The Read More Diverse Non-fiction Challenge - 2025

52 participants (299 books)

15 Dec 202431 Dec 2025

Overview

 
Last year 200 of us committed to reading non-fiction by diverse authors through a Storygraph challenge. It’s coming back for 2025. 

This Storygraph challenge started as a way for genre fiction readers to expand our understanding of the world and the contexts of many of the fiction books we read. 

The Non-fiction challenge has 2 main components
  1. 6 required prompts
  2. 19 bonus prompts

As part of the challenge, we commit to talking, struggling, and learning from these books. Some of the prompts have side quests to help you think about how you will take your learning into the real world. 

Why non-fiction?
Reading is political. When we choose to engage solely with fiction, we can ignore the political themes and nuanced discussions within our chosen genres. This challenge invites us to engage more deeply with our fiction works of choice, and it empowers us to deepen our connections to our communities and our shared history. 

The intent of the challenge:
  • Read from a diverse group of authors writing about their history, community, culture or writing about broad topics. 
  • Read books that challenge us. 
  • Talk about the books and get more people reading them.

What do we mean when we say Diverse? 
  • Diversity at its most basic definition is someone who is different from you. 
  • In the context of this challenge, we are reading from people who hold different identities than dominant CIS, HET, white, abled culture. 
  • This means to meet the challenge's prompts a book must be written by Black, brown, indigenous, queer, trans, and/or disabled person.
  • This year, we will also consider class. If someone was raised in poverty, they meet the intent of this challenge. 

Picking books for the challenge
  • Editing the Storygraph challenges and keeping out books that don’t meet criteria is difficult. 
  • Before you decide to add a book, check to see if it meets the definition of a diverse author. 
    • You are responsible for ensuring that at the end of the challenge you have read a wide variety of topics by a diverse group of authors. 
    • Could you participate in this challenge and only read books that meet Diversity in one criteria? Yes, this is not the intent. The wide range of topics allow you to tailor the challenge to your own positionality. You have the power to make it what you need it to be.
  • If you find a book that shouldn’t be there, complete this short form, and our moderator will go and remove the book from the challenge. Removing the book just means no one else can add it. It does not remove the book from your challenge. 
  • Anti-trans, racist, ableist, antisemetic, and/or Isalmophobic books will be removed when noticed or flagged after a discussion with the Advisory Council.

Read-a-longs and discussions
  • Amanda will host a read along on discord/in Storygraph once per month. These books are picked by a vote among members, and should align with specific challenges. 
  • We are siblings to Diversify your Reading 2025. This year at least 4 of our books will be read simultaneously with Alise’s book club's fiction pick. So, if you are interested join both! Look for the Double Jeopardy prompts below to find out more. 

Posting and talking about the Read More Diverse Nonfiction Challenge
  • Use the hashtag #readmorediversenonfiction so we can stay engaged
  • On Bluesky, follow the feed Diverse Nonfiction.
  • Post your updates in the discord!
  • Use the stickers, templates designed by Sam to show off and review your reads. 

Want to join us?
  • Go to the Storygraph challenge and click “Join” 
  • If you want to join the discord, please fill out this form, and Amanda will send you an invite. 

As you read through the year, tag your content #readmorediversenonfiction and if you want to participate in our community of readers, join the challenge, post the books you're reading and include the prompt,  keep an eye out for lives, and request to join our Discord! 

Challenge Prompts

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