Marathon Read 2025

Marathon Read – the annual literature reading featuring students and other members of the Penn State community – will take place from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 3, on Pattee Mall (outside Burrowes Building).  

The theme for this year's event is "Awakenings: Resilience in Literature." Texts to be read will demonstrate the power that literature possesses to wake individuals from their many slumbers — emotional, intellectual, political, sexual and spiritual — and showcase individuals' ability to overcome personal and collective adversity to remake worlds in which people rise, resist, rebuild and rest.

Marathon Read is free and open to the public. Anyone who is interested can also register to read aloud from one of the selected texts during the event. 

Marathon Read 2025 is sponsored by the School of Global Languages, Literatures, and Cultures and co-sponsored by the College of the Liberal Arts; the Department of African American Studies; the African Studies Program; the Center for American Literary Studies; the Center for Global Studies; the Department of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies; the Department of Asian Studies; the Department of Comparative Literature; the Department of English; the Department of French and Francophone Studies; the Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literaturesl the Department of Spanish, Italian, And Portuguese; the Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; the Humanities Institute, the Paterno Undergraduate Fellows Program; and University Libaries.