National Book Festival https://blogs.loc.gov/national-book-festival News & Updates Tue, 19 Sep 2023 15:20:07 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5.5 A New Name and More Content: Important Update About This Blog https://blogs.loc.gov/national-book-festival/2023/03/a-new-name-and-more-content/ https://blogs.loc.gov/national-book-festival/2023/03/a-new-name-and-more-content/#comments Tue, 21 Mar 2023 18:00:59 +0000 https://blogs.loc.gov/national-book-festival/?p=3416 Hello, National Book Festival fans—

Thanks for your continued interest in the Library of Congress National Book Festival. Through this blog, we’ve been able to reach out and provide the latest information on the annual Festival and share lineups, videos, tips for visiting Washington D.C. and more.

Starting tomorrow, instead of a “National Book Festival Blog,” you’ll be receiving posts from “Bookmarked: Celebrating Contemporary Books and Writers at the Library.” Don’t worry: You’ll still get all the Festival updates just like you have in the past.

This new blog will add content from our “From the Catbird Seat: Poetry and Literature” blog to provide you with not only the latest about the National Book Festival, but news and stories about poetry and the poetry scene, connections between contemporary books and the Library’s collections, and interviews with the United States Poet Laureate and the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, among other literary content related to the Library.

If you already subscribe to the National Book Festival blog, we’ll rollover your subscription to “Bookmarked” and you don’t need to do anything. If you don’t subscribe already, here’s an easy way to do so, and we hope you do subscribe.

We have been busy putting together our author lineup for this year’s Festival and are building an exciting experience for you. Stay tuned for a big announcement about the 2023 National Book Festival, coming soon.

We’ll see you soon at “Bookmarked”!

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An Evening with Nobel Peace Prize Winner Maria Ressa https://blogs.loc.gov/national-book-festival/2022/11/an-evening-with-nobel-peace-prize-winner-maria-ressa/ https://blogs.loc.gov/national-book-festival/2022/11/an-evening-with-nobel-peace-prize-winner-maria-ressa/#comments Tue, 29 Nov 2022 22:30:50 +0000 https://blogs.loc.gov/national-book-festival/?p=3389 This is a guest post by Joshua Kueh, Southeast Asian Reference Librarian at the Asian Division of the Library of Congress.

On Saturday, December 3, 2022, the Library of Congress will host an evening with 2021 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Maria Ressa. A journalist with extensive experience in Asia, Maria Ressa is acclaimed for holding power to account and championing freedom of expression. Her principled stance and reporting have garnered multiple awards such as the Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize, the Golden Pen of Freedom Award, and the Knight International Journalism Award. Her determination to tell the truth—to hold the line—has also made her a target of autocrats.

In her most recent book, “How to Stand Up to a Dictator: The Fight for Our Future,” Ressa recounts the consequences of this battle with authoritarianism by looking at the weaponization of the law to suppress Rappler, a digital-only news site based in the Philippines that she co-founded. She also traces the role of social media in spreading disinformation, fear, and strife, creating the conditions that have seen the rise of fascism and undemocratic rule around the world. Drawing on lessons learned from her personal and professional life, Ressa answers the implicit question in the book’s title, providing an approach to confronting the erosion of democratic values. To gain further insight into the book and Maria Ressa’s perspective, consider attending the December 3 event, which will feature a conversation between the author and the Library’s Chief Communications Officer, Roswell Encina. Free registration is available on the Library’s Events site. Please note that the event has been moved to room LJ-119.

Screenshot of Maria Ressa event registration page
Event registration page for “An Evening with Nobel Prize Winner Maria Ressa

In conjunction with the event, there will be a display in Room LJ-113 located the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building. The display, which will be open to the public on the day of the event from 4:30-6:00 pm, will highlight various Library items connected to historic Philippine newspapers, “seditious” Filipino playwrights, freedom of the press, photos of the 1986 People Power protests, and Filipino American publications from the Asian American and Pacific Islander Collection. These items give visitors a glimpse of the Library’s holdings on topics related to the press in the Philippines and the role of Filipino and Filipino American writers in shining a light on injustice in society.

