National Book Festival: Full Author Lineup
The 2019 Library of Congress National Book Festival will offer an outstanding lineup of authors for readers of all ages for the festival’s 19th year, with more than 140 nationally recognized authors, poets and illustrators, as well as the addition of stages devoted to science and international subjects.
On Saturday, Aug. 31, at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, doors will open at 8:30 a.m., with programs beginning at 9 a.m. and running until 8 p.m.
The stellar lineup includes U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, eminent historians David McCullough and Michael Beschloss, celebrity D.C. chef and humanitarian José Andrés, graphic novel superstar Raina Telgemeier and Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction recipient Richard Ford.
The 2019 festival also will invite visitors to Explore America’s Changemakers, part of a yearlong initiative coinciding with a series of exhibitions, events and programs at the Library. Among numerous festival programs dedicated to the theme of Changemakers, a special panel will feature new books on Winston Churchill by Andrew Roberts, Frederick Douglass by David Blight and visionary women including Rachel Carson, Jane Jacobs, Jane Goodall and Alice Waters, by Andrea Barnet.
The National Book Festival is made possible by the generous support of private- and public-sector sponsors who share the Library’s commitment to reading and literacy, led by National Book Festival Co-Chairman David M. Rubenstein. Charter sponsors are the Institute of Museum and Library Services, The Washington Post and Wells Fargo; Patron sponsors are the James Madison Council, the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities; the Champions are Thomas V. Girardi, the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress, PBS and Pizza Hut BOOK IT! Program; and, in the Friends category, Booklovers Circle Members, Bookshare - a Benetech initiative, Buffy Cafritz, Embassy of Australia, Embassy of Canada, Embassy of Germany, Embassy of Ireland, Embassy of Latvia, Embassy of Peru, Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction administered by The University of Alabama School of Law, The Hay-Adams, Inter-American Development Bank, The Junior League of Washington, Andy King, Leon Levy Center for Biography (CUNY), Library of Congress Federal Credit Union, Mexican Cultural Institute, Timothy and Diane Naughton, Planet Word, Scholastic Inc, Small Press Expo (SPX), Spain Arts & Culture and Western Writers of America; Media Partners are C-SPAN2’s Book TV, The New York Times and NPR.