Posted on

Writers Rally Against Anti-Asian Hatred Amid Pandemic; May 27, United Against Hate: A Day of Online Solidarity

Man Mo Temple; Hollywood Road, Tai Ping Shan, Hong-Kong, Hong Kong, Photograph courtesy of Nicolas Hoizey, Unsplash

“We realize that this anti-Asian sentiment comes alongside an equally troubling uptick in xenophobia, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, and anti-Black violence,” said writer and PEN America Trustee Min Jin Lee. “This is a clarion call that all forms of racist hatred, especially at this moment, are unwelcome, unacceptable, and intolerable. As writers, we reckon with the power of words each day, and we know that along with the physical violence, poisonous rhetoric is also visiting a different kind of violence on all too many people. We’re here to say: We won’t stand for it.” 

PEN America and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop today released a joint statement from well over one-hundred writers, artists, actors, and creative professionals calling for an end to anti-Asian and Asian-American sentiment amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Signed by Riz Ahmed, Ayad Akhtar, Alexander Chee, Min Jin Lee, Celeste Ng, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and C. Pam Zhang, among many others (click here for a full list of signatories), the statement comes as the two organizations also announced a May 27 online day of action “United Against Hate: A Day of Solidarity” to condemn hate and celebrate Asian, Asian American, and Pacific Islander writers.

“The time to turn back this wave of hate is now,” the statement reads (full text below). “We, the undersigned, call on everyday citizens to join us in standing in solidarity with all those targeted by hate during COVID-19. Together, we can use the power of our collective voices to call for a more just, equal, and inclusive society. As members of the global literary community, we know well that diversity is a pillar of any liberal democracy, providing rich and varied stories to celebrate.”

The statement comes against the backdrop of a surge in hate crimes, violence, and other assaults against Asians, Asian-Americans, and Pacific Islanders, spurred by hateful rhetoric and often taking place in public spaces. The statement also highlights that public officials and leaders have not taken sufficient steps to address such attacks, and in some cases are promoting theories that blame Asian people for the coronavirus pandemic.

“We realize that this anti-Asian sentiment comes alongside an equally troubling uptick in xenophobia, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, and anti-Black violence,” said writer and PEN America Trustee Min Jin Lee. “This is a clarion call that all forms of racist hatred, especially at this moment, are unwelcome, unacceptable, and intolerable. As writers, we reckon with the power of words each day, and we know that along with the physical violence, poisonous rhetoric is also visiting a different kind of violence on all too many people. We’re here to say: We won’t stand for it.”

“The long history of organizing in the AAPI community parallels a longer history of anti-Asian bigotry, and the recent wave of hate is an unfortunate reminder that these racist tropes have been harming Asian American communities for decades,” said AAWW’s executive director Jafreen Uddin. “The AAWW is proud to partner with PEN America in taking a stand against this dangerous rise in bigotry. Our partnership embodies the spirit of coalition-building that has long been at the heart of organizing within the Asian American community and the AAWW’s own work in amplifying marginalized voices through the power of storytelling. History has proven time and again that we are stronger together, and with allies like PEN America on our side, we are able to meet the challenge of this moment as a forceful, united front.”

UNITED AGAINST HATE:

A DAY OF SOLIDARITY

On Wednesday, May 27, PEN America and AAWW will host a virtual day of action “United Against Hate: A Day of Solidarity.” The daylong program will include readings, lectures, poetry, and a teach-in to discuss strategies for combatting and defending against hateful actions and rhetoric. Click here for the full lineup.

Events include a teach-in featuring Jennifer Ho, Floyd Cheung, Pawan Dhingra, and Kathleen Yep; an AAWW Lit Lunch on Instagram Live with Huiyan B. Chan; a panel on countering hate speech with Nadine Strossen, Ishmael Beah, and Helen Zia; and a poetry reading with George Abraham, Kazim Ali, Regie Cabico, Marilyn Chin, Staceyann Chin, Tarfia Faizullah, Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai, Jenny Xie, Monica Youn, and others.

