This is a guest post by Literary Initiatives intern Kevin Lopez Cruz.
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 one adult book event and one children’s book event from that year. To see the other videos from the 2017 festival, please go here. We hope you enjoy scrolling through the past with us! Check out videos from the first 2001 festival here.
Roxane Gay is a New York Times bestselling author, cultural critic and professor, known for her raw and incisive writing. Her books include “Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body,” “Difficult Women,” “Bad Feminist” and “An Untamed State.” She also contributed to Marvel’s “World of Wakanda” comic series and works in television and film.
At the 2017 Library of Congress National Book Festival, Gay discussed “Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body” and “Difficult Women” with NPR’s Linda Holmes.
Gay explores the challenges of writing about her body and trauma, navigating public perceptions as a woman writer and the importance of storytelling for marginalized voices. She also shares insights on her comic work and pop culture influences.
Gay begins speaking at 0:22, and the video proceeds as follows:
1:09: Writing “Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body”
8:57: What to reveal (memoir)
13:35: Experimentation in “Difficult Women”
15:38: Going on book tours
16:28: Working with Marvel
19:42: Writing more positive topics
28:00: Q&A begins
Ellen Oh and Meg Medina are accomplished authors and founding members of We Need Diverse Books, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting diversity in children’s literature. Oh, editor of “Flying Lessons & Other Stories,” is known for her middle-grade novel “Prophecy” and the chilling “Spirit Hunters.” Medina, a New York Times bestselling author, Newbery Medal winner and former National Ambassador of Young People’s Literature, has written award-winning books like “Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass” and “Tia Isa Wants a Car.”
In their presentation at the 2017 Library of Congress National Book Festival, Oh and Medina discuss “Flying Lessons & Other Stories,” a short-story anthology produced with We Need Diverse Books and Random House Crown Books for Kids. The collection features 10 authors, including Soman Chainani, Jacqueline Woodson and Kwame Alexander, and emphasizes diverse narratives reflecting varied life experiences, backgrounds and cultures.
Oh and Medina begin speaking at 3:06, and the video proceeds as follows:
5:15: Selfie for Tim and Kwame
9:22: Excerpt from “Sol Painting, Inc.” (Medina)
11:58: The cat story (Oh)
15:48: Excerpt from “Flying Lessons” (Oh)
17:59: Stories as paintings
23:52: Writing “Spirit Hunters”
26:33: Q&A begins
Come back next week for highlights from 2017!