Hi, I’m Lauren, and I’m a writer, editor, and the Founding Director of The New Commons.

I created this community because I wanted a space where readers could participate in deep reading and collective dialogue together over literary texts, and then put that reading into conversation with a contemporary work of art. I wanted a welcoming home for anyone to read full books with plenty of time to flip backwards and forwards to analyze the text on their own, and then, to show up expecting not a lecture, but a rich, rigorous, well-held dialogue where every voice matters. It sounds simple—yet it feels so rare to come by this more spacious, dialogue-based form of learning.

I’ve been joined by Marisa Lainson and Julian Mammano—both brilliant teachers and dear friends—as co-founders. Between the three of us, we bring years of teaching experience, literary expertise, and dialogue practice. Our goal is that, by the end of your cohort, you feel like you deeply know the book you’ve read, and that you can speak about it with confidence and expertise. While book cohorts are one-time commitments, once you are a part of the online community, you will have access to all of our dialogue-based learning resources and continual membership benefits.

A little bit more about me: Before founding TNC, I had a six-year career in public health communications! And before that, I earned an MA in English at Georgetown, where I was a Lannan Poetry Fellow (I even revised my thesis into a peer-reviewed academic article, which was published in Textual Cultures). I was also the project manager of a Mellon Foundation grant that aimed to help humanities graduate students find meaningful careers outside of academia, as well as a research assistant, English tutor, and guest teacher in undergraduate English courses.

If you are a book lover and life-long learner looking for a welcoming and intellectually inspiring community of readers, I hope you will join a book cohort. You won’t just be a face on a Zoom call—we actually can’t wait to meet you, talk with you, and partner with you as a reader and learner.