STATEMENT OF SOLIDARY

AGAINST ANTI-ASIAN HATRED

The surge in hate crimes, violence, and verbal assaults against Asians, Asian Americans, and Pacific Islanders in recent months is a painful reminder that racism, bigotry, and xenophobia are persistent challenges in the United States. Many of these attacks have been brazen, occurring in public spaces and online. They have been egged on at times by an administration drawing on racist tropes and stereotypes, eager to distract from its own missteps.

Reports of any individuals being spit on, stabbed, beat up, or verbally assaulted are disturbing enough when they are isolated incidents. However, when such attacks are collectively driven by hate, and when they occur in such large volume, the onus lies heavily on civil society and on our elected representatives to condemn them. Shamefully, such voices have been too few in recent months. Attacks continue to be reported in large numbers, and one recent poll found that 32 percent of Americans have witnessed someone blaming Asian people for the coronavirus pandemic. The alarming rise in xenophobia, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, and anti-Black violence during this pandemic demands a robust civic response.

The time to turn back this wave of hate is now. We, the undersigned, call on everyday citizens to join us in standing in solidarity with all those targeted by hate during COVID-19. Together, we can use the power of our collective voices to call for a more just, equal, and inclusive society. As members of the global literary community, we know well that diversity is a pillar of any liberal democracy, providing rich and varied stories to celebrate. On behalf of PEN America and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, we invite you to join us on May 27 for a day of action to condemn this scourge; celebrate Asian, Asian American, and Pacific Islander writers; and to raise your voice to call out hate in all its heinous forms.

Click here to add your name.

This post is courtesy of and in support of PEN America and the Asian-American Writers’ Workshop.

Jamie Dedes:

Your donation HERE helps to fund the ongoing mission of The Poet by Day in support of poets and writers, freedom of artistic expression, and human rights.

Poetry rocks the world!

FEEL THE BERN

For Peace, Sustainability, Social Justice

Maintain the movement.

“Democracy is not a spectator sport.” Bernie Sanders

“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.”  Lucille Clifton

Posted on

PEN America Announces Honorary and Career-Achievement Literary Awards; Rigoberto González – PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry

Courtesy of Francisco Delgado, Unsplash

The PEN America Literary Awards have, since their founding in 1963, brought together award-winning writers, editors, translators, and critics in dynamic and diverse panels of judges that determine the given year’s most resonant literature. Over the decades, the PEN America Literary Awards have expanded across genres, celebrating a wide range of writing and recognizing writers at every stage of their careers.

Tom Stoppard  courtesy of ru:Участник:KDeltaE under CC BY-SA 3.0

PEN America announced its major career achievement honors to be presented at the 2020 PEN America Literary Awards. Academy Award and four-time Tony Award winner Tom Stoppard will receive the PEN/Mike Nichols Writing for Performance Award for Leopoldstadt, a work of epic scale and deep personal resonance that Stoppard has said may be his final play. Leopoldstadt, set in the old Jewish quarter of Vienna, where Jews fled persecution at the turn of the 19th century, makes its world premiere on London’s West End this week, at a time when anti-Semitism is surging throughout Europe and the U.S.

The PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature, honoring an author of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and/or drama with $50,000, will be given to M. NourbeSe Philip for writing that has, for four decades, merged vital formal experimentation and considerations of race, gender, colonialism, and African Diasporic identity. Playwright Tanya Barfield, critically lauded for works including The Call, Bright Half Life, and Blue Door, will accept the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award. Rigoberto González—poet, novelist, memoirist, critic, professor, and vocal champion of Latinx poets—will be honored with the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry. The awards will be among those presented March 2 at The Town Hall, the largest venue in the history of the PEN America Literary Awards, in a ceremony hosted by Late Night host, comedian, and “influential recommender of books” (The New York Times) Seth Meyers.

Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf, PEN America Director of Literary Programs, said, “Fostering and celebrating international literature is central to the mission of the PEN America Literary Awards; we seek to champion original and promising writers of the global community and promote their work to an American audience. This year, we are incredibly proud to honor such urgent and diverse voices, which we know have the power to awaken empathy and redefine public discourse.”

