UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State’s 14th annual Marathon Read will take place Thursday, Oct. 1, beginning at 10 a.m. The 12-hour communal reading event will be held on Burrowes Lawn (located south of Paterno Library and behind the Burrowes Building). Admission is free and open to the public.

The theme for this year’s event is “Well-Versed: Music and Literature” and will include texts that explore the influence of music in our daily lives and texts that move musically with their harmonious or rhythmic use of language.

During the marathon, students, faculty, staff and community members will read continuously until 10 p.m. Anyone can sign up to read in five-minute increments or simply sit and listen. Food will be provided throughout the day.

Starting off the Marathon Read will be Jennifer Egan’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “A Visit from the Goon Squad.” Other featured writings will include Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy’s memoir “Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back),” essays by Hanif Abdurraqib, sonnets by Petrarch and William Shakespeare, and the novel “Daisy Jones & The Six” by Taylor Jenkins Reid. Participants can also choose to read in any language.

The event will also feature a 7:30 p.m. performance of folk and rock classics on guitar by Stacy Glen Tibbetts, assistant teaching professor of English and mainstay of the State College music scene.

Marathon Read is sponsored by the College of the Liberal Arts; Department of English; Paterno Fellows Program; School of Global Languages, Literatures, and Cultures; Center for American Literary Studies; Department of Comparative Literature; Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; Department of Asian Studies; Department of French and Francophone Studies; Department of German and Slavic Languages and Literatures; Department of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies; Center for Global Studies; and the Humanities Institute.