This is a guest blog post by Junior Fellow Riley Rhoder.
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 2021 festival, please go here. We hope you enjoy scrolling through the past with us! Check out videos from the first 2001 festival here.
Known for his role as Beverly Leslie on the television show “Will & Grace,” Leslie Jordan was an Emmy-winning actor, singer, comedian and writer. In addition to starring in “Will & Grace” he appeared in “Sordid Lives,” “American Horror Story” and “Call Me Kat.” During the pandemic, he rose to fame on social media, with his Instagram gaining over five million followers as he hilariously documented his daily life. In 2021 he published his autobiography, “How Y’all Doing? Misadventures and Mischief from a Life Well Lived.”
In the video below, Jordan reminisces with his former co-star about his time on “Will and Grace” and recounts all the hilarious tales that have happened to him since.
Jordan begins speaking at 0:18, and the video proceeds as follows:
0:46: Auditioning for “Will & Grace”
5:11: Joan Collins
6:23: Going viral on Instagram
10:47: Sayings
12:05: Unfortunate incarceration
15:42: His parents
20:36: Debbie Reynolds
28:03: Being in recovery
30:09: Accepting himself
34:33: “American Horror Story”
38:40: “The Help”
42:41: “Call Me Kat”
43:28: Q&A begins
Named after New Zealand’s Tui bird, Tui T. Sutherland is a children’s book author best known for her New York Times best-selling dragon fantasy series, “Wings of Fire.” She is also author of the “Pet Trouble” series and the “Menagerie” trilogy. Additionally, Sutherland contributed to the “Spirit Animals” and “Seekers” series under the collective pseudonym Erin Hunter. Outside of writing children’s books, Sutherland is a “Jeopardy” champion, where she won over $46,000 over the course of two days.
In the video below, Sutherland looks back on the last ten years of her “Wings of Fire” series, from its conception to where she sees the series going.
Sutherland begins speaking at 2:07, and the video proceeds as follows:
2:22: How the series evolved
3:54: Inspiration for Luna
7:16: The dedication
8:42: Graphic novel adaptations
11:12: TV adaptation
12:38: Jeopardy
13:34: Q&A begins
Come back next week for our final highlights from 2023 and 2024!