Help Us Celebrate the 25th National Book Festival!

The Library of Congress National Book Festival will celebrate its 25^th year on September 6. To honor the occasion, starting today—and for the 24 weeks leading up to this year’s Festival at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center—we’re going to highlight two videos each week from past book festivals, from the festival’s first year in 2001 to 2024.

It’s been a lot of fun for us staff in the Literary Initiatives Office to look back on which books and writers were popular, and which ideas were trending, during our 25 years. I want to thank our interns for combing through the mountains of Festival videos we possess. Ideas come; ideas go. But recordings of National Book Festival events from our entire history are here to stay.

I hope you enjoy combing through our past with us in these next 24 weeks, and I hope you join us on Saturday, September 6 at the Washington Convention Center for our 25^th Festival!

Here are the first two videos, from our kickoff festival in 2001.

#1 New York Times-bestselling author Sue Grafton was the author of 26 books, as well as many short stories and screenplays. Her books are published in twenty-eight countries and in twenty-six languages. Books in her alphabet series, beginning with “A is for Alibi” in 1982, are international bestsellers with readership in the millions. Named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, she received many other honors and awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Private Eye Writers of America, the Ross Macdonald Literary Award, the Cartier Diamond Dagger Award from Britain’s Crime Writers’ Association, the Lifetime Achievement Award from Malice Domestic, the Anthony Award given by Bouchercon and three Shamus Awards. Grafton lived in Montecito, CA and Louisville, KY until she passed away in 2017.

Sue Grafton starts speaking at 2:20, and the video proceeds as follows:

5:14: Comic books’ influence and childhood
9:24: Father’s writing lessons
12:46: Writing “A is for Alibi”
16:09: Reading from “P is for Peril”
19:53: Q&A begins

Walter Dean Myers, 2012-2013 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, was the third writer to hold this position. During his two-year term, Myers traveled across America to promote his platform, “Reading is Not Optional.”

Myers (1937-2014) was a critically acclaimed author of books for young people, writing more than one hundred works during his 45-year writing career. His award-winning body of work includes “Sunrise Over Fallujah,” “Fallen Angels,” “Monster,” “Somewhere in the Darkness” and “Harlem.” Myers received two Newbery Honor Awards, five Coretta Scott King Awards, and was the winner of the first Michael L. Printz Award for excellence in young adult literature. He was also the first recipient of Kent State University’s Virginia Hamilton Literary Award for Lifetime Achievement. In 2008, he won the May Hill Arbuthnot Lecture Award, and in 2010, received the Rutgers University Award for Young Adults from the New Jersey Center for the Book and the Rutgers School of Communications. Walter Dean Myers was born in Martinsburg, WV, grew up in Harlem, NY, and lived in Jersey City, NJ until his death in 2014.

Walter Dean Myers starts speaking at 1:24, and the video proceeds as follows:

2:28: Why write a memoir
4:46: Giving young people permission to read
7:33: Reading from “Bad Boy”
14:20: Figuring out identity as a Black boy
22:45: Q&A begins

An earlier version of this blog inadvertently included some incorrect information. That information has been removed.