A particularly valuable resource at the Library for exploring how Filipino journalists dared to imagine a freer society in the face of oppression is the Library’s collection of historic Philippine newspapers. Nationalist periodicals of the late 1800s drew attention to oppressive conditions of the Spanish colonial system and later the occupation by the United States. The Library holds several of these publications—originals in some cases and reproductions in others. An example is Filipinas Ante Europa, pictured below. The Library holds a rare first edition original copy of this newspaper, which was edited by Isabelo de los Reyes, a pioneering Filipino folklorist, lawmaker, co-founder of an independent church with Filipino leadership called the Iglesia Filipina Independiente, and one of the first labor organizers in the Philippines. To learn more about other historic (and contemporary) Philippine newspapers at the Library, please consult the Southeast Asian Serials research guide.

Filipinas ante Europa. 25 October, 1899. Library of Congress Rare Book and Special Collections Division.

Besides newspapers, Filipino writers asserted their independence in theatrical works. Playwrights penned what colonial authorities saw as “seditious” dramas that questioned the injustices of the colonial order and advocated for freedom within a national framework.

One of the most famous “seditious” dramas was Aurelio Tolentino’s “Kahapon, Ngayon at Bukas” or “Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow.” During the performance of this play at the Libertad Theater in Manila in 1903, Americans in attendance were reported to have stormed the stage when the heroine threw the American flag to the ground and raised the standard of the Filipino nationalist Katipunan society. The disturbance made the news in the United States, appearing on the front page of a newspaper in Texas.

“Americans Stop Play,” Brownsville Daily Herald, May 19, 1903. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Library of Congress.

Filipino writers have not only made an impact in the Philippines but also here in the United States. Carlos Bulosan (c. 1911-September 11, 1956) was a Filipino American writer, poet, and activist best known for his novel, “America Is in the Heart.” He arrived in Seattle onboard the S.S. President Taft in 1930 and closely aligned himself with the causes of his fellow Filipino immigrants, many of whom worked in agricultural or cannery jobs on a migratory circuit that took them to points up and down the West coast of the United States: California, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska. As editor for Local 37’s 1952 Yearbook for the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union (ILWU), Bulosan drew attention to how the union’s Filipino American officers were threatened with deportation for their union activities during the years of McCarthyism. In his other publications such as “The Power of the People,” Bulosan linked Filipino experiences both in the Philippines and America to larger themes of social justice. In an essay accompanying the Norman Rockwell painting “Freedom from Want,” which pictures a scene of a plentiful Thanksgiving table, Bulosan gave voice to the struggles of workers in capitalist democracies. This jarring juxtaposition of abundance and need, featured in the Saturday Evening Post issue of March 6, 1943, captured the attention of an American audience and served as an introduction to Bulosan’s writings. The Library’s Asian American and Pacific Islander Collection counts among its holdings some of Bulosan’s works mentioned, as well as the archives of several Filipino American writers and activists like Sarah Joaquin and Royal F. Morales.

Publications by Carlos Bulosan in the Asian American and Pacific Islander Collection. Library of Congress Asian Division.

For questions on Philippine and Filipino American resources, please contact Southeast Asian reference staff through the Library’s Ask-a-Librarian service.

Further resources:

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Best of the Fest 2022: Young Adult https://blogs.loc.gov/national-book-festival/2022/11/best-of-the-fest-2022-young-adult/ https://blogs.loc.gov/national-book-festival/2022/11/best-of-the-fest-2022-young-adult/#comments Thu, 03 Nov 2022 14:05:44 +0000 https://blogs.loc.gov/national-book-festival/?p=3328 The Young Adult stage was a busy spot at the National Book Festival this year, for both teens, adults and everyone in-between. Plus, we welcomed three teen moderators on the stage. With a lineup of 17 authors across eight programs, it was a day full of panels, truth-telling and heartfelt connection among the authors, the audience and the books that brought us all together.

Below is a list of events from the YA stage accessible on our site and our YouTube channel.

