The author of the fall 2016 community read, Joshua Davis, will share with the community about his work in a 7:30 p.m., presentation, Tuesday, Oct. 4, at Hesston Mennonite Church on the Hesston College campus. Another opportunity for interested people to connect with him will be at 1 p.m., Wednesday, Oct. 5, at the Hesston Public Library. The presentations are free and open to the public.

Davis’s “Spare Parts,” this year’s community read, was named one of the best new books by Amazon and the BBC in 2014. It is the true story of four undocumented teenagers from Mexico and living in Phoenix who were inspired by their high school science teachers to be greater than their adversity and be successful in building an underwater robot to compete against corporate-sponsored collegiate teams. The book was developed into a major motion picture by Lionsgate and released in 2015 with well-known actors George Lopez and Jamie Lee Curtis.

Although “Spare Parts” has been a major hit for Davis, he has many other accomplishments. Davis is the co-founder of Epic Magazine and has been a contributing editor at Wired for a decade. He has also written for The New Yorker, GQ, Outside, Men’s Journal, Men’s Health, Maxim and Food & Wine. He was a finalist for the 2014 National Magazine Award in feature writing and he has numerous works in the 2012 edition of “The Best American Science and Nature Writing, as well as the 2006, 2007 and 2009 editions of “The Best Technology Writing,” Davis also makes documentary films and television projects.

The 2016 community read is again engaging the wider community as well as Hesston High School, Hesston Middle School, Hesston Public Library (HPL) patrons and a Newton Public Library book club. Anyone interested in reading the book prior to the presentations can find it at Hesston Public Library in hard copy, as an audio book and in the eLibrary.