Tom Stoppard – Recipient of Honorary PEN/Mike Nichols Writing for Performance Award

PEN America introduced the PEN/Mike Nichols Writing for Performance Award in partnership with venerated late filmmaker and comedian Mike Nichols’ dear friend Lorne Michaels last year, when it was presented to Kenneth Lonergan. It confers a prize of $25,000 to a writer whose work represents the year’s best writing for performance, exemplifying excellence and influence in the world of theater, television, or film. At the March 2 ceremony, Lonergan, Cynthia Nixon, and Christine Baranski will pay tribute to Nichols and present the award to this year’s winner, Tom Stoppard.

At once elegant and variegated in their intellectual pursuits, Tom Stoppard’s twistingly cerebral plays are also suffused with humor and heart. Traversing time to extract new meaning from history and the literary canon, Stoppard dauntlessly maps the potentials and limits of human experience. In a review of Nichols’ 1984 production of The Real Thing, The New York Times deemed him “an intellect that has few equals in contemporary theater.” The Times (UK) has called him “Britain’s greatest living playwright.”

Stoppard’s newest play Leopoldstadt takes place in the eponymous old Jewish quarter of Vienna—where Jews from the Pale of Settlement migrated the late 1800s and early 1900s, seeking refuge from pogroms—and follows one Jewish family there across the first half of the 20th century. Though Stoppard often looks outward for influence, as evidenced in his works’ many references to and mind-warping reconsiderations of our literary past, he has described Leopoldstadt as a rare “personal” work. (Stoppard grew up fleeing the rise of Nazism, and his four grandparents were killed in concentration camps.)

M. NourbeSe Philip ­– PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature

Founded in 2016 in collaboration with the Vladimir Nabokov Literary Foundation, the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature is conferred annually to a living author whose body of work, either written in or translated into English, represents the highest level of achievement in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and/or drama, and is of enduring originality and consummate craftsmanship. Previous winners of the award include Sandra Cisneros, Edna O’Brien, and Adonis.

This year’s PEN/Nabokov Award judges—Alexis Okeowo, George Elliott Clarke, Hari Kunzru, Lila Azam Zanganeh, and Viet Thanh Nguyen—have chosen poet, novelist, and essayist M. NourbeSe Philip, who has bent and pushed poetry and prose in exhilarating directions, via vivid and fragmentary portraits of the pluralities of African Diasporic experience and searing indictments of the oppressive structures—legal, linguistic, social—carried across history into our present. The Tobago-born, Canada-based writer’s many singular, varied works include She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks, and Zong!

Tanya Barfield – PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award

The PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award reflects Laura Pels’s dedication to supporting excellence in American theater as well as PEN America’s commitment to recognizing and rewarding the literary accomplishment of playwrights. Recent winners have included Larissa Fasthorse, Sibyl Kempson, Tarell Alvin McCraney, Young Jean Lee, and Anne Washburn. Tanya Barfield’s “exquisite” (Time Out), “thoughtful and engrossing” (The New York Times) works—with by their resonance, poignancy, and meticulous social observation—epitomize the qualities the award was established to celebrate.

The judges of the 2020 award—Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Kirsten Greenidge, and Naomi Iizuka—write, “With a unique emotional vividness and political nuance, Barfield’s body of work-to-date explores the complications of lives lived on the margins of belonging or between so-called ‘identities.’…Whether it’s the black tenured math professor in Blue Door (2006) coming to terms with the literal haunting of his ancestors or the couple attempting to adopt an African child battling the specters of their own white privilege in The Call (2013) or the intersectional lovers in Bright Half Life (2014) possessed by the spirits of their younger selves in a newfound era of marriage equality, Barfield’s worlds are full of ghosts and it is only through a confrontation with them that the living truly learn what it is to live.”

Leigh Silverman—who directed the premieres of Blue Door, The Call, and Bright Half Life—will present the award to Barfield at the ceremony on March 2. Actor Kerry Butler, star of The Call, and award-winning actor, writer, and singer-songwriter Eisa Davis (Pulitzer Prize finalist for Bulrusher) will perform excerpts from Barfield’s work.

