Library of Congress Announces Award-Winning Authors To Participate in Seventh Annual National Book Festival

The Librarian of Congress and Laura Bush Invite Book Lovers of All Ages To Celebrate the Joy of Reading and Lifelong Literacy on the National Mall on Sept. 29
SPECIAL NOTE: A media repository is accessible, for press to download background materials, high-resolution images, video and audio sound bites, b-roll and other audiovisual resources, as well as to request interviews with participating authors. This information can be accessed via the Press Registration link at www.loc.gov/bookfest.

The 2007 National Book Festival, organized and sponsored by the Library of Congress and hosted by Mrs. Laura Bush, will be held from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 29, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., between 7th and 14th streets (rain or shine). The festival is free and open to the public.

"This will be the seventh year of this extraordinary celebration of the joy of reading and the creativity of America’s writers and illustrators," said Librarian of Congress James H. Billington. "The National Book Festival brings authors and readers together to share the stories that touch their minds and hearts. Tens of thousands of book lovers see firsthand how reading changes lives and how our country, its citizens and its libraries promote reading in imaginative and inspiring ways."

"The National Book Festival welcomes all Americans to the National Mall to celebrate reading and meet with some of America’s most-loved authors from across the country," said Mrs. Bush. "Readers of all ages can discover the joys of new books and fall in love again with old favorites."

The 2007 National Book Festival is made possible with generous support from Distinguished Benefactor Target; Charter Sponsors AT&T, The Amend Group and The Washington Post; Patrons AARP, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the James Madison Council and the National Endowment for the Arts; and Contributors Barnes & Noble, the Library of Congress Federal Credit Union, Marshall and Dee Ann Payne, NBA/WNBA, PBS, Penguin Group (USA) and Scholastic Inc.

This year about 70 well-known authors, illustrators and poets will talk about their books in the following pavilions: Children; Teens & Children; Fiction & Fantasy; Mysteries & Thrillers; History & Biography; Home & Family; and Poetry. Festivalgoers can have books signed by their favorite authors, and children can meet ever-popular storybook and television characters and NBA/WNBA players appearing on the festival grounds throughout the day.

Participating authors include fiction and fantasy writers Joyce Carol Oates, Jodi Picoult, Harry Turtledove, Edward P. Jones and Terry Pratchett. The History & Biography pavilion will feature Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Kennedy; Ken Burns and Geoffrey Ward, authors of "War: An Intimate History, 1941-1945"; Michael Beschloss, whose most recent book is "Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America"; and ABC News correspondent and author Jan Crawford Greenburg.

Authors and illustrators of books for children and teens include Coretta Scott King award winner Ashley Bryan; Newbery Medal winner Patricia MacLachlan; 2007 Newbery Honor winner Jennifer Holm; 2007 Caldecott winner David Wiesner; M.T. Anderson, winner of the 2006 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature; Gene Luen Yang, who received the Michael L. Printz Award for excellence in literature written for young adults; and Rosemary Wells, the recipient of numerous awards and citations.

Popular authors in the Mysteries & Thrillers pavilion include J.A. Jance, Lisa Scottoline, David Baldacci, Deborah Crombie and Stephen L. Carter. In the Home & Family pavilion, book lovers will meet, among others, barbecue king Steve Raichlen; Emmy award-winning chief medical correspondent for CNN Dr. Sanjay Gupta; and Cat Cora from Food Network’s Iron Chef America.

The newly appointed U.S. Poet Laureate Charles Simic will be featured in the Poetry pavilion. Also participating will be Jack Prelutsky, who has been named by the Poetry Foundation as the nation’s first Children’s Poet Laureate. Other prize-winning poets in the pavilion will include Kevin Prufer, Jon Stallworthy, Anne Stevenson and Diane Thiel.

In the Teens & Children pavilion, the national student winners of the Letters About Literature program will read their personal letters to authors who inspired them. Sponsored by the Library’s Center for the Book with support from Target, this reading and writing promotion program invites young readers in grades 4-12 to write personal letters to authors, past or present, who have changed their views of the world or of themselves. Each year, winners are selected at the state and national levels. As the project’s corporate sponsor, Target awards the six national winners and their parents with a trip to the National Book Festival to share their winning letters with the festival audience. "It is inspiring to see the number of young people whose lives have been positively affected by a particular author or book," said Laysha Ward, vice president, community relations, Target. "Through its comprehensive support of early childhood reading, including the Letters About Literature program and the National Book Festival, Target is helping to instill a love of reading in kids as the foundation for lifelong learning."

