2020 Festival Videos

Presenters included Madeleine Albright, Jenna Bush Hager, John Grisham, Colson Whitehead, Melinda Gates, Leigh Bardugo, Ann Druyan, Haben Girma, James McBride, Kate DiCamillo, Ann Patchett, Jason Reynolds, Salman Rushdie, Gene Luen Yang, Tomi Adeyemi, Sarah M. Broom, Kali Fajardo-Anstine, Joy Harjo, Robert Pinsky, Tracy K. Smith, Juan Felipe Herrera, Walter Isaacson, Sandra Cisneros, Amy Tan and Jon Meacham.

  • Film, Video
    Haben Girma: National Book Festival 2020 "Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law" (Twelve) is the incredible life story of Haben Girma, the first deafblind graduate of Harvard Law School, and her journey from isolation to extraordinary accomplishment. Girma's advocacy for people with disabilities won her the Helen Keller Achievement Award as well as praise from President Obama, who named her White House Champion of Change.
    • Contributor: Library of Congress - National Book Festival (U.S.)
    • Date: 2020
  • Film, Video
    Melinda Gates: National Book Festival 2020 For the past 20 years, Melinda Gates has been on a mission to find solutions for people with the most urgent needs, wherever they live. Throughout this journey, one thing has become increasingly clear to her: If you want to lift a society up, you need to stop keeping women down. Her new book is "The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the…
    • Contributor: Library of Congress - National Book Festival (U.S.)
    • Date: 2020
  • Film, Video
    Jason Reynolds: National Book Festival 2020 Jason Reynolds, the Library of Congress's National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, talks about "Stamped: Racism, Antiracism and You" (Little, Brown), the bestselling book that he and African-American studies scholar Ibram X. Kendi have produced to give us a timely, crucial and empowering exploration of racism -- and antiracism -- in America.
    • Contributor: Library of Congress - National Book Festival (U.S.)
    • Date: 2020
  • Film, Video
    Reinventing the Festival: National Book Festival 2020 To talk about the ways this book festival and so many others are having to reimagine themselves in the age of COVID-19 and the virtual world, Marie Arana (literary director of the Library of Congress and the National Book Festival) joins Peter Florence (founder of the Hay Festival), Cristina Fuentes La Roche (executive director of the Hay Festival), Mitchell Kaplan (co-founder of the Miami…
    • Contributor: Library of Congress - National Book Festival (U.S.)
    • Date: 2020
  • Film, Video
    How Liberty Flourishes: National Book Festival 2020 Jared Diamond, "Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis" (Little, Brown), appears in conversation with James A. Robinson, "The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies and the Fate of Liberty" (Penguin). Diamond's book centers on why some nations recover from trauma and others don't, positing a more contemporary version of his bestselling "Guns, Germs and Steel." Robinson's book (co-authored with Daron Acemoglu) answers the question of…
    • Contributor: Library of Congress - National Book Festival (U.S.)
    • Date: 2020
  • Film, Video
    Big Brother Is Watching: National Book Festival 2020 Barton Gellman, "Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State" (Penguin), appears in conversation with Thomas Rid, "Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), and Washington Post columnist and spy novelist David Ignatius (moderator), "The Paladin: A Spy Novel" (Norton). Gellman's narrative of the modern surveillance state is based on unique access to Edward Snowden and…
    • Contributor: Library of Congress - National Book Festival (U.S.)
    • Date: 2020
  • Film, Video
    The Ray Bradbury Effect: National Book Festival 2020 Ann Druyan, "Cosmos: Possible Worlds" (National Geographic), and Leland Melvin, "Chasing Space: An Astronaut's Story of Grit, Grace and Second Chances" (Amistad), talk about Ray Bradbury's effect on their lives and their work. The Bradbury centennial is currently being celebrated by fiction writers, astronomers, astronauts and readers throughout the world. Melvin is one of NASA's first African American astronauts. Ann Druyan, widow of astronomer…
    • Contributor: Library of Congress - National Book Festival (U.S.)
