This is a guest post by Literary Initiatives intern Anhai Roantree.
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. We hope you enjoy scrolling through the past with us! Check out videos from the first 2001 festival here.
Award-winning author Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul in 1952. He dreamt as a child of becoming a painter and studied architecture before abandoning both plans to become a writer. His first novel, “Mr. Cevdet and His Sons,” was published in 1982 and won the Milliyet Literary Prize as well as the Orhan Kemal Novel Prize, named after a Turkish novelist. He later named a character after the latter prize in his 2008 novel “The Museum of Innocence.” In 2006, Pamuk received the Nobel Prize for Literature, becoming the second youngest person in history to win the award. Pamuk now lives in Istanbul in the same building in which he was raised.
Experience some of his work as well as his ideas about writing and world politics in the video below. Let us know if you agree with Pamuk’s advise for writers and if this video has given you further insight into his novels.
Pamuk begins speaking at 5:51, and the video unfolds as follows:
- 6:10: Why Pamuk decided to pursue a writing career over other opportunities
- 8:22: Craftsmanship side of writing
- 11:35: Writing routine (and how his relationship with his daughter has affected it)
- 15:43: Inspiration behind “Mr. Cevdet and His Sons”
- 16:58: “Puzzles within puzzles” in Pamuk’s writing
- 19:43: The presence of Turkey within Pamuk’s writing
- 23:50: Pamuk’s boldness and the charge he faced in Istanbul in 2005 for speaking about the killings of Turks and Armenians
- 27:54: Discussing “The Museum of Innocence”
- 32:51: Discussing the museum that Pamuk planned to open in Istanbul (The Museum of Innocence later opened in 2012)
- 35:23: Pamuk reads from his Nobel speech, “My Father’s Suitcase”
- 38:35: Q&A begins
Norton Juster (1929-2021) was the author of the iconic “The Phantom Tollbooth,” illustrated by Jules Feiffer. Juster also worked as an architect, and started writing children’s books while in the Navy. Afterwards, “The Phantom Tollbooth” was published while Juster was living in Brooklyn. He passed away in 2021 at his home in Massachusetts.
Jules Feiffer (1929-2025) was Juster’s neighbor in Brooklyn and illustrated “The Phantom Tollbooth.” Almost 50 years later, the two collaborated again on a new title, “The Odious Ogre.” Watch as they discuss how they each began working on children’s books and their subsequent collaboration; can you tell that these creators are responsible for the humor and mischief in “The Phantom Tollbooth?”
Juster begins speaking at 3:42, and the video proceeds as follows:
- 3:42: Juster discusses his collaboration with Jules Feiffer
- 4:25: Juster discusses their upcoming book, “The Odious Ogre”
- 5:40: Feiffer discusses how he became a children’s book illustrator
- 11:57: Feiffer discusses how words and illustrations have to work together in a children’s book
Come back next week for highlights from 2011!
Comments
Interesting…