  • When it comes to telling the truth about liars, E. Lockhart is an expert story-teller. Listen in as she shares the story of how “Family of Liars” came to be, and what it was like to write a prequel to her blockbuster bestseller “We Were Liars.”
  • We delight in a splash of magic realism, and R.M. Romero and Rose Szabo deliver it in buckets in this frank talk about their novels, “The Ghosts of Rose Hill” and “We All Fall Down,” respectively. Moderated by the Library’s expert on LGBTQIA+ studies, Meg Metcalf, the authors shared the ghosts and monsters in their novels and in their lives.
  • Who doesn’t want to be among winners, especially when they’re so accessible and relatable? Moderated by author Dhonielle Clayton (who also made an appearance on the Main Stage), follow the journeys of award-winning authors and their novels: Malinda Lo with “Last Night at Telegraph Club,” Darcie Little Badger with “A Snake Falls to Earth,” and Donna Barba Higuera with “The Last Cuentista.”
  • Whether set in an isolated small town full of secrets or in broad daylight at an elite sleepaway camp, horror finds a way to creep up and take a hold of the reader. Masters of the genre and genre-bending experimentation, Tiffany D. Jackson (“The Weight of Blood”) and Ryan La Sala (“The Honeys”) bring you the stories of real life heartbreak that took shape into horror novels. But it’s not all darkness and dread: every author program from now on needs a fit check.
  • Samira Ahmed and Sabaa Tahir create magic onstage and sparks on the page – and vice versa. The two authors brought the heat in their bestselling novels “All My Rage” (Tahir) and “Hollow Fires” (Ahmed) and on stage in a conversation with young author Sasa Aakil and teen moderator Nandini Kotamurthy.
  • Nothing can carry us away like a good song, or a swoony romance, or a really good time travel moment. Check out the two novels that weave together music, radio, fashion, love and ambition in this conversation between “Spin Me Right Round” author David Valdes and Ebony Ladelle, debut author of “Love Radio,” moderated by the Library’s Celia Roskin, who splits her time as a full-time Library employee and a YA romance enthusiast.
  • We love a fantasy. We love a protagonist who fights to save the world and to protect her heart. And more than anything, we love a good, solid sequel. If you need a new world to dive into (and stay in), don’t miss this conversation with Victoria Aveyard (“Blade Breaker”), Namina Forna (“Merciless Ones”) and Chloe Gong (“Our Violent Ends”), moderated by Austin Ferraro (librarian for teens) and Ava Luo (actual teen).
  • There is no one better to close out the Young Adult stage than the current National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, Jason Reynolds, with his new YA title “Ain’t Burned All the Bright.” In conversation with the Library’s Monica Valentine and teen moderator Gabby Maitra, Reynolds covers his newest title, his term as Ambassador, and the realities of the pandemic’s effect on his work in service to young people.

Dig in and enjoy these events from this year’s YA authors!

 

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Best of the Fest 2022: Please Read Me a Story https://blogs.loc.gov/national-book-festival/2022/11/best-of-the-fest-2022-please-read-me-a-story/ https://blogs.loc.gov/national-book-festival/2022/11/best-of-the-fest-2022-please-read-me-a-story/#comments Tue, 01 Nov 2022 14:05:11 +0000 https://blogs.loc.gov/national-book-festival/?p=3325 This year’s Please Read Me a Story Stage at the Library of Congress National Book Festival was a new one for us, placing on one stage all of our children’s picture book events. We also added to this year’s Festival a new partnership, with Literature to Life, a stellar literary nonprofit that performs passages from great books and actively involves the audience in a conversation about the performance and the book. We’re happy to release the footage from this stage today on our site and our YouTube channel. The publisher Scholastic sponsored some of the children’s programming at this year’s Festival and we are grateful for their support! Here’s the events that took place on the Please Read Me a Story stage:

  • Legendary Arthur creator Marc Brown talked about his latest book, “Believe in Yourself: What We Learned from Arthur” with WJLA anchor Alison Starling.
  • Brittany J. Thurman, the author of the picture book “Fly,” presented the book with introducer Monica Valentine.
  • Children’s writer and scholar Ruth Behar talked with her audience about her latest, “Tía Fortuna’s New Home: A Jewish Cuban Journey,” with moderator Cecilia Cackley.
  • Civil Rights figure Ruby Bridges talked with Andrea Davis Pinkney, the editor of her latest book, “I Am Ruby Bridges.”
  • Derrick Barnes and Vanessa Brantley-Newton presented “The Queen of Kindergarten” with introducer Allina Migoni.
  • Mac Barnett talked with me about his book “The Important Thing About Margaret Wise Brown” and the 75th anniversary this year of her crucial book, “Goodnight Moon.”
  • Xelena González talked about her latest picture book, “Where Wonder Grows,” illustrated by Adriana M. Garcia, with moderator Lauren Roszak.
  • The first of Literature to Life’s events was a performance of a passage from and conversation about Richard Wright’s novel “Black Boy.”
  • Next, Literature to Life performed from James Baldwin’s novel “If Beale Street Could Talk” and involved the audience in a conversation about the book.
  • And lastly, Literature to Life brought “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” by Junot Diaz to life.

