The National Book Festival this year will expand to two days, allowing organizers to add about 20 more authors to the roster of speakers for the hugely popular event on the National Mall.
Organized and sponsored by the Library of Congress, the 11th annual festival will be held on the Mall from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 24, and 1 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 25.
“Fans of the National Book Festival have urged us to make it a weekend-long event for many years,” said Librarian of Congress James H. Billington.
The extra day will allow festival organizers to both increase the number of authors at the event and offer fans better access to their favorite writers. Organizers plan to bring at least 90 authors to the festival to talk about their work and sign books for fans, up from about 70 in past years.
Author sessions this year will be longer, giving writers more time to speak and festival-goers more time to ask questions at the end of each session. And the break between sessions will be longer, making it easier for fans to navigate the grounds and catch the authors they want to see.
The festival location also will make a short move to the west on the Mall. The event this year will be staged between 9th and 14th streets in a space bounded by the American History and Natural History museums to the north and the Smithsonian castle and Agriculture Department to the south.
The book festival has grown steadily since its inception in 2001, attracting some 150,000 fans last year.
“Last September, during our wonderful 10th-anniversary celebration, we crossed the threshold of a million festival-goers over the life of the festival, and we look forward to welcoming millions more festival-goers of all ages for many years to come,” Billington said.
Organizers also plan several festival-related events for the weeks preceding the festival. Although planning still is under way, the events might include panel discussions of major book genres or sessions on “Books that Changed History” and events aimed at young readers, pegged to summer-reading activities and the encouragement of family read-aloud sessions. Some events will expand on past successes such as the “Hardcover Mysteries” panel discussion of last year, while others will be entirely new.
Some of the popular features of past festivals will be back again this year: The Pavilion of the States, which represents reading-and library-promotion programs in all 50 states; the Let’s Read America Pavilion, which offers reading activities for families; and the Library of Congress Pavilion, which showcases the cultural treasures of the Library’s vast collections.
Updates and more information are available at www.loc.gov/bookfest/.
