’s award winning novel, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe is a beautiful coming-of-age story set in 1987 El Paso, TX, features two Mexican-American teenagers, Aristotle “Ari” Mendoza and Dante Quintana, as they navigate the twists and turns of family, friendship, identity, and love.

Book Club Kit: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

Sing, Unburied, Sing, by Jesmyn Ward

This kit contains a variety of sheets to be used for discussion. It begins with an introduction to Jesmyn Ward and a discussion of the novel’s context to jumpstart book club conversations. Jesmyn Ward’s novel Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017) is a powerful, multi-layered story that follows a family in rural Mississippi. The novel focuses on 13-year-old Jojo, his troubled mother Leonie, and the haunting presence of past generations. Bouncing between points of view, we get to read details of events from all perspectives. Exploring the complexities of love, loss, and survival, this novel is notable for its exploration of the enduring legacy of racism in America.

Watch the On-Demand webinar with Jesmyn Ward from October 16, 2024, presented by NEHS Director Chris Lockwood as an added component to or inspiration for your book club.

Book Club Kit: Sing, Unburied, Sing

Quick Kits

To help build enthusiasm for the 2025 Convention LitFest and encourage attendees to read the attending authors, the 2025 Convention Co-Chairs are creating a series of Book Club Quick Kits. Like the longer Book Club Kits, these shorter versions are designed for single-event conversations like chapter meetings. They are also intended to spark your interest in reading our speakers' works. Perhaps these abbreviated Book Club Kits will lead you to organize campus or community service projects and events. They're also a way for chapters unable to attend convention to participate locally in events inspired by the authors at LitFest. However you use these resources, we hope they'll help you get to know our guest speakers a little bit better.

Cameron Barnett

Cameron Barnett is a poet and teacher in Pittsburgh, PA. He is the author of The Drowning Boy’s Guide to Water, winner of the Autumn House Press 2017 Rising Writer Contest and finalist for the 49th NAACP Image Awards for Outstanding Literary Work in Poetry. His second full-length collection, Murmur, was published by Autumn House Press in February 2024. Cameron is a graduate of Duquesne University, and he holds his MFA and MAT from the University of Pittsburgh. He was the 2022-2024 Emerging Black Writer in Residence for Chatham University’s MFA program. He was the 2019 Emerging Artist Awardee at the Carol R. Brown Creative Achievement Awards. Cameron’s poetry explores the complexity of race and the body for Black Americans today. He teaches middle school English language arts and social studies at his alma mater. He is also “one of ours,” inducted into Sigma Tau Delta as an undergraduate.

Book Club Quick Kit: Cameron Barnett

Clare Beams

Fiction writer Clare Beams is the author of the short story collection We Show What We Have Learned. The collection, published in 2016, won the Bard Fiction Prize and was a Kirkus Best Debut as well as a finalist for several other awards. Her most recent publication, The Garden, landed on several Best Books of 2024 lists, and her novel The Illness Lesson (2020) was a New York Times Editor’s choice. Beams has received several fellowships including the National Endowment of the Arts, MacDowell, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. A finalist for the 2023 Joyce Carol Oates/New Literary Project Prize, Beams is currently teaching in the Randolf College MFA program and lives in Pittsburgh with her husband and children.

Book Club Quick Kit: Clare Beams

Sherrie Flick

Sherrie Flick is the author of the novel Reconsidering Happiness (University of Nebraska Press) and two acclaimed short story collections: Whiskey, Etc. and Thank Your Lucky Stars (Autumn House Press). Whiskey, Etc. won the Foreword INDIES bronze prize and was named a 2016 Entropy best fiction book. Her stories have been featured on NPR’s Selected Shorts and at NYC’s Symphony Space. Her work appears in notable anthologies including Norton’s Flash Fiction Forward and New Micro, as well as journals like Ploughshares and Booth. Flick’s nonfiction has been published in The Wall Street Journal, Creative Nonfiction, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where she wrote the column “From a Writer’s Urban Garden.” Her latest publication is an essay collection entitled Homing: Instincts of a Rustbelt Feminist.