We hope you enjoy the events from the Please Read Me a Story stage!

 

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Best of the Fest 2022: KidLit https://blogs.loc.gov/national-book-festival/2022/10/best-of-the-fest-2022-kidlit/ Fri, 28 Oct 2022 14:05:53 +0000 https://blogs.loc.gov/national-book-festival/?p=3322 The National Book Festival has always welcomed families and children, and this year was no exception. On the KidLit stage, the stage devoted to middle-grade writers and their latest books. 18 writers and illustrators shared their works with thousands of kids and their families, with some reveling in the fun of reading while others shared profound stories about being human. This year, we featured moderated conversations, a graphic novel panel, and even an author traveling to NBF from abroad. Below is a list of events that celebrated the love for reading with kids of all ages, accessible on our site and our YouTube channel.

  • We opened the stage with a one-of-a-kind read-aloud of the graphic novel “The First Cat in Space Ate Pizza” by author Mac Barnett and illustrator Shawn Harris. Both creators brought lots of energy, funny voices, and unforgettable catchphrases to get the morning started on the best possible note. Oh, my big wrinkly toe!
  • Young activist, Tybre Faw, still in his teens, shared his experience meeting his hero as he discussed “Because of You, John Lewis” with the award-winning author Andrea Davis Pinkney.
  • Erin Entrada Kelly talked about her chapter book series starring a young but mighty Marisol Rainey with local News4 anchor Eun Yang.
  • For those who enjoy real stories about real people, Julie Menendez’s session with her book “Latinitas” was the perfect chance to meet 40 incredible dreamers who share Hispanic heritage.
  • Nothing is more relatable than being a kid whose life is not their own to control. Graphic novelists Johnnie Christmas and Kat Fajardo shared the stage with the Library’s comics expert Megan Halsband as they discussed visual approaches to storytelling.
  • This year marks an NBA anniversary, so we celebrated during the “Hardcourt: 75 Years of Basketball” panel with author Fred Bowen and illustrator James E. Ransome with moderator Tajay Ashmeade, a professional basketball player.
  • Buckle in because our program with Gordon Korman was all about his 100th book, “The Fort”! That’s one impressive milestone—maybe he will come back with his 200th?
  • NBF is a great time to introduce readers to a new book, and Kwame Alexander delivered. His talk was about his newest title “The Door of No Return,” a novel that hadn’t even come out yet. He gave an inspiring talk about the power of perseverance in his 11-year-old protagonist.
  • Middle school is a universally rough time, and the memory of struggling through those years doesn’t fade even when kids grow up. Authors David Bowles and Jennifer Zeigler discussed their tough protagonists in “They Call Her Fregona” and “The Worser,” respectively, as those characters navigate moments that are both relatable and heartbreaking.
  • Soman Chainani shared the origins of his hit series “A School for Good and Evil” with his fans and new readers.
  • Adventure stories collided in the panel “How Many Times Do Kids Have to Save the World?” with bestselling author Lev Grossman and newcomer Julian Randall. Our writers talked about feeling stuck, lost, and making lots of mistakes–while also trying to save the world!
  • The stage finale caused a wave of enthusiasm as Tui T. Sutherland, author of the “Wings of Fire” series, discussed the 10 years of writing tales of the dragonkind with local elementary school librarian Catherine Fravel.

This is a guest post by Sasha Dowdy, program specialist in the Literary Initiatives Office.

Enjoy these events from this year’s KidLit authors!

