Community Read & Campus Read Selections
Making the right choice for your community read or campus read program is about more than the book — it’s about what happens when that author walks into the room. Samara Speakers Agency represents award-winning authors whose books spark meaningful conversation and whose presence transforms a reading program into an unforgettable shared experience.
Our authors have been featured in community read and campus read programs at libraries, universities, high schools, and community organizations across North America. Each brings a rich speaking program and supplementary material to complement their book — talks, Q&As, classroom visits, teaching guides, book club guides, and workshop sessions tailored to your audience and your goals.
Irena's Gift: A Holocaust Family Memoir (Mandel Vilar Press)
Awards: National Jewish Book Award finalist
Irena's Gift traces Karen's family's survival through the Warsaw Ghetto, Auschwitz, and Dachau — including her grandmother's remarkable negotiation with an SS officer who saved her mother's life. A deeply human introduction to Holocaust history through personal narrative, it is an ideal choice for programs exploring moral courage, hate, reconciliation, and generational memory.
Karen's talks are meticulous, moving, and accessible to audiences of all ages and backgrounds.
Email to book Karen or request a complimentary review copy.
Under Alien SkiesA Sightseer's Guide to the Universe (W. W. Norton, 2023)
Awards: Financial Times Best Science Book of 2023, Science News Favorite Book of 2023, Scientific American Staff Recommendation, Publishers Weekly starred review.
What would it feel like to stand on Mars as a dust storm rumbles through the soles of your boots? To lie on the lunar surface watching a solar eclipse from the other side? To watch one of your two suns eclipse the other on a planet with a binary star system? Dr. Phil Plait — astronomer, former NASA Hubble Space Telescope contractor, and one of the world's most beloved science communicators — doesn't just answer these questions. He takes you there.
Under Alien Skies visits ten of the most spectacular locations in the cosmos — the Moon, Mars, Saturn, Pluto, a nebula, a black hole, and beyond — grounding each destination in rigorous science and bringing it alive through vivid, immersive storytelling. John Green called it "a rollicking, wondrous, and awe-inspiring introduction to the universe." Bill Nye said it offers "a good astronomical education." Publishers Weekly gave it a starred review and declared it will change how readers think about space.
Accessible, funny, and endlessly curious, Under Alien Skies is an ideal community read or campus read for programs exploring science, curiosity, wonder, and what it means to be human in an incomprehensibly vast universe. Phil's accompanying talks bring the book to life with the same warmth and infectious enthusiasm that have earned him millions of followers and tens of millions of views — and leave audiences of all ages looking up at the night sky with new eyes.
Email to book Phil or request a complimentary review copy.
Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir (MCD, 2024)
Awards: Pulitzer Prize for Memoir or Autobiography, Eisner Award for Best Graphic Memoir, Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize.
Feeding Ghosts tells the story of three generations of Chinese women — a Shanghai journalist who fled the Communist regime, her daughter, and the author herself — weaving together Chinese history, intergenerational trauma, and the healing power of storytelling. Extensively researched and gorgeously illustrated, it is an ideal choice for programs exploring family, history, immigration, mental health, and the Asian American experience.
Tessa's talks are rich, funny, and deeply researched — equally at home in a university lecture hall, a public library, or a high school classroom.
Email to book Tessa or request a complimentary review copy.
Me and Me: A Memoir (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Awards: Pacific Northwest Book Award, LAMBDA Literary Award finalist
Ma and Me is the story of a Cambodian refugee daughter navigating the weight of a life debt to her mother while claiming her own identity as a queer woman in a traditional family. It is a rich choice for programs exploring immigration, LGBTQ identity, family duty, and the tension between cultural tradition and personal truth.
Putsata is a warm, candid, and deeply engaging speaker whose talks resonate with students and community members alike.
Email to book Putsata or request a complimentary review copy.
First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers (HarperCollins)
Adapted into a film directed by Angelina Jolie for Netflix
First They Killed My Father is one of the most powerful firsthand accounts of the Khmer Rouge genocide ever written — the story of a five-year-old girl who survived the killing fields and went on to become a leading human rights activist. Widely taught in high schools and universities, it is an essential choice for programs exploring genocide, refugee experience, resilience, and human rights.
Loung is a commanding and deeply moving speaker whose personal story leaves audiences changed.
Email to book Loung or request a complimentary review copy.
Spear, Hild, So Lucky, and others
Awards: Six Lambda Literary Awards, Washington State Book Award, Damon Knight Grand Master, and others.
Spear retells the Arthurian legend of Percival through the eyes of a queer woman warrior, set in a sixth-century Britain that is historically cosmopolitan, racially diverse, and alive with Celtic magic — a Camelot that, as the Los Angeles Times put it, belongs to us all.
Praised as a masterpiece by the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, and John Scalzi, Spear is rich, accessible, and short enough to be read in a single sitting — making it ideal for community read and campus read programs. It generates powerful conversation around identity, belonging, queerness, disability, the stories we inherit, and the ones we choose to write for ourselves. Nicola's talks on the book explore the research behind the history, the politics of whose stories get told, and the radical act of writing the marginalized into the center of a beloved myth.
Email to book Nicola or request a complimentary review copy.