Book Club Quick Kit: Sherrie Flick

Cynthia Kadohata

Cynthia Kadohata was born in Chicago in 1956. Like the variety of settings in her fiction, Cynthina has lived in Chicago, Georgia, Arkansas, and California as a child. As a grownup, she has lived in Boston, Pennsylvania, and New York. She has lived in Southern California since 1990. Cynthia attended school at the University of Pittsburgh and Columbia University. She was first published in The New Yorker and subsequently published ten books for children and three for adults, beginning with The Floating World. She is the winner of the 2005 Newbery Medal for Kira-Kira and the 2013 National Book Award for The Thing About Luck. Her many hobbies include adopting and loving Dobermans and serving as a team manager for her son’s youth hockey team.

Book Club Quick Kit: Cynthia Kadohata

Kassia Krone

Kassia Krone is the author of Hollywood’s Monstrous Moms: Vilifying Mental Illness in Horror Films and the co-author of Yours in Filial Regard: The Civil War Letters of a Texas Family. Her work also appears in Mississippi Quarterly. Her research interests include Southern literature, gothic literature, film, disability studies, digital humanities, epistolary studies, and women and gender studies. She received the W.A. Young Teaching Award for outstanding teaching at Friends. Wichita Business Journal has recognized her for her work with DEI. She is the current chair of general education and co-chair of the Diversity Leadership Council at Friends. She serves on the Sigma Tau Delta Board as High Plains Regent and is the Chapter Advisor for Friends’ local chapter: Alpha Theta Beta. She is the current sponsor of Friends University’s The MEWS and English Club. She teaches a wide range of English courses in addition to general education classes at Friends University.

Book Club Quick Kit: Kassia Krone

Diana Khoi Nguyen

A poet and multimedia artist, Diana Khoi Nguyen is the author of Ghost Of (2018) which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and Root Fractures (2024). Her video work has recently been exhibited at the Miller Institute for Contemporary Art. Nguyen is a Kundiman fellow and member of the Vietnamese artist collective, She Who Has No Master(s). A recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and winner of the 92Y Discovery Poetry Contest and 2019 Kate Tufts Discovery Award, she currently teaches in the Randolph College Low-Residency MFA and is an Assistant Professor at the University of Pittsburgh.

Book Club Quick Kit: Diana Khoi Nguyen

Billie R. Tadros and Elias Kerr

Billie R. Tadros lives, writes, and teaches in Scranton, PA, where she is an Associate Professor at The University of Scranton and has also taught at Wilkes University in the Maslow Family Graduate Program in Creative Writing. She earned her PhD in English from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and her MFA in Writing from Sarah Lawrence College, and she is a graduate of the Writers Institute at Susquehanna University. Tadros is the author of three books of poems, including Was Body (Indolent Books, 2020), winner of the National Indie Excellence Awards for Poetry in 2021, and Graft Fixation (Gold Wake Press, 2020), selected by Gold Wake as the winner of the press’s open reading period in 2019. She is “one of ours”: inducted into Sigma Tau Delta as an undergraduate, she now serves as a Faculty Advisor.

Elias Kerr is a Transmasculine poet, who writes under the pen name E Kerr. They graduated from The University of Scranton in 2023, with a masters degree in occupational therapy, and double minors in English and writing. They are the recipient of the inaugural 2022 Stemmler/Dennis LGBT& Award. Their work has been featured in various publications, including Rappahannock Review, Another Chicago Magazine, and the Hollins Critic, and their debut collection, trans [re]incarnation, was released in April 2023, with Mason Jar Press. Kerr lives and writes in Scranton, PA, with their cat, Nola.

Book Club Quick Kit: Billie R. Tadros and Elias Kerr

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