We are a community of scholars and humanitarian policy experts working to understand the potential power of fiction to help drive policy change.

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Read for Action: The Humanitarian Book Club is a research initiative and a global community reading powerful novels about those affected by climate, conflict and humanitarian crises.

But, we don’t just read. In the book club, we bring together policy experts, authors, students, community members, and scholars from multiple disciplines to talk about and research the potential power of fiction to help support advocacy, influence policy, and create new ways of responding to global crises.

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how it works

As part of Read for Action we have:

hosted an online book club and created an active community of over 1000 readers. We read novels with themes around climate and conflict and discussed together on the Discord platform and instagram . During our reading period we were joined by activists and humanitarian experts for live discussions connecting the books to present-day challenges and actions we could take.

taught college seminar courses and hosted intimate student bookclubs where we analyzed novels and their ability to allow us to better understand the nuance and complexity of humanitarian and climate crises.

participated in large-scale advocacy events and forums where we introduce our research questions to broad audiences and aim to increase curiosity on how to bring together the humanities and humanitarian policy.

teamed up with research scholars from the fields of literature, public policy, and social psychology to conduct research and uncover the potential for fiction to influence policy and prosocial behavior.

engaged with organizations, activists, and authors to find and promote ‘actions’ that are addressing the needs of millions of people caught in crises and calling for policy change.

All of our research and materials are free to use for your own classes, book clubs, and events! Check out our conversations about The Displacements, Exit West, How Beautiful We Were, and A Passage North.

Interested readers, scholars and policy experts can connect with us at readforaction@virginia.edu and on instagram.

our books

Climate, Conflict & Humanitarian Crisis

a passage north

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize - A young man journeys into Sri Lanka’s war-torn north in this searing novel of longing, loss, and the legacy of war from the author of The Story of a Brief Marriage. - Penguin Random House

how beautiful we were

A fearless young woman from a small African village starts a revolution against an American oil company in this sweeping, inspiring novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Behold the Dreamers. - Penguin Random House

exit west

Finalist for the Booker Prize & Winner of the L.A. Times Prize for Fiction - An astonishingly visionary love story that imagines the forces that drive ordinary people from their homes into the uncertain embrace of new lands. - Penguin Random House

the displacements

A suspenseful read plotted on a vast national tapestry, The Displacements thrillingly explores what happens when privilege is lost and resilience is tested in a swiftly changing world. - Penguin Random House

global internal displacement

The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) offers preliminary estimates of new displacement events reported in the last 180 days. The provisional data is updated daily with new available data. Read about how IDMC monitors and reports their figures here.

Source: IDMC