The Pavilion of the States, sponsored by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), will highlight reading, literacy and library promotion activities in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and several American trusts and territories. Representatives from the states and territories will welcome families and children interested in learning about writers and reading programs nationwide. IMLS representatives will also be providing information about its library initiatives, including the Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program to recruit and educate the next generation of librarians. The Big Read programs in the states, sponsored by IMLS and the National Endowment for the Arts, will be featured in the pavilion.

In the popular Let’s Read America pavilion, there will be a wide variety of fun-filled reading promotion activities developed by festival sponsors for children.

The Library of Congress Pavilion will feature a variety of interactive family-centered activities illustrating the depth and breadth of the Library’s extraordinary collections available online. Computers will be available for both children and adults to explore the Library’s acclaimed Web site at www.loc.gov. Information about conserving photographs and valuable documents as well as the Library’s digital preservation program will be provided. The Library will share the latest technologies in film and audio preservation developed for its new Packard Campus in Culpeper, Va. A group of veterans who appeared in the Ken Burns film "The War" will be interviewed by Veterans History Project (VHP) historian Tom Wiener. Other VHP programs in the pavilion will feature editors of the upcoming publication "The Library of Congress Companion to World War II"; veterans whose stories are told in the 2008 Veterans History Project Wall Calendar; and veterans interviewed for the last published book by celebrated journalist David Halberstam ("The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War"). The use of VHP materials in the classroom will be showcased in a program where a teacher and students will demonstrate how to interview a veteran.

In addition to planning a range of activities for this year’s festival on the National Mall, the Library is offering a variety of ways for people around the country to participate in the event online. This summer, the Library will launch the National Book Festival Young Readers’ Online Toolkit (www.loc.gov/bookfest) to bring the festival into libraries, schools and homes across the country. The Toolkit will feature information about National Book Festival authors who write for children and teens, podcasts of their readings and teaching tools and activities for kids. This interactive resource also shows educators, parents and children how they can host their own book festivals.

Available again this year will be downloadable podcasts of interviews with popular participating authors. The Library will also present same-day coverage of the morning presentations on its Web site. All of the authors’ presentations will be available on the Library’s site the week following the festival.

In addition to the same-day webcasts, the Library will again collaborate with Book TV on C-SPAN2 to televise events taking place at the festival. The C-SPAN2 Book TV Bus, a mobile television studio with a multimedia demonstration center for the public, will also be on the National Mall.

Leading up to the festival, washingtonpost.com will host a series of online chats with authors appearing at the National Book Festival. These text-based discussions can be viewed daily, starting on Monday, Sept. 24, on the site at www.washingtonpost.com. The schedule of chats and authors’ names will be posted on the site and the Library’s site at www.loc.gov/bookfest. Participants can submit questions in advance or during the live discussion. Authors’ responses will be posted while the program is airing or at a later date on washingtonpost.com’s online discussion archives. Washington Post Radio will also be interviewing authors prior to the festival day.

The artist for this year’s festival is Mercer Mayer, whose work brings a magical quality to the 2007 National Book Festival poster. Mayer will be among the authors and illustrators speaking in the Children’s Pavilion. Posters featuring his digital painting will be available free of charge at the festival.

The Junior League of Washington will again have hundreds of volunteers to help with the National Book Festival.

A preliminary list of participating authors, illustrators and poets, their books, and other activities in each presentation pavilion follows. For more information about them and the festival, visit www.loc.gov/bookfest.

