Want to begin making your plans for traveling to campus in the fall? Please visit the Opening of School Schedule on our website, and download a copy of next year's academic calendar.

Summer reading assignments and suggestions have been posted to the SAS library website. In addition to this year's all-School read—Transatlantic by Colum McCann—you are asked to read two other books from the required reading list, all of which have been recommended by St. Andrew's faculty.

Next year, we have several brilliant visiting writers coming to campus. We're excited to announce that Colum McCann, who won the National Book Award in 2009 for Let the Great World Spin, will visit St. Andrew's for a day next year. At the end of the school year, we gave all current students a copy of TransAtlantic. Students should bring their book back to school with them - we will be studying the novel in all English classes next year before McCann's visit.

In fact, as you read TransAtlantic, and get to know the fictional version of Frederick Douglass that McCann creates in its pages, students may also want to dip into the work of renowned historian David Blight, whose recent biography, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom (2018), which just won both the Pulitzer and Bancroft Prizes, among many others. Since we are always interested in how different disciplines can learn from one another—something you can see in the vast array of books suggested by the faculty—Professor Blight will be visiting on campus this year as well and will engage in a conversation with Colum McCann.

Additionally, in the fall, Richard Blanco—an American poet, author, civil engineer, and President Obama's second inaugural poet—will spend a day with our students. I strongly recommend reading his poetry collection In Looking for the Gulf Motel and his memoir, The Prince of Los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood. In these works, he explores his Cuban heritage and his role as a gay man in Cuban-American culture. We are thrilled that he will be one or our visiting writers next year!

There is no summer homework beyond the required reading, but fun enrichment resources can also found on the summer work website, if you wish to keep in practice in your favorite subjects for the fall.