Havana-born and Georgia-raised Carmen Agra Deedy slipped into the accents and characters of her tale in relating the making of "The Yellow Star," her prize-winning book for children.
The purpose of fiction, said author Tim O'Brien, is to try to make you believe. "A good story hits the whole human being—in the stomach, in the heart, in the nape of the neck. I'm a believer in stories, and that's why I'm here today," O'Brien told his audience at the National Book Festival.
Gail Buckley, author and daughter of singer-actress Lena Horne, said "America's history is full of extraordinary wartime generations and extraordinary heroes, but we have never really seen the whole picture of American greatness. For too long, great black generations were left out; making history whole is about uncovering the secrets."
Princeton University history professor James McPherson, author of more than a dozen books about the Civil War, posed two questions to his audience about the Battle of Antietam, when 6,000 died and 17,000 were wounded or missing: "What could justify such a slaughter? Was anything accomplished?"
Luci Tapahonso, a poet and professor of American Indian studies and English at the University of Arizona, Tucson, greeted the guests at the White House ceremony opening the book festival in her native Navajo language and then in English.
Virginia attorney-turned-writer David Baldacci, a strong advocate of books and reading, said he regards a rejection of a written work as "a badge of honor." It shows that "you're writing, you're trying, you're putting yourself out there. ... A rejection is only bad if it dissuades you from continuing to write; then you fail."
Anita Shreve followed other career paths—as a teacher and then as a journalist in Africa—before turning to writing fiction full time. She spoke about the importance of place in her novels. "[Place] sounds a note like a tuning fork. It sets my imagination humming and allows a tale to unravel in my head."
The illustrator or author of more than 70 books for children, Eric Carle found himself correcting Laura Bush as she pronounced the title of his latest book, "Slowly, Slowly, Slowly Said the Sloth." Said Carle, "No, Mrs. Bush, it's ‘Slooowly, Sloooowly, Slooooowly …'" The audience—as well as Mrs. Bush—laughed as he told the story.
Dava Sobel said of her 1999 bestseller, "Galileo's Daughter": "The fact that this person [Galileo], who was presented as the great enemy of the Catholic Church, had not one but two daughters who were nuns, was a powerful statement and made me think that possibly everything I had learned about him was wrong," she said.
Norman Bridwell, creator of Clifford the Big Red Dog—his series of books about Clifford has sold 100 million copies over the past 40 years—said he is still trying to figure out "what makes Clifford the Big Red Dog so darn lovable."
As elegantly dressed as their novels are written, the mother-daughter team of Mary Higgins Clark and Carol Higgins Clark wooed their book festival audience with spicy stories, witty one-liners, and insights into their success.
Cowboy storyteller Waddie Mitchell talked about growing up on a ranch at the end of a dirt road 60 miles from the nearest town. "We had no TV, so we sat around at night and did the strangest thing—we told stories,"he said.
Vine Deloria Jr. of the Standing Rock Sioux, is the author of more than 20 books and the recipient of the 1996 Native American Writers Circle Lifetime Achievement Award. "Instead of fighting over the idea of beginnings," he said, the focus should be a better understanding of earth history. "Then we can talk about how we think things originated."
Henry Louis Gates Jr., chair of Afro-American Studies at Harvard University, recalled how he discovered and acquired the 1850s manuscript of "The Bondswoman's Narrative." "I knew I was onto something," he said, when he discovered that the people named in the manuscript had actually existed.
"I think with my fingers," said Jim Lehrer, nationally known public broadcaster and novelist. "I can write anywhere; it is a natural act for me." He told his audience, "I've been writing novels longer than I've been on television; you just didn't know about it!"
Famous for his Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee Navajo mystery novels, Tony Hillerman gave credit to his mother for influencing his development as a writer: "She read to us and made sure that we had something to read," even though the family lived a long way from a library.
Haynes Johnson, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, spent six years working on his latest book "The Best of Times: The Boom and Bust Years of America Before and After Everything Changed." Said Johnson, "Tragically, the story I tell turned out to be a story of squander, lost opportunities. We allowed ourselves to be diverted."
Veteran journalist David Halberstam lives only a few blocks from New York firehouse Engine 40, Ladder 35, which sent 13 men to help at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. He wrote "Firehouse" he said, because "I wanted to know who they were and why they did what they did." Twelve of them died.
Theodore Roosevelt's biographer, Edmund Morris, described the 26th president as "the most book loving president" after Thomas Jefferson. "As a young Harvard student, Roosevelt once said ‘reading with me is a disease,'" according to Morris, whose biography "The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt" won the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award in 1980.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author David McCullough, in concluding the days events, called the Library of Congress "the greatest library in the country and in the world. For me this is hallowed ground."
