Celebrate the 10th Anniversary of The Big Read with this year's selection, Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine.

2018 Big Read events run February - June

Claudia Rankine's bold book recounts mounting racial aggressions in ongoing encounters in twenty-first-century daily life and in the media. In essay, image, and poetry, Citizen is a powerful testament to the individual and collective effects of racism in our contemporary, often named "post-race" society. It was a finalist for the National Book Award in poetry and winner of the NAACP Image Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the PEN Open Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry while at the same time was a finalist for the same award in criticism. It was also named one of the best books of the year by numerous media outlets, including The New Yorker The Atlantic, National Public Radio, and Publisher's Weekly.

The Big Read encourages communities to rediscover the joy of reading by selecting one annual work of literature to read citywide and on which to focus cultural events and activities. The Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest and the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.