    • Date: 2020
  • Film, Video
    Sarah Scoles: National Book Festival 2020 In "They Are Already Here: UFO Culture and Why We See Saucers" (Pegasus), veteran science writer Sarah Scoles gives us an anthropological glimpse into the UFO community. Scoles tells of her experiences with researchers -- believers in space alien visitations as well as skeptics -- as they pursue mysteries, both terrestrial and cosmic.
    • Contributor: Library of Congress - National Book Festival (U.S.)
    • Date: 2020
  • Film, Video
    Insect World: National Book Festival 2020 Edward D. Melillo, "The Butterfly Effect: Insects and the Making of the Modern World" (Knopf), appears in conversation with Wendy Williams, "The Language of Butterflies: How Thieves, Hoarders, Scientists and Other Obsessives Unlocked the Secrets of the World's Favorite Insect" (Simon & Schuster). Amherst professor Melillo gives us an insightful, entertaining dive in the fruitful, centuries-long relationship between humans and insects, while Williams --…
    • Contributor: Library of Congress - National Book Festival (U.S.)
    • Date: 2020
  • Film, Video
    Katherine Eban: National Book Festival 2020 From award-winning journalist Katherine Eban, "Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom" (Ecco) is an explosive narrative investigation of the generic drug boom that reveals fraud and life-threatening dangers on a global scale, achieving for the pharmaceutical industry what Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" did for the meatpacking industry.
    • Contributor: Library of Congress - National Book Festival (U.S.)
    • Date: 2020
  • Film, Video
    Ann Druyan: National Book Festival 2020 In "Cosmos: Possible Worlds" (National Geographic), the sequel to Carl Sagan's blockbuster "Cosmos" -- written by Sagan's widow and collaborator, Ann Druyan -- we continue an electrifying journey through space and time, connecting with worlds billions of miles away and envisioning a future of science tempered with wisdom.
    • Contributor: Library of Congress - National Book Festival (U.S.)
    • Date: 2020
  • Film, Video
    Literary Lives: National Book Festival 2020 Mark Doty, "What Is the Grass: Walt Whitman in My Life" (Norton), appears in conversation with Jenn Shapland, "My Autobiography of Carson McCullers: A Memoir" (Tin House). Effortlessly blending biography, criticism and memoir, National Book Award-winning poet and bestselling memoirist Doty explores his personal quest for Walt Whitman, while Shapland encounters the love letters of Carson McCullers and a woman named Annemarie. Moderated by…
    • Contributor: Library of Congress
    • Date: 2020
  • Film, Video
    Tracy K. Smith: National Book Festival 2020 Tracy K. Smith served as the 22nd Poet Laureate of the United States from 2017 to 2019 and is now chair of the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University. A Pulitzer Prize winner for her 2011 collection, "Life on Mars," she here reads "The United States Welcomes You" from her latest collection of poetry, "Wade in the Water: Poems" (Graywolf). Her recent…
    • Contributor: Library of Congress - National Book Festival (U.S.)
    • Date: 2020
  • Film, Video
    Confronting Racism and Bigotry: National Book Festival 2020 From Ibram X. Kendi, the National Book Award-winning author of "How to Be an Antiracist" (One World), comes a groundbreaking approach to understanding and uprooting racism and inequality. From Saeed Jones, winner of the 2019 Kirkus Prize in nonfiction, comes "How We Fight for Our Lives: A Memoir" (Simon & Schuster), a devastating memoir about power (who has it, how and why we deploy…
    • Contributor: Library of Congress - National Book Festival (U.S.)
    • Date: 2020
  • Film, Video
    Daniel Markovits: National Book Festival 2020 From eminent Yale Law professor Daniel Markovits, "The Meritocracy Trap: How America's Foundational Myth Feeds Inequality, Dismantles the Middle Class and Devours the Elite" (Penguin) presents a revolutionary new argument attacking the false promise of meritocracy, the axiom of American life that advantage should be earned through ability and effort.
    • Contributor: Library of Congress - National Book Festival (U.S.)
    • Date: 2020
  • Film, Video
    Richard Haass: National Book Festival 2020 "The World: A Brief Introduction" (Penguin) is an invaluable primer from Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, that is meant to help experts and non-experts alike navigate a time in which many of our biggest challenges come from the world beyond our borders. Interview by David Rubenstein.
    • Contributor: Library of Congress - National Book Festival (U.S.)