Rigoberto González – PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry

Rigoberto González courtesy of Carlos Parker under CC BY-SA 3.0

“I think, How clever time works, overlapping people’s lives at certain stages, and as some eyes are waking up, others are already closing, securing the continuity of the world. My mother and I were connected for twelve years. She also lived during a time I didn’t exist. And I, in turn, must now keep living when she does not. And yet my father, who still shares the same wheel of time, is more like my parallel line.” Rigoberto González, Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Miriposa

Sample some of Rigoberto’s poems HERE.

The PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry, established by a bequest from Hunce Voelcker and given in even-numbered years, confers $5,000 to a poet whose body of work represents a notable and accomplished presence in American literature. The poet honored by the award is one who has expanded the scope of American poetry and continues to mature with each successive volume of poetry. Rigoberto González will be honored at the Ceremony on March 2, and will share a special reading of his poetry. Rigoberto González has authored five poetry collections, as well as two bilingual children’s books, and ten fiction and non-fiction books. A professor in the MFA program for Creative Writing at Rutgers University-Newark, he has served as a Faculty Member of CantoMundo; is a Founding Member of the Advisory Circle of Con Tinta, a collective of Chicanx/Latinx writers; and is a monthly columnist on Latinx literature for NBC Latino online as well as critic-at-large for The Los Angeles Times.

As this year’s panel of judges—Cornelius Eady, Deborah Paredez, Linda Gregerson, and Monica Youn—writes, González has “devoted his writing life not only to the development of his astonishing voice as a poet and non-fiction writer but to his astute and discerning craft as a reviewer and steadfast advocate for other Latinx voices.”

The judges continue, “Rigoberto González is one of our great mythmakers, cutting to the core of historical narratives and present-day calamities, exposing the faultlines of greed and violence, love and hunger, cruelty and corruption, family and tribe that pattern human experience. The son and grandson of migrant farm workers, and claiming a cultural heritage of lyricism and activism, he is attuned to the voices of the dead and the living, and he counsels us ‘To reach the dead // walk toward the structures still standing, / their windows still looking in.’”

About the PEN America Literary Awards

The PEN America Literary Awards have, since their founding in 1963, brought together award-winning writers, editors, translators, and critics in dynamic and diverse panels of judges that determine the given year’s most resonant literature. Over the decades, the PEN America Literary Awards have expanded across genres, celebrating a wide range of writing and recognizing writers at every stage of their careers.

In recent years, the PEN America Literary Awards ceremony has evolved from an auditorium event for winners and their families into a preeminent gathering of the city’s writing and publishing luminaries and passionate book lovers, who unite to celebrate diverse voices and catapult new writers to prominence. The ceremony encompasses live winner announcements, dramatic readings from selected award-winning works, and a moving In Memoriam segment, which recognizes the literary greats lost over the last year. Recent ceremony participants and attendees include Hari Kondabolu, Matthew Broderick, Candace Bergen, Lorne Michaels, Zadie Smith, Diane Sawyer, and Steve Martin.

While the career-achievement awards are announced in advance, the honors for individual works are announced from the stage. PEN America has previously announced Finalists for the 2020 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, honoring a book-length work of any genre for its originality, merit, and impact, and conferring a prize of $75,000 to its author. In their selection of Finalists, the 2020 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award judging panel—Marilyn Chin, Garth Greenwell, Rebecca Makkai, Michael Schaub, and William T. Vollmann—have elevated works that have reshaped the boundaries of form and signaled strong potential for lasting literary influence. The 2020 Finalists include Anne Boyer for The Undying (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), Yiyun Li for Where Reasons End (Random House), Ilya Kaminsky for Deaf Republic: Poems (Graywolf Press), Rion Amilcar Scott for The World Doesn’t Require You (Liveright), and Chris Ware for Rusty Brown (Pantheon). The 2020 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award winner will be announced live at the March 2 ceremony.

PEN America has also released Longlists for other 2020 Literary Awards, which can be found here.

Tickets for the Ceremony can be purchased here.

PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect open expression in the United States and worldwide. This organization champions the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world. Its mission is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible.

Jamie Dedes. About /Testimonials / Disclosure / Facebook / Medium / Ko-fi

Your donation HERE helps to fund the ongoing mission of The Poet by Day in support of poets and writers, freedom of artistic expression, and human rights.

