College Novel

Celebrating our 30th Year of the College Novel!

Book Cover - The Four WindsKristin Hannah's Novel, The Four Winds

A presentation will be held on October 27 at 10:50 am in the Student Center Theater. Light refreshments will be served.

This year will include two guest speakers. Dr. Cory Homer will discuss the book from the psychology aspect. Dr. Homer is Vice President of Student Success and Institutional Advancement at Sussex. He holds a doctorate in Psychology from Grand Canyon University. Assistant Professor Daniel Cosentino will review the book from the art perspective. Professor Cosentino is the Coordinator for Visual and Performing Arts and oversees the arts programs at the College.

The College Novel for the 2022-2023 academic year is Kristin Hannah's The Four Winds. Members of the College Community are invited to read the novel and join in the activities, discussions, and lectures related to the novel. Many faculty members will use the novel in class. The goal of the college novel is to create a reading community and encourage reading for pleasure, critical thinking, global awareness, and multicultural understanding.

Workshops, colloquies, and lectures support this activity.

Through the use of a College-wide Novel, we unite the Sussex community in an effort to encourage reading as life long source of pleasure and learning. Each year faculty, students, and staff select a novel that will best suit them. This year is the 30th anniversary of the College Novel at Sussex County Community College!

Dr. Eleanor Carducci, retired Professor of English at Sussex, began the College Novel tradition in 1993. The current College Novel coordinator, Dr. Mary Thompson, annually asks the faculty and staff at Sussex to nominate novels and then holds a meeting for people to advocate for their nominations. At the end of the meeting, the group narrows the field to two options and a student vote determines which novel will become the College Novel for the new academic year.

Helpful Resources

Kristin Hannah"Kristin Hannah is an award-winning and bestselling author of more than 20 novels including the international blockbuster, The Nightingale, Winter Garden, Night Road, and Firefly Lane.

Her novel, The Nightingale, has been published in 43 languages and is currently in movie production at TriStar Pictures, which also optioned her novel, The Great Alone. Her novel, Home Front has been optioned for film by 1492 Films (produced the Oscar-nominated The Help) with Chris Columbus attached to direct.

Kristin is a former-lawyer-turned writer who lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband. Her novel, Firefly Lane, became a runaway bestseller in 2009, a touchstone novel that brought women together, and The Nightingale, in 2015 was voted a best book of the year by Amazon, Buzzfeed, iTunes, Library Journal, Paste, The Wall Street Journal and The Week.  Additionally, the novel won the coveted Goodreads and People’s Choice Awards. The audiobook of The Nightingale won the Audiobook of the Year Award in the fiction category."

From: The official Kristin Hannah website