Join us for a special event featuring Hua Hsu – author of the 2024–2025 NYU Reads selection, Stay True – in conversation with Provost Georgina Dopico.

NYU Reads, sponsored by the Office of the Provost, brings the NYU community together around a common reading, chosen by a committee made up of faculty, student, and staff representatives. Through both large- and small-scale events, the discussion around this common reading begins during NYU Welcome and continues throughout the year.

This event is free and open to the public. RSVP does not guarantee a ticket. Ticket pickup information will be shared via email, prior to the event. 

About Hua Hsu
Hua Hsu is the author of two books, including the bestselling memoir Stay True. His memoir was a Top 10 Book of the Year at The New York Times, and was named a Best Book of the Year at TIME, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and more. Hua is a staff writer at the New Yorker and a CBS Sunday Morning contributor. He teaches at Bard College, and has previously taught at Harvard and Vassar College.

About Stay True
Stay True charts Hsu’s experience as an undergraduate at UC Berkeley in the mid-1990s—his days filled with mix tapes, “zines,” and making friends laugh and think. Social media and cell phones barely existed; email was so rarely used that friends checked one another’s inboxes every 2-3 weeks, as a neighborly gesture. As distant as this may seem from our current world, much of what Hsu evokes remains relevant, even pressing, to students today: from the significance that matters of taste (in music, movies, clothes) can suddenly take on, to a growing sense of one’s identity, to the important and transformative role that close friends can play in our lives. After one of his closest friends at Berkeley dies in a senseless act of violence during his junior year, Hsu comes to grips with remembering the past in a way that does justice to both the meaningful and the mundane, as well as with the grief of losing someone so young, when growing up still means growing outward. The timeless themes of Stay True will prompt NYU readers to reflect on what it means to engage with each other today—to listen and cultivate curiosity; to build bridges with those who are different from us; and to grow from our experiences and contribute what we learn to the community.