Reading for Normal: Young People and Fiction in the Time of Covid-19

For young people finding their way in the world, what it means to be normal and live an ordinary life are crucial concepts. But the Covid-19 pandemic has meant navigating a ‘new normal’ in which the very notion of ordinariness is destabilised. ‘Reading for Normal’ will work with young people to interrogate the ‘connective tissue’ of commonplace reality that currently feels out of reach. Recognising the value of literature for making sense of diverse experience, it will build a digital reading community to explore ideas of normality in recent young adult novels. The project will create an important record of young readers’ responses to Covid-19 through their engagement with textual portrayals of everyday British life, and develop a framework for how they might support each other at a distance through shared reading practices.