The lineup for the 2011 National Book Festival – going to two days this year for the first time – continues to grow, with information on scores of authors, video clips of authors and book-lovers, and a “countdown clock” among the features of the festival website now live.
NBF poster by Jon J Muth
Always a family-friendly event, this year’s festival will also feature the biggest lineup of authors for children the Library of Congress, which sponsors and organizes the festival, has yet assembled. The big weekend is Saturday, Sept. 24 (10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.) and Sunday, Sept. 25 (1 p.m. to 5:30 pm.) between 9th and 14th streets on the National Mall, rain or shine. The event is free and open to the public.
The website offers a downloadable file of the 2011 National Book Festival poster by renowned illustrator Jon J Muth, who will appear at the festival.
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough, authors Russell Banks, Dave Eggers and Terry McMillan, Pulitzer Prize-winners Siddhartha Mukherjee, Jennifer Egan, and Eric Foner, authors Garrison Keillor and Amy Chua and Nobel- and Pulitzer-Prize winner Toni Morrison will be among more than 80 writers slated to attend this year’s festival. Other authors scheduled to appear at the festival include Edmund Morris, Louis Bayard, Isabel Wilkerson, pianist Leon Fleischer, poet Rita Dove, Hoda Kotb, Gregory Maguire, Esmeralda Santiago, National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature Katherine Paterson, television newsman Jim Lehrer and actress/children’s book author Julianne Moore.
A special pavilion will be set up, celebrating the joys of reading aloud and featuring authors for very young children. Also featured will be celebrities and musical acts appealing to kids.
We’re still adding authors … who would you most like to see onstage at the National Book Festival?