Special Event: Final Author Lineup for 2017 National Book Festival Released

Updated August 18

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The 2017 National Book Festival will take place on Saturday, September 2, 2017 in Washington, DC.
Direct to Complete Schedule.
Direct to 2017 National Book Festival Posted (PDF)

From the Library of Congress:

A star-studded and diverse lineup of more than 100 authors, illustrators and poets will be presenting from the festival stages at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C., from 9:30 a.m. until 7:30 p.m
Doors to the convention center will open at 8:30 a.m.
A few festival highlights:
• The eminent historian and Pulitzer Prize-winner David McCullough will open the festival’s Main Stage, which features six other best-selling authors and allows seating for more than 2,500. He will discuss his new book, “The American Spirit: Who We Are and What We Stand For.”
• Dav Pilkey, beloved creator of Captain Underpants, will delight with his latest story, “Dog Man: A Tale of Two Kitties,” on the Children’s Purple Stage.
• On the Children’s Green Stage, two-time Newbery Medal winner Kate DiCamillo will discuss her latest novel, “Raymie Nightingale.”
• Newbery Medalist Kwame Alexander and Mary Rand Hess will talk to teens about their poetic verse novel, “Solo.” The Teens Stage will conclude with one of the festival’s most popular events, a poetry slam.
• In Contemporary Life, Roxane Gay promises to offer an unvarnished discussion of what it’s like to be fat (her preferred term) in a world that prizes the body beautiful.
• National Book Award winner Alice McDermott will be on the Fiction Stage, offering another of her tales of the Irish in America, this time in the 1940s and ’50s, with the launch of a new novel, “The Ninth Hour.”
• A story that most Americans never knew was the subject of “Hidden Figures” by Margot Lee Shetterly. She will be on the History & Biography Stage, which will also offer a panel of authors focusing on the legacy of John F. Kennedy in this 100th anniversary year of his birth.
• Fans of Ernest Hemingway will not want to miss the panel of Mary Dearborn (“Ernest Hemingway: A Biography”), Paul Hendrickson (“Hemingway’s Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost”) and Nicholas Reynolds (“Writer, Sailor, Soldier Spy: Ernest Hemingway’s Secret Adventures”) on the Poetry & Prose Stage. The distinguished author of “A Lesson Before Dying,” Ernest Gaines, also will speak about “The Tragedy of Brady Sims,” his new novel, launching at the festival.
• Longtime best-selling writer Scott Turow has just published a new legal thriller, “Testimony.” He will be on the Thrillers & Fantasy Stage, as will science-fiction master John Scalzi, with “The Collapsing Empire.”
• Finally, the popular Graphic Novels Stage will feature “Big Nate” author Lincoln Peirce, hilarious New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast and National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature Gene Luen Yang.

Schedule

The complete schedule along with other information is available.

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