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Best of the Fest 2022: Society and Culture https://blogs.loc.gov/national-book-festival/2022/10/best-of-the-fest-2022-society-and-culture/ https://blogs.loc.gov/national-book-festival/2022/10/best-of-the-fest-2022-society-and-culture/#comments Thu, 27 Oct 2022 14:05:02 +0000 https://blogs.loc.gov/national-book-festival/?p=3329 This year’s Society and Culture Stage at the Library of Congress National Book Festival traversed a wide range of subjects—mental health, community building, climate change and the natural world, the multi-layered costs of racism and more—and offered unique solutions to the intricate problems we face today. We’re happy to release the footage from that stage today on our site and our YouTube channel. Here’s what you’ll find among the rich conversations that took place on the Society & Culture stage:

  • We kicked off the day with Robert Samuels and Linda Villarosa, two author-journalists writing about the costs of slow-growing, systemic racism. Samuels discussed the life and legacy of George Floyd and Villarosa illustrated the shocking and deadly health disparities Black and Brown people face, especially Black women, with NPR’s Eric Deggans.
  • In conversation with Missing Pages podcast host Bethanne Patrick, Rachel Aviv and Daniel Bergner discussed the consequences of the treatment and mistreatment of mental health in America.
  • Journalist Will Bunch discussed the radical shifts college has undergone in the last 60 years and asks a central and timely question, “How can we protect college as a fundamental and affordable right for all?” Bunch talked with Washington Post columnist Alexandra Petri.
  • Writer and editor Gal Beckerman and law professor Kathryn Judge talked with the Texas Tribune’s editor-in-chief Sewell Chan about the ways modern life obfuscates direct and, in many cases, lasting communication and collaboration.
  • Roswell Encina, the Library’s Chief Communications Officer, spoke to authors Brendan McConville and Elizabeth Williamson about the ways conspiracy theories mix with our nation’s history, ultimately causing real-world damage.
  • Marine scientists Juli Berwald and Edith Widder chatted with Liz Neeley about equally vibrant yet different parts of the ocean: coral reefs and deep sea creatures.
  • Celeste Marcus, managing editor of Liberties journal, spoke to essayists Morten Høi Jensen, Shawn McCreesh and Becca Rothfeld about the power of the essay as a form, especially in the hyper speed of our digital world.
  • Award winning journalist Ed Yong explored the limits of our human reality by describing the ways animals experience the natural world. Yong spoke to the Director of the National Museum of Natural History, Kirk Johnson.

We hope you enjoy the events from this year’s Society & Culture stage!

This is a guest post by Anya Creightney, program specialist in the Literary Initiatives Office.

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Best of the Fest 2022: Pop Lit https://blogs.loc.gov/national-book-festival/2022/10/best-of-the-fest-2022-pop-lit/ Wed, 26 Oct 2022 14:05:15 +0000 https://blogs.loc.gov/national-book-festival/?p=3320 This year’s Pop Lit Stage at the Library of Congress National Book Festival was a new one for us, featuring different kinds of books and writers. It also featured new ways of performing books that we hadn’t tried out at the Festival before. We’re happy to release the footage from that stage today on our site and our YouTube channel. Some of the events on this stage were generously sponsored by the Library’s Publishing Office and our National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled. Here’s what you’ll find among the vibrant conversations that took place on the Pop Lit stage:

  • The day began with novelists Kirstin Chen, Katie Gutierrez, and Amanda Eyre Ward in conversation with book critic and writer Marion Winik about fiction that delves into crime and all-around bad behavior.
  • Bestselling writer Mitch Albom made his Festival premiere this year to celebrate the 25th anniversary of “Tuesdays with Morrie.” He was in conversation with writer and philanthropist David M. Rubenstein.
  • Novelists Eleanor Brown and Jennifer Close discussed their latest novels in our “Families Are the Best, Families Are the Worst” panel, with Shari Werb, the Library’s Director of the Center for Learning, Literacy and Engagement moderating.
  • In addition to collecting, archiving and storing books and other media, the Library of Congress also publishes books, chief among them our Crime Classics series, which reissues some of the finest American crime writing from the 1860s to the 1960s. We portrayed a crucial scene from a recent Library publication, Rudolph Fisher’s “The Conjure-Man Dies,” the first American mystery to feature a Black detective and all Black characters.
  • Dolen Perkins-Valdez, whose latest novel is titled “Take My Hand,” was in conversation with journalist Linda Villarosa about the novel, about a Black nurse in post-segregation Alabama who blows the whistle on a terrible injustice done to her patients.
  • Our next panel, “Is Anything Funnier Than Politics?,” answered its own question (no) as novelists Grant Ginder, Xochitl Gonzalez and Susan Coll talked about their latest, funny novels. The Library’s Chief Communications Officer, Roswell Encina, moderated.
  • Karen Joy Fowler and Louis Bayard’s new novels both depict mega-famous people—in Fowler’s case John Wilkes Booth and his family and in Bayard’s case Jacqueline Kennedy. Both novels depict their protagonists before they were famous, though, so we asked Colleen J. Shogan to moderate a conversation with them we titled “We Knew Them Before They Were Famous: Historical Fiction.”
  • In a collaboration with the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled, this year’s Festival featured a vibrant performance from some of the NLS’s star audiobook narrators—Michael Kramer, Kimberly Schraf, and Dawn Ursula—performing and talking about the art of voice narration. Kathryn Marguy, a public affairs specialist at the NLS, moderated.

