UCSB Reads 2026 kicks off in January with a free book giveaway 📚 for UCSB students and culminate with a free public talk by Michelle Zauner at Campbell Hall on May 7, presented with UCSB Arts & Lectures.

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UCSB Reads, @ucsantabarbara's award-winning common book program, fosters a shared sense of belonging by bringing the campus and Santa Barbara communities together to read a common book that explores compelling issues of our time.

Michelle Zauner is a Korean-American musician, writer and the lead vocalist of indie pop sensation Japanese Breakfast. TIME magazine named Zauner one of the 100 most influential people of 2022.

"Crying in H Mart" was a New York Times bestseller and received numerous awards and accolades. The New Yorker described it as “a book you experience with all of your senses: sentences you can taste, paragraphs that sound like music."