    • Date: 2020
  • Film, Video
    Jessica & Parker Curry: National Book Festival 2020 In "Parker Looks Up: An Extraordinary Moment" (Aladdin), a visit to Washington's National Portrait Gallery forever alters Parker Curry's young life when she views first lady Michelle Obama's gigantic and stunning portrait. Parker Curry is five years old; her co-writer is her mother, Jessica Curry.
    • Contributor: Library of Congress - National Book Festival (U.S.)
    • Date: 2020
  • Film, Video
    Jerry Craft: National Book Festival 2020 Winner of the 2019 Newbery Medal, Coretta Scott King Author Award and Kirkus Prize for Young Readers' Literature, Jerry Craft's "New Kid" (Quill Tree) is a timely, honest graphic novel about starting over at a new school where diversity is low and the struggle to fit in is real.
    • Contributor: Library of Congress - National Book Festival (U.S.)
    • Date: 2020
  • Film, Video
    Frank Morrison & Connie Schofield-Morrison: National Book Festival 2020 Summer is over, and this little girl has got the school spirit! What can she learn today? "I Got the School Spirit" (Bloomsbury) is an exuberant celebration of the first day of school by Connie Schofield-Morrison and illustrated by Frank Morrison, a Coretta Scott King-John Steptoe Award winner.
    • Contributor: Library of Congress - National Book Festival (U.S.)
    • Date: 2020
  • Film, Video
    Don Tate: National Book Festival 2020 "William Still and His Freedom Stories: The Father of the Underground Railroad" (Peachtree) is the remarkable, little-known story of William Still, known as the Father of the Underground Railroad, from award-winning author-illustrator Don Tate.
    • Contributor: Library of Congress - National Book Festival (U.S.)
    • Date: 2020
  • Film, Video
    Dan Brown: National Book Festival 2020 The bestselling author of "The Da Vinci Code," Dan Brown, makes his picture book debut with "Wild Symphony" (Rodale), a mindful, humorous, musical and uniquely entertaining book that features conductor Maestro Mouse.
    • Contributor: Library of Congress - National Book Festival (U.S.)
    • Date: 2020
  • Film, Video
    Deborah Hopkinson: National Book Festival 2020 In "Thanks to Frances Perkins: Fighter for Workers' Rights" (Peachtree), Deborah Hopkinson tells about the life of an American first, Frances Perkins, who was the first woman Cabinet member of the United States, made heroic efforts to bring about new laws to treat people better and make workplaces safer, and created our Social Security program. This year, 2020, marks the 85th anniversary of the…
    • Contributor: Library of Congress - National Book Festival (U.S.)
    • Date: 2020
  • Film, Video
    Jon Scieszka & Steven Weinberg: National Book Festival 2020 Jon Scieszka and Steven Weinberg's new book "AstroNuts Mission Two: The Water Planet" (Chronicle) follows a new mission, where AstroWolf, LaserShark, SmartHawk and StinkBug must find a planet fit for human life after we've finally made Earth unlivable. After they splash-land on another planet, they find power-hungry clams, a rebellious underwater force and a world full of things suspiciously too-good-to-be-true.
    • Contributor: Library of Congress - National Book Festival (U.S.)
    • Date: 2020
  • Film, Video
    The Virtues of Brevity: National Book Festival 2020 Susan Minot, "Why I Don't Write: And Other Stories" (Knopf), shares experiences with Karen Russell, "Orange World and Other Stories" (Knopf). Two masters of the short story talk about their craft, the ways they work and the enchantments of the briefer form. Minot is the award-winning author of many novels and collections, including "Monkeys," "Lust" and "Thirty Girls." Russell, author of "Vampires in the…
    • Contributor: Library of Congress - National Book Festival (U.S.)
    • Date: 2020
  • Film, Video
    Joy Harjo: National Book Festival 2020 Joy Harjo is the 23rd and current United States Poet Laureate -- the first Native American to receive the honor. A member of the Muskogee (Creek) nation, her most recent poetry collection is "An American Sunrise: Poems" (Norton), from which she here reads the poem "Running." Her recent anthology is "When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton…
    • Contributor: Library of Congress - National Book Festival (U.S.)
    • Date: 2020