Annual Washburn University iRead Lecture is September 23; Public is Invited

     Topeka, Kan. – Washburn University’s iRead program, coordinated by Washburn’s University Libraries, encourages a community-wide reading experience, particularly among first-year students. The iRead selection for the 2024-2025 school year is “Raft of Stars” by Andrew Graff. During the fall 2024 semester, professors are encouraged to incorporate the book into their curriculum and the University Libraries will host a series of events around the book, culminating in the 2024 iRead Lecture with Graff at 7 p.m. Sept. 23 in White Concert Hall, on the Washburn University campus.

        When two hardscrabble young boys think they’ve committed a crime, they flee into the Northwoods of Wisconsin. Will the adults trying to find and protect them reach them before it’s too late? “Raft of Stars’” timeless story of loss, hope and adventure runs like the river itself amid the vividly rendered landscape of the upper Midwest.

        Graff's fiction and essays have appeared in “Image and Dappled Things.” Andrew grew up fishing, hiking and hunting in Wisconsin's Northwoods. After a tour of duty in Afghanistan, he earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He lives in Ohio and teaches at Wittenberg University.

        “The Washburn University iRead program provides students and faculty across campus the opportunity to read a book together and use it as a starting place for conversations that bring to light the most basic components of the world we share and help us ask and answer some of the essential questions of our shared humanity,” said Sean Bird, senior associate dean of University Libraries, Washburn. “’In Raft of Stars,’ author Andrew Graff crafts a coming-of-age story that compels readers to ask among other questions: what is friendship? How does our past anticipate our future? And, what is love?”

        “Raft of Stars” is available for purchase at the Ichabod Shop in the Memorial Union, on the Washburn University campus.

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