April 10, 2014
Kai Bird, Kate DiCamillo, Francisco Goldman, Alice McDermott Among Authors at 2014 Library of Congress National Book Festival
Renowned Illustrator Bob Staake Will Create Festival Poster Art
A wealth of authors, poets and illustrators for readers of all ages—including such writers as Jonathan Allen, Amie Parnes, Peter Baker, Ishmael Beah, Kai Bird, Billy Collins, Kate DiCamillo, Francisco Goldman, Henry Hodges, Siri Hustvedt, Cynthia Kadohata, U.S. Reps. John Lewis and James Clyburn, Alice McDermott, George Packer, Lisa See, Maria Venegas, and Gene Luen Yang—will thrill book-lovers at the 2014 Library of Congress National Book Festival. The festival, which is free and open to the public, will take place from 10 a.m to 10 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 30 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C.
The festival for the first time in its history will hold evening hours, with special events between 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. including a poetry slam, a session featuring "Great Books to Great Movies," and a "super-session" for graphic-novel enthusiasts. The theme of this year’s festival is "Stay Up With a Good Book."
The festival’s new location also facilitates an expanded selection of genre pavilions. In addition to the longtime pavilions History & Biography, Fiction & Mystery, Poetry & Prose, Children’s, Contemporary Life, Teens and Special Programs, this year’s festival also will offer new pavilions focused on Science, Culinary Arts, Small Press/International and for children, Picture Books.
"The world of books always offers us something new. This year, the Library’s National Book Festival will return the favor, offering our fresh approach to the world of books," said Librarian of Congress James H. Billington.
Authors who have accepted the Library’s invitation to speak and sign books at the 2014 Library of Congress National Book Festival also include Bob Adelman, Paul Auster, Andrea Beaty, Eula Biss, Kendare Blake, Paul Bogard, Jeffrey Brown, Peter Brown, Eric H. Cline, Bryan Collier, Raúl Colón, James Conaway, Ilene Cooper, Jerry Craft, H. Allen Day, Liza Donnelly, Margaret Engle, Percival Everett, Jules Feiffer, David Theodore George, Carla Hall, Molly Idle, Peniel E. Joseph, Nick Kotz, Nina Krushcheva, Louisa Lim, Eric Litwin, Adrienne Mayor, Meg Medina, Claire Messud, Anchee Min, Elizabeth Mitchell, Richard Moe, John Moeller, Bryan Lee O’Malley, Alicia Ostriker, Laura Overdeck, Dav Pilkey, Paisley Rekdal, Amanda Ripley, Cokie Roberts, Ilyasah Shabazz, Lynn Sherr, Brando Skyhorse, Vivek Tiwary, David Treuer, Ann Ursu, Lynn Weise, Rita Williams-Garcia, Natasha Wimmer, Jacqueline Woodson and Tiphanie Yanique.
Details about the Library of Congress National Book Festival can be found on its website at www.loc.gov/bookfest. The website offers a variety of features, and new material will be added to the website as authors continue to join this year’s stellar lineup.
Among those notables, Alice McDermott, born in Brooklyn and educated in New York and New Hampshire, won the National Book Award for Fiction for her novel "Charming Billy" (1998). Her latest novel is "Someone" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2013). McDermott’s other novels include "A Bigamist’s Daughter" (1983), "That Night" (1987), "At Weddings and Wakes" (1992), "Child of My Heart" (2002) and "After This" (2006). McDermott, who also writes extensively for The New York Times, The New Yorker and The Washington Post, is the Richard A. Macksey Professor of Humanities at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
Kai Bird is the author of the soon-to-be-released "The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames" (Crown/Random House). He also wrote "Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978" (2010) and was co-author with Martin J. Sherwin of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, "American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer" (2005), which additionally won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography and the Duff Cooper Prize for History in London. A contributing editor of The Nation, Bird is also the author of the books "The Chairman: John J. McCloy, the Making of the American Establishment" (1992) and "The Color of Truth: McGeorge Bundy & William Bundy, Brothers in Arms" (1998).
Kate DiCamillo, the Library of Congress National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, wrote "Because of Winn-Dixie" (a Newbery Honor book), "A Tiger Rising" (a National Book Award finalist), "The Tale of Despereaux" (the 2003 Newbery Medal winner) and "The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane" (winner of the Boston Globe Horn Book Award), among others. Her most recent book, a New York Times best-seller, is "Flora & Ulysses" (Candlewick Press, 2013).
Francisco Goldman’s most recent novel is "Say Her Name," which won the 2011 Prix Femina Étranger. His novel "The Long Night of White Chickens" was awarded the American Academy's Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction. Goldman’s novels have been finalists for several prizes, including The PEN/Faulkner Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His other books include "The Ordinary Seaman," "The Divine Husband," "The Art of Political Murder" and "The Interior Circuit." Goldman has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a Cullman Center Fellow at the New York Public Library and a Berlin Fellow at the American Academy. He has written for The New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, Harper's and other publications. He directs the Aura Estrada Prize. Goldman teaches at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn.
Well-known artist and illustrator Bob Staake has designed the artwork for this year’s Library of Congress National Book Festival poster, a collector’s item throughout the 14-year life of the festival.
Staake has been the author or illustrator of more than 60 books, including "The Donut Chef," "Bluebird," "Bugs Galore," "Hello Robots," "Look! A Book," "This Is Not A Pumpkin," "Pets Go Pop" and others. He has also illustrated extensively for magazines, including several covers for The New Yorker, and for newspapers and advertising.
The festival’s new setting will offer many familiar and popular activities. Representatives from across the United States and its territories will celebrate their unique literary offerings in the Pavilion of the States. The Let’s Read America area will offer reading activities that are fun for the whole family. The Library of Congress Pavilion will showcase treasures in the Library’s vast online collections and offer information about Library programs.
The 2014 National Book Festival is made possible through the generous support of National Book Festival Board Co-Chairman David M. Rubenstein; Charter Sponsors the Institute of Museum and Library Services, The Washington Post and Wells Fargo; Patrons the National Endowment for the Arts and PBS KIDS; Contributor Scholastic Inc. and—in the Friends category—the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The Library of Congress, the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution, is the world’s preeminent reservoir of knowledge. Many of the Library’s rich resources and treasures may be accessed through its website, www.loc.gov.
# # #
PR 14-062
04/10/14
ISSN 0731-3527
