In October 2023, Tara Maria Fernandes arranged some chairs in a circle at International House New York — around a book, fresh fruit, and a blue teapot of hot tea — and invited neighbors in her residential community to gather around literature. Thirty-one sessions later, The I-House Book Club has read its way from Le Guin to Homer with readers from every continent, sustained a 226-member WhatsApp community that stays connected from Mumbai to Guatemala, and become the subject of her PhD dissertation at Teachers College, Columbia University: “A Book Club in the Web of Living Literature.” In this webinar, Dr. Fernandes shares the story and the research behind the book club — and the practical craft of building reading communities that last: how to curate a reading list collaboratively, structure a session that invites stimulating conversation, and set the table — tea, snacks, and an opening question — so attendees become a community.
After this session, participants will be able to:
- Identify the core elements that turn a voluntary book club into a durable community — ritual, hospitality, and shared ownership of the reading list
- Design a session structure that invites lively conversation among readers of different backgrounds and languages, from the opening question (“What are you bringing to Book Club today?”) to the closing one (“What are you taking away from today’s Book Club?”)
- Develop approaches to text selection that put classical and canonical works in conversation with contemporary and translated literature
- Apply low-cost, high-impact practices — circulating shared copies of the text, tea and snacks, a between-sessions messaging community — to sustain engagement between sessions and make the club welcoming to international and multilingual readers
About our presenter:
Dr. Tara Maria Fernandes holds a PhD in English Education from Teachers College, Columbia University, where her dissertation, A Book Club in the Web of Living Literature, grew out of the transnational reading community she founded in New York. She started The I-House Book Club at International House in October 2023; thirty-one sessions later, its readers span the globe. A former high school English teacher in Bangalore, she has taught graduate courses in literature pedagogy — including the Teaching of Shakespeare (Fall 2024 and Fall 2025 at Teachers College) — and this fall she leads a reading group at the Center for Fiction in Brooklyn. She calls herself a Teacher-Researcher-Adventurer, devoted to building strong communities around literature wherever she can. Follow her work at taramariafernandes.github.io, or connect with her on LinkedIn.