Poetry rocks the world!

FEEL THE BERN

For Peace, Sustainability, Social Justice

The Poet by Day officially endorses Bernie Sanders for President.

The New New Deal

Link HERE for Bernie’s schedule of events around the country.

“Democracy is not a spectator sport.” Bernie Sanders

“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.”  Lucille Clifton

Posted on

EDWARD BUNKER PRIZE IN FICTION to Celebrate Literary Excellence by Writers in Prison; The Prison Writer Awards

PEN America nonprofit logo under

Last week PEN America announced the launch of the PEN/Edward Bunker Prize in Fiction. This to honor the legacy of the famed crime fiction author and screenwriter. The PEN/Bunker Prize will celebrate short works in fiction by writers who are currently incarcerated and will be presented for the first time as part of the PEN America’s 2019 Prison Writing Awards.

Public domain photograph of Edward Bunker taken at an unknown California prison.

EDWARD BUNKER, who became a prolific writer while incarcerated, leveraged the power of the writing process to reinvent himself into the iconic storyteller author and screenwriter we know today. Celebrated for conceiving some of the most gripping crime stories of our time, he penned numerous books, collaborated with celebrity A-listers like Quentin Tarantino and Danny Trejo, was a screenwriter on Straight Time (1978), Runaway Train (1985) and Animal Factory (2000), and acted alongside Hollywood elite in films such as The Running Man, Tango & Cash, and Reservoir Dogs. Thirteen years after his death, his legacy and the transformative power of writing continues through his family’s support of the PEN America Prison Writing Program.

In addition to a cash prize, each recipient will be paired with a writing mentor and given a clear Swintec typewriter—the only typewriter allowed in U.S. prisons, and the one used by Edward Bunker when he first began to write.

“Eddie Bunker’s inspirational legacy is threaded through the hundreds of submissions that pour into PEN America’s Prison Writing Awards each year,” said Caits Meissner, PEN America Prison and Justice Writing Program manager. “Like Eddie, our writers use the written word to expose the painful aspects of incarceration, as well as offer up moments of triumphant humanity that shine light into dark spaces. Thirteen years after his passing, we’re incredibly grateful for the opportunity to continue Eddie’s legacy of transformative writing with his family’s generous support of our program.”

“The Bunker prize is a perfect match for what PEN America is doing with the Prison and Justice Program—reaching out to prisoners who have turned to writing as a salvation, and hopefully a future. I wanted to bring hope and inspiration to those important voices out there that have value and need to be heard. And just as importantly, because our son, Brendan Bunker, sees this as one more way to keep his father and his work immortalized,” said Jennifer Steele, wife of Eddie Bunker.

PEN America’s Prison Writing Program, founded in 1971 in the wake of the Attica riots, advances the restorative, rehabilitative, and transformative possibilities of writing, and has offered many thousands of incarcerated writers free writing resources, skilled mentors, and audiences for their work. A hallmark of the program is the PEN America Prison Writing Awards, which recognizes works by incarcerated writers in poetry, fiction, drama, nonfiction, and memoir.

The crowded living quarters of San Quentin Prison in California, in January 2006. As a result of overcrowding in the California state prison system, the United States Supreme Court ordered California to reduce its prison population (the second largest in the nation, after Texas). Public domain photograph

Every year hundreds of imprisoned writers from around the country submit poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and dramatic works to the Prison Writing Awards, one of the few outlets of free expression for the country’s incarcerated population.

This month, the first print anthology of award-winning works from the Prison Writing Awards will be published. And, yesterday, September 13, PEN America presented Break Out: Voices from the Inside at the Brooklyn Book Festival, featuring readings and artistic interpretations of works by incarcerated writers, staged by prominent authors on the outside. This is part of a series of events centered on mass incarceration and writers in prison. For more information visit the events calendar.

***

PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect open expression in the United States and worldwide. It champions the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world. Its mission is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible.

