Patricia Sullivan Common Reading Program

Patricia Sullivan Common Reading Program

The Patricia Sullivan Common Reading Program at Molloy University:

• Involves students, faculty, administrators, and staff, reading and discussing a book chosen by a college committee because of its important theme and its relevance to contemporary life.
• Revolves around a book that is required reading for FST 1000, The College Experience, a course all First-Year students take during their first semester.
• Serves as the subject of the University’s Opening Convocation each fall. The book’s author comes to campus to talk about the book.
• Is the catalyst for Inspired Works, a contest sponsored by the Patricia Sullivan Common Reading Program Committee to reward creativity in student writers, artists, or musicians.

Current Book and Author AY 26.27

Catalina by Karla Cornejo Villaviecencio

Convocation Speaker Wednesday, October 7, 2026

About the Author

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio is an Ecuadorian American writer and the author of The Undocumented Americans (2021), a finalist for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her current novel is Catalina (2024). Cornejo graduated from Harvard in 2011, becoming the first undocumented immigrant to do so. She was an Emerson Collective fellow and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the American studies program at Yale. Her work, which focuses on race, culture, and immigration, has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Vogue, Elle, n+1, The New Inquiry, Interview, and on NPR.

About Catalina:

When Catalina is admitted to Harvard, it feels like the fulfillment of destiny: a miracle child escapes death in Latin America, moves to Queens to be raised by her undocumented grandparents, and becomes one of the chosen. But nothing is simple for Catalina, least of all her own complicated, contradictory, ruthlessly probing mind. Now a senior, she faces graduation to a world that has no place for the undocumented; her sense of doom intensifies her curiosities and desires. She infiltrates the school’s elite subcultures—internships and literary journals, posh parties and secret societies—which she observes with the eye of an anthropologist and an interloper’s skepticism: she is both fascinated and repulsed. Craving a great romance, Catalina finds herself drawn to a fellow student, an actual budding anthropologist eager to teach her about the Latin American world she was born into but never knew, even as her life back in Queens begins to unravel. And every day, the clock ticks closer to the abyss of life after graduation. Can she save her family? Can she save herself? What does it mean to be saved?

Brash and daring, part campus novel, part hagiography, part pop song, Catalina is unlike any coming-of-age novel you’ve ever read—and Catalina, bright and tragic, circled by a nimbus of chaotic energy, driven by a wild heart, is a character you will never forget.

Patricia Sullivan Common Reading Program Committee

AY 26.27 Common Read Committee Members:

Elizabeth Cotter, PhD, RN, NPD-BC, Professor, School of Nursing and Health Sciences

Noelle Cutter, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Biology, and Director of First Year Experience

Jennifer Elliott, Ph.D., Director of the Common Reading Committee, Associate Professor of Psychology

Sarah Evans, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Program Director of New Media

Mary Gallagher, B.A., Administrative Assistant, Psychology and Interdisciplinary Departments

Donna Iucolano, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, School of Business

Mark James, Ph.D., Associate Professor of English

Janice Kelly, Ed.D., Professor, Program Director of Professional Communications, Chairperson of Interdisciplinary Studies

Laurie Hallick, M.S.Ed., Instructional Designer, Blended & Online Learning

Rebecca Martinez, Ed.D., Assistant Director, Career Center

David Nochimson, M.L.S. Access Service Librarian, James E. Tobin Library

Trisha O’Neill, B.F.A., Administrative Coordinator, Communications, and Art

Katherine Patterson, Assistant Professor of Education

Committee members with 2025 guest speaker, Eddie Ahn

Molloy’s Common Reading Program 2009- 2026

2009        Hurry Down Sunshine: A Father’s Story of Love and Madness by Michael Greenberg

2010        Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Relin

2011        Outcasts United by Warren St.John

2012        Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder

2013        Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

2014        One Amazing Thing by Chitra Divakaruni

2015        March Book One, March Book Two by Congressman John Lewis, Andrew Aydin,

                and Nate Powell

2016        Post Mortal by Drew Magary

2017        The Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henriquez

2018        Tough as They Come by Travis Mills

2019        We Are All Called to Rise by Laura McBride

2020        What the Eyes Don’t See by Mona Hanna-Attisha

2021        Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue

2022        One Two Three by Laurie Frankel

2023        The Many Daughters of Afong Moy by Jamie Ford

2024         The Plant Hunter by Dr. Cassandra Quave

2025         Advocate by Eddie Ahn

2026         Catalina by Karla Cornejo Villaviecencio

Inspired Works 2025-26 Contest Winners

Patricia Sullivan Common Reading Program Inspired Works Contest

Each year the committee sponsors a contest which is open to all students and invites them to submit a creative work in the medium of their choice, inspired by the book. Prizes are awarded at an Award Ceremony in the Spring.

Inspired Works 2025-26 Contest Winners-

Victoria Antulov, First Place (artwork)

Lyn Gauck, Second Place (essay)

Inspired Works Winners, Victoria Antulov and Lyn Gauck pictured with their certificates along with Associate Dean of the School of Arts & Sciences, Dr. Matt Applegate and Common Read Committee Member, Dr. Jennifer Elliott.