This is a guest post by Literary Initiatives intern Kevin Lopez Cruz, with contributions from fellow intern Amanda Brown.
The Library of Congress National Book Festival will celebrate its 25th year on September 6, 2025. For this year’s festival information, visit the 2025 National Book Festival website.
To honor the occasion, we are taking the 24 weeks leading up to this year’s festival at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center to highlight two videos each week from past National Book Festivals, from the festival’s first year in 2001 to 2024. Each week, we’ll highlight a past festival year with a video from an adult writer and one from a children’s writer. We hope you enjoy scrolling through the past with us! Check out videos from the first 2001 festival here.
Natasha Trethewey is a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and author known for exploring themes of memory, identity and history in the American South. She served two terms as the U.S. Poet Laureate from 2012 to 2014 and held the role of Mississippi poet laureate from 2012 to 2016. Her book “Native Guard” won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for poetry, and her memoir “Memorial Drive” became a New York Times bestseller in 2020. Trethewey has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts and the Rockefeller Foundation, among others. She is a member both of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2017 she received the Heinz Award for Arts and Humanities and, in 2019, she was elected to the Board of Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets. In 2020, Trethewey received the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry (for lifetime achievement) from the Library of Congress. Currently, she is the Board of Trustees Professor of English at Northwestern University.
Dive into Trethewey’s world by watching the video below, where she shares selections of her poetry and offers intimate glimpses into her life, including stories of her parents and her mother’s grief.
Trethewey begins speaking at 1:13, and the video unfolds as follows:
- 2:01: Reading “The Southern Crescent”
- 4:12: Background about her parents and their meeting at Kentucky State College
- 4:57: Reading “Early Evening, Frankfort, Kentucky”
- 6:21: Reading “Miscegenation”
- 13:01: Reading “Mythmaker”
- 14:29: Reading “Myth”
- 18:11: Reading “Limen”
- 17:58: The process of learning new things when writing poems.
David Shannon, born in Washington, D.C., grew up in Spokane, Wash., where his early passion for drawing kept him out of trouble in school. After earning a fine arts degree from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA., he moved to New York City in 1983, illustrating for Time, Newsweek, and The New York Times. His picture book, “How Many Spots Does a Leopard Have?” debuted in 1988, showcasing his whimsical storytelling and vibrant art. Six years later, “How Georgie Radbourn Saved Baseball” became a New York Times Best Illustrated Book of 1994. Shannon’s semi-autobiographical picture book, “No, David!” won a Caldecott Honor in 1999. With over 40 books to his name, Shannon’s work continues to delight readers of all ages with its humor, heart and unmistakable style.
Check out the video below to learn about how he came up with the character of David— a spirited nod to his own childhood self and other real life people— and get to know the fun and irreverent person behind the famous picture books. At the end of the video, follow along with his step by step process of drawing David!
Shannon begins speaking at 1:46, and the video unfolds as follows:
- 1:46: Becoming a children’s book artist
- 4:50: Introduction and read-aloud of “Alice the Fairy”
- 12:23: Learn how to draw David (with bonus business idea)
- 22:30: Q&A begins
Come back next week for highlights from 2005!