Dear reader, welcome to your nurturing, passionate dialogue community.
Our world literature reading program is designed to bring critical reading of literary texts together with warm, expert-facilitated, and meditative dialogue.
Our Passion
In the age of AI, book bans, declining literacy, and social media overstimulation, participants of our cohorts are invited to take a big exhale and deeply read books together — books that are both urgent and timeless works of literature.
Our Process
As an independent reading program with high teaching standards, we combine close and meditative reading with joyful and collaborative modes of learning — to bring students together with passion, not pretension, to nurture a deep, honest, and sustained reading practice.
Our Cohorts
We’ve designed structured, in-depth reading experiences, where our small cohorts gather to cultivate genuine connection, authentic expression, and generous Socratic dialogue — all led by an expert instructor. Within each cohort, we focus on slow reading one book at a time.
The Books We Teach
We specialize in teaching specific books, using our discussion-based teaching philosophy and small cohort size to facilitate meditative, collaborative dialogue. This list is ever-growing as we grow.
You can claim a seat for as many book cohorts as you would like to attend. You can also let us know if there’s a book you’d like to see added to our course list.
More coming soon!
More coming soon!
More coming soon!
More coming soon!
More coming soon!
More coming soon!
More coming soon!
More coming soon!
Book Cohort
Communities
We offer two separate and completely private book cohort spaces on our Circle platform
Each of these communities have access to separate, private spaces on our Circle platform, where we facilitate weekly community events, such as Office Hours and exam prep sessions for students, and community reading hours for adults readers.
Joining a book cohort means gaining life-time access to a beautifully active and passionate community of deep readers. It’s for rigor, but without the pretension. All are welcome and all belong.
Session Elements and Structure
*These are example session times. Specific times are different for each cohort, so make sure to check specific cohort pages for full details!
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Cohort members will join the call on time, get settled, and make sure videos and microphones are working. This will be a warm, open time for everyone to very briefly share how they are doing and enter into the space in a grounded, attentive way.
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Each session begins with a 5 to 10-minute exercise called Recall, which aims to help students access knowledge solely from memory.
We will share words, phrases, ideas, questions, and moments that we remember off the top of our minds — without the need to layer on interpretation.
This exercise aims to build knowledge and demonstrate initial comprehension of the reading, while also connecting us as a team.
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After we’ve done a few rounds of Recall and everyone has had the chance to speak, we’ll begin with an Opening Question.
This is an open-ended question that the instructor will ask the cohort.
It provides a doorway into the text, and will always be connected to a key learning objective.
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We will begin to make statements and observations, ask questions, and present our interpretations of the text.
Cohorts will practice building on ideas, encountering agreements and disagreements, and making collective decisions to transition the conversation into new threads. Each student will have the opportunity to not only contribute, but to lead the group into an idea.
The instructor is there to serve as an attentive, expert guide on the text and on the art of the dialogue. They will affirm key ideas and movements and help the group work through “hot and cold” moments, all while giving the cohort agency to direct where the conversation goes next.
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In the final 10 minutes of each session, we will bring the discussion a close and summarize what we’ve discussed — tracing where the dialogue led to the most exciting moments of learning, and noticing where it felt challenging or stagnant.
This is a moment where the instructor will invite each student to contribute a thought.
The goal is to build metacognitive awareness, without any judgement, on our individual and collective process and contribution.
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In the final few minutes, the instructor will offer three well-designed prompts based on the age/cohort type and the content of that session’s reading:
An academic writing prompt (e.g., a research essay).
A creative writing prompt (e.g., a persona poem or a text-to-life essay).
A research activity prompt (e.g. dig up more on the origins of words, texts, ideas, and key concepts we explored).
We could talk about the cohort model all day long
Our cohort model is more structured than a book club, less expensive than a college course, more in-depth and community-oriented than a one-time online seminar, and more well-rounded than test-prep tutoring.
Keep reading about why the cohort model truly works for all ages of readers — and how we’ve uniquely designed it to meet this moment.
Your Instructors
Lauren Frey, MA (she/her)
Founding Director, Instructor
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Marisa Lainson, MFA (she/they)
Founding Instructor
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Julian Mammano (they/them)
Founding Instructor
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Ready, steady, close read
Grab your seat in an upcoming book cohort!
Frequently Asked Questions
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Joining a cohort is simple! Explore our current Book Cohort offerings and book your seat directly on our website. As soon as. you have booked, you will be added t our online Circle community. If you see a book that we teach but do not yet see a course scheduled, join our Subscriber or follow us list to receive updates on openings.
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No, there are no requirements to join (e.g., a transcript, test scores, or letters of recommendation). We are a very warm and welcoming program that also demands rigor and real presence and engagement from our cohort participants. We require that students commit to reading the entire text, participating, and attending all the sessions (except when absences are absolutely necessary). See more specifics under our Program Policies.
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We currently do not offer scholarships at this time. However, we are price-conscious, and it is our goal to be able to offer scholarships to students in need as soon as possible.
We offer a 10% discount to all students who apply well before the deadline — please visit each cohort page for specific discount deadlines.
We offer additional discounts and early access to upcoming book cohorts to all of our alums.
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No grades! To receive the Certificate of Completion, students must complete the reading and attend all the sessions. If students do not fully participate—for instance, if they end up skipping a session without proper notice or reason, or if they have evidently not done the reading—they will not receive the certificate. See our Program Policies on Participation for more of the heart behind this policy.
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No. As an independent program, we provide extracurricular, supplemental training for students. For high school students, think of us as a program where solo study meets community dialogue, where private reading meets individual mentorship. The program should not be used to replace regular high school classes, although this process will absolutely support the mastery of texts that appear on advanced placement and college-entry examinations.
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The conversations we have in session can absolutely support content knowledge, critical thinking skills, and writing and analysis required in English classes and beyond. The mission of this program is to support that academic work, not replace it, by deepening the student’s reading experience and knowledge of core texts through the work of long-form dialogue.
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Book clubs are often free and wonderful places to read books and meet new people. However, sometimes the emphasis can be more on the social experience, and the level of rigor in dialogue is inconsistent.
Think of The New Commons more like a yoga studio model than a book club: it’s a place to truly exercise your mind, and practice the craft of dialogue and inquiry in real-time, under the guidance of experienced instructors who have studied literature in depth, with advanced degrees and/or years. of professional experience in education.
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