ABOUT

Poet and writer, I was once columnist and associate editor of a regional employment publication. Currently I run this site, The Poet by Day, an information hub for poets and writers. I am the managing editor of The BeZine published by The Bardo Group Beguines (originally The Bardo Group), a virtual arts collective I founded.  I am a weekly contributor to Beguine Again, a site showcasing spiritual writers.

My work is featured in a variety of publications and on sites, including: Levure littéraure, Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature,Compass Rose, Connotation Press, The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, Second Light, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Meta / Phor(e) /Play, and California Woman.

Posted on

Leading Historians, Novelists, Poets and Children’s Writers Are Among the Authors to be Featured during U.S. 2018 National Book Festival

The Washington, D.C. Convention Center at Mount Vernon Square courtesy of APK like a lollipop under CC BY-SA 3.0 license

Dozens of best-selling authors, leading historians, American poets and children’s writers will be featured speakers at the U.S. Library of Congress 2018 National Book Festival. The festival will be held on Saturday, Sept. 1, from 8:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C.  This year’s schedule includes a wide-ranging mix of authors and genres.

HISTORY and BIOGRAPHY

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright will discuss her new book, Fascism: A Warning, a history of fascism in the 20th century and how its legacy shapes the world.

Presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin will speak about her new book, Leadership in Turbulent Times, an examination of leadership based on four presidents she has studied most closely.

Historian Jon Meacham will discuss his new book, The Soul of America, about critical times in our history when hope overcame fear and division.

Alexander Hamilton biographer Ron Chernow is back with a new biography of Ulysses S. Grant.

POETRY and WRITING

Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith will join the festival for a conversation with former Poet Laureate Robert Hass about the making of poetry.

American Author, Amy Tan (b. 1952). Her work explores mother-daughter relationships and the Chinese American experience. Public Domain photo courtesy of Robert Foothorap

Best-selling author Amy Tan will discuss her new memoir, Where the Past Begins, A Writer’s Memoir, delving into memories of her traumatic childhood, the inspiration behind her fiction writings and the workings of her mind as a writer.

CHILDREN and TEENS

Children’s author and Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Diaz will discuss his debut picture book, Island Born, about a girl who can’t remember the island where she immigrated from – so she imagines it with help from family and friends.

Matt de la Peña and Loren Long will discuss their new children’s book, Love.

Leigh Bardugo will speak about her series, Six of Crows, a young adult best-seller.

Jacqueline Woodson, the Library of Congress National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, will discuss two new books she has been writing.

Novelists

Isabel Allende will discuss her novel In the Midst of Winter. The story is about an academic who rear-ends a car driven by an undocumented immigrant and an adventure that unfolds.

Dave Eggars will discuss his new book, The Monk of Mokha, the true story of a young Yemeni American man’s quest to resurrect the ancient art of Yemeni coffee but is trapped by civil war.

American Novelist and Short Story Writer, Jennifer Egan (b. 1962), is the author of several novels and a short story collection. Her new novel, Manhattan Beach, published last fall, has been awarded the 2018 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. Her last novel, A Visit From the Goon Squad, won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Los Angeles Times book prize. Also a journalist, she has written frequently in the New York Times Magazine. Photo courtesy of David Shankbone under CC BY 3.0.

Jennifer Egan will discuss her historical novel Manhattan Beach, set in the docks of Brooklyn during World War II when a girl becomes the first female diver on the squad.

Additional authors—including the Main Stage lineup—and other details of the festival will be announced in the coming months.

More information and updates will be available on the National Book Festival website at loc.gov/bookfest/.

Later this summer, the National Book Festival app will be updated with complete presenter, schedule and wayfinding information for iOS or Android smartphones. Follow the festival on Twitter @librarycongress with hashtag #NatBookFest.

The Main Reading Room of the U.S. Library of Congress courtesy of Carol M. Highsmith. Public domain.

The Library of Congress is the world’s largest library, offering access to the creative record of the United States—and extensive materials from around the world—both on-site and online. It is the main research arm of the U.S. Congress and the home of the U.S. Copyright Office. Explore collections, reference services and other programs and plan a visit at loc.gov, access the official site for U.S. federal legislative information at congress.gov, and register creative works of authorship at copyright.gov.

ABOUT