CHILDREN (sponsored by AT&T)
María Celeste Arrarás, "The Magic Cane"
Ashley Bryan/Jan Spivey Gilchrist, "My America"
Carmen Deedy, "Martina the Beautiful Cockroach: A Cuban Folktale"
Mercer Mayer, "The Bravest Knight" and "There’s a Nightmare in My Closet"
Megan McDonald, "Judy Moody & Stink: The Holly Joliday"
Judy Schachner, "Skippyjon Jones and the Big Bones"
Rosemary Wells, "Red Moon at Sharpsburg" and "Max’s ABCs"
David Wiesner, "Flotsam"
Jacqueline Wilson, "Candyfloss"
NBA/WNBA

TEENS & CHILDREN (sponsored by Target)
M.T. Anderson, "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1"
Holly Black, "Ironside"
Jennifer Holm, "Middle School is Worse Than Meatloaf"
Gail Carson Levine, "Fairy Haven and the Quest for the Wand"
Patricia MacLachlan, "Edward’s Eyes"
Patricia McCormick, "Sold"
Shelia P. Moses, "The Baptism"
Cynthia Leitich Smith, "Tantalize"
Gene Luen Yang, "American Born Chinese"
Letters About Literature

FICTION & FANTASY (sponsored by the James Madison Council)
Edward P. Jones, "All Aunt Hagar’s Children"
Thomas Mallon, "Fellow Travelers"
Sena Jeter Naslund, "Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette"
Joyce Carol Oates, "The Gravedigger’s Daughter"
Jodi Picoult, "Nineteen Minutes"
Terry Pratchett, "Making Money"
Jeff Shaara, "The Rising Tide"
Lalita Tademy, "Red River"
Harry Turtledove, "The Gladiator"
Susan Vreeland, "Luncheon of the Boating Party"

HISTORY & BIOGRAPHY (sponsored by AARP)
Diane Ackerman, "The Zookeeper’s Wife: A War Story"
Michael Beschloss, "Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America
1789-1989"
Ken Burns/Geoffrey Ward, "The War: An Intimate History, 1941-1945"
Jan Crawford Greenburg, "Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Control of the United States Supreme Court"
David M. Kennedy, "The Library of Congress World War II Companion"
Michael B. Oren, "Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East 1776 to the Present"
Arnold Rampersad, "Ralph Ellison: A Biography"
Meryle Secrest, "Shoot the Widow: Adventures of a Biographer in Search of Her Subject"
James Swanson, "Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer"
Douglas L. Wilson, "Lincoln’s Sword: The Presidency and the Power of Words"

HOME & FAMILY (sponsored by Target)
Ann Amernick, "The Art of the Dessert"
Cat Cora, "Cooking from the Hip: Fast, Easy, Phenomenal Meals"
Dr. Sanjay Gupta, "Chasing Life: New Discoveries in the Search for Immortality to Help You Age Less Today"
Doro Bush Koch, "My Father, My President: A Personal Account of the Life of George H. W. Bush"
Judith Martin, "No Vulgar Hotel/The Desire and Pursuit of Venice"
Joan Nathan, "The New American Cooking"
Nancy Pearl, "Book Crush"
Martha Raddatz, "A Long Road Home: A Story of War and Family"
Steve Raichlen, "How to Grill"
Victoria Rowell, "The Women Who Raised Me"
Patricia Schultz, "1,000 Places to See in the USA and Canada Before You Die"

MYSTERIES & THRILLERS (sponsored by The Amend Group)
David Baldacci, "Simple Genius"
Stephen L. Carter, "New England White"
Deborah Crombie, "Water Like a Stone"
Brian Haig, "Man in the Middle"
Carolyn Hart, "Set Sail for Murder"
Stephen Hunter, "The 47th Samurai"
David Ignatius, "Body of Lies"
J. A. Jance, "Justice Denied"
Lisa Scottoline, "Daddy’s Girl"
Daniel Silva, "The Secret Servant"

POETRY (sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts)
Francisco Hernández, "Connecting Lines: New Poetry from Mexico"
N. Scott Momaday, "The Way to Rainy Mountain" and "House Made of Dawn"
Jack Prelutsky, "The Wizard" and "In Aunt Giraffe’s Green Garden"
Kevin Prufer, "Fallen from a Chariot"
Jon Stallworthy, "Body Language"
Anne Stevenson, "Stone Milk"
Diane Thiel, "Echolocations"
Kevin Young, "For the Confederate Dead"
U.S. Poet Laureate Charles Simic, "My Noiseless Entourage: Poems"
Poetry Out Loud