We hope you enjoy the events from this year’s Pop Lit stage!

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Best of the Fest 2022: Library of Congress https://blogs.loc.gov/national-book-festival/2022/10/best-of-the-fest-2022-library-of-congress/ Tue, 25 Oct 2022 14:05:59 +0000 https://blogs.loc.gov/national-book-festival/?p=3327 The Library of Congress Stage introduced audiences to the important work being done at the Library to make our collections more accessible, inspire research and creativity, and extend our reach beyond the walls of our reading rooms. We are excited to release footage from that stage on our site and our YouTube channel.

  • The day started with Library Trivia – an engaging program for all ages that combined fun with learning about the Library of Congress’ history and collections.
  • Public affairs specialist María Peña welcomed Spanish-speaking visitors to the book festival with our first Spanish-language presentation, featuring an overview of the Library’s history and collections, and an invitation to join the Library for Hispanic Heritage Month. More…
  • Creativity is the core of copyright, and John St. Amour took the audience on a journey through the Copyright Office exhibit’s artifacts to find how each of us contribute to the copyright system through books and other creative works. More
  • Visitors were treated to a presentation by Law Librarian Aslihan Bulut and research librarian Barbara Bair, who walked us through Constitution Annotated, an online resource that provides a comprehensive review of U.S. Constitutional provisions and the leading U.S. Supreme Court decisions that interpret them. More
  • The Library of Congress supports K-16 teachers with primary source-inspired programs, classroom materials, fellowships and grants. Lee Ann Potter introduced guests to a sampling of the K-16 resources at the Library. More
  • Since 2018, our virtual volunteers have completed more than 500,000 transcriptions improving search, accessibility and discovery for the papers of Theodore Roosevelt, Rosa Parks, Walt Whitman, Susan B. Anthony, and more. Travis Owens explained how transcribers are impacting the Library while exploring pages from history—and how you can get involved. More
  • Doing genealogical research for African Americans can be quite challenging, but reference specialist Ahmed Johnson walked a packed room through various approaches including what you might be able to find in your home, local community, and at the Library. More
  • Library staff don’t just support the research of visitors, but are accomplished authors themselves. Mark E. Horowitz, Julie Miller, Ryan Reft and Trevor Owens discussed the process of researching and writing and answered questions about their work at the Library.
  • The Library’s preservation services division is busy with projects that enable digital research and preserve born-digital collections. Amanda May explained the specialized hardware and software used to save collections that live on external media like floppy disks, CDs and hard drives. More
  • Lora Sodini shared the Library’s history of philanthropy and how you might contribute to this rich history by becoming a Friend of the Library of Congress. More

We hope these presentations inspire you to engage with the Library and connect with our resources wherever you may be.

This is a guest post by Elizabeth Schreiber-Byers, events liaison in the Special Collections Directorate.

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Best of the Fest 2022: Writers Studio https://blogs.loc.gov/national-book-festival/2022/10/best-of-the-fest-2022-writers-studio/ Mon, 24 Oct 2022 14:05:27 +0000 https://blogs.loc.gov/national-book-festival/?p=3283 The 2022 Library of Congress National Book Festival featured many of the same stages and formats as years’ past, but we also took the opportunity to change things up for our return to the Washington Convention Center. A great example: the new “Writers’ Studio” stage, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts, which expanded upon our “Poetry and Prose” stage from years past. Here’s what happened there a few weeks ago, footage you can now find  on our site and our YouTube channel:

