SUNY Oneonta’s Common Read advances diversity by encouraging students to examine and better understand topics such as equity, inclusion, and personal history through many lenses. It aims to further infuse cultural literacy into our academic program by asking the campus community to read a diversity-related book, which then is discussed in fall courses across several disciplines.
2026 Mills Distinguished Lecture
We are pleased to announce When These Mountains Burn, a novel by David Joy, as the 2026 Common Read. Set amidst the backdrop of ecological disaster, Joy tells the story of opioid addiction raging across the mountains of western North Carolina and how addicts and their family and community members struggle to battle its flames. A master of “country noir,” Joy chronicles what he calls “dark, often hopeless stories of working-class people doing the best they can with the circumstances they’re given.” When These Mountains Burn is the winner of the 2020 Dashiell Hammett Award for Literary Excellence in Crime Writing. USA Today calls When These Mountains Burn “a snapshot of small-town America at a fracture point, when the least of the concerns is the fire that could consume everyone, all at once.”
Author of five prize-winning novels and a memoir, Joy’s work is place-driven and deeply rooted in Appalachia and has been translated into six languages. In 2023, his debut novel Where All Light Tends to Go was adapted to film starring Billy Bob Thornton and Robin Wright. His stories and creative nonfiction have appeared widely, most recently in The New York Times Magazine, and TIME. He is also coeditor of Gather at the River: Twenty-Five Authors on Fishing, a book he spearheaded to raise money for the CAST For Kids Foundation.
David Joy will deliver the 2026 Mills Distinguished Lecture Monday October 5 at 7 pm in the Hunt Union Ballroom and will meet with students and other members of the campus community earlier that day.
Questions may be sent to members of the Common Read Committee or to its chair, George Hovis.
Past Mills Distinguished Lecturers
About the Mills Lecture
The Mills Distinguished Lectureship is named to honor the memory of Professor Albert Mills and his wife, Helena. Their bequest to the SUNY Oneonta Foundation led to the establishment in 1988 of a fund to bring prominent speakers to our campus.