  • The stage started with a virtual event featuring Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction winner Jesmyn Ward in conversation with the Library’s Literary Director, Clay Smith. Ward is the youngest writer to receive the prize, which celebrates “strong, unique, enduring voices that—throughout consistently accomplished careers—have told us something essential about the American experience.”
  • In a session titled “Past Pain, Future Hope: Perseverance in Literature,” Tomás Q. Morín discussed “Let Me Count the Ways: A Memoir,” about his OCD as a mechanism to survive childhood, and Morgan Talty discussed his linked short story collection set in a Native community in Maine, “Night of the Living Rez” with writer Tope Folarin.
  • Pulitzer Prize winner Geraldine Brooks returned to the festival to talk about her newest novel, “Horse”—based on the true story of the thoroughbred Lexington—with writer Marie Arana, the Library of Congress’ former literary director.
  • A session titled “Bring on the Blur: Fantasy vs. Reality” featured two wildly imaginative authors—Lidia Yuknavitch and her time-traveling novel “Thrust” along with Kim Fu and her genre-bending short story collection, “Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century”—in conversation with Poets & Writers magazine editor-in-chief Kevin Larimer.
  • Poet and psychoanalyist Nuar Alsadir talked about her nonfiction debut “Animal Joy: The Book of Laughter and Resuscitation,” which seeks to recover the sensation of being present, with poet and University of Baltimore assistant professor Steven Leyva.
  • A session titled, “My Body, Not Myself: Wresting with Identity” featured poet Diana Goetsch discussing “This Body I Wore: A Memoir,” an account of her journey to late transition, along with poet and playwright Sarah Ruhl discussing her memoir “Smile: The Story of a Face,” about her decade-long battle with partial face paralysis, with Rob Casper, the Library’s head of poetry and literature.
  • Filmmaker and writer Rebecca Miller talked about her arresting, darkly prescient new book of short stories, “Total”—her first in over two decades—with National Public Radio correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben.
  • To conclude the day, Linda Gregerson—acclaimed poet, distinguished professor at the University of Michigan, and former chancellor of the Academy of American Poets—discussed her newest poetry collection, “Canopy” with Washington Post critic Ron Charles.

We hope you get a chance to check out all of the “Writers Studio” sessions!

Three men sitting and talking on a stage in front of a National Book Festival backdrop
Moderator Tope Folarin talks with authors Morgan Talty and Tomas Q. Morin on the subject “Past Pain, Future Hope,” at the 2022 National Book Festival, Sept. 3. Photo by David Critics
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Best of the Fest 2022: Life/Style https://blogs.loc.gov/national-book-festival/2022/10/best-of-the-fest-2022-life-style/ Wed, 19 Oct 2022 14:05:57 +0000 https://blogs.loc.gov/national-book-festival/?p=3291 The new Life/Style stage gathered together makers, how-to experts, and guides on the practical and inspirational. Today, we’re releasing the footage for this stage on our site and our YouTube channel. Here’s what you’ll find among the insightful conversations that took place on the Life/Style stage at the recent Festival:

  • Writers and fashion designers Hekima Hapa and Lesley Ware began the day discussing their book “Black Girls Sew” and helping young people shape their own fashion narrative with the Library of Congress’ Desiree Woodard.
  • Psychiatrist Ellen Vora (“The Anatomy of Anxiety”) and psychologist Tracy Dennis-Tiwary (“Future Tense”) explored new and different ways of thinking about anxiety—a condition that affects more than 40 million Americans—in conversation with Tara Parker-Pope, consumer health editor at the Washington Post.
  • In the afternoon, Celeste Headlee (“Do Nothing”) confronted the concept that our worth depends on how hard we work and talked about how we can learn to take time for ourselves with Mary Beth Albright, correspondent and editor at the Washington Post.
  • After years of personal experience and many interviews with great investors, David M. Rubenstein (“How to Invest”) discussed the personal qualities and habits that he believes are integral to successful investing with Neil Irwin, chief economic correspondent for Axios.
  • In a program that can brighten your day, Todd Doughty talked about his new book, “Little Pieces of Hope,” a collection designed to allow readers to take thoughtful breaks and appreciate the small joys in life, with NBC Washington news anchor Jummy Olabanji.
  • In an appropriate finale for a festival with the theme “Books Bring Us Together,” Geoffrey L. Cohen (“Belonging”) appeared in conversation with Crosby Kemper, director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and discussed how individuals can overcome differences, forge lasting connections and decrease polarization.

We hope you enjoy the events from this year’s Life/Style stage!

This is a guest post by Deziree Arnaiz, a program specialist in the Literary Initiatives Office.

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