The Library's 2022 National Book Festival was the first in-person festival in three years, since COVID shut down much of public life in D.C, and thousands of readers and fans thronged the Convention Center in search of a good read. Celebrities such as Janelle Monae, Nick Offerman, Leslie Jordan and Megan Mullally were there to greet them. So were big names in fiction, non-fiction and children's books, including Geraldine Brooks, Karen Joy Fowler and Mitch Albom.
“Blackout,” the hit YA romance novel of interlinked stories written by six Black authors, is coming to the National Book Festival’s main stage. It’s sure to be one of the festival’s highlights, as the event will put five of those authors on one stage: Dhonielle Clayton, Tiffany D. Jackson, Nic Stone, Ashley Woodfolk and Nicola …
Author Xochitl Gonzalez will be at the National Book Festival on Sept. 3, talking about her celebrated debut novel, "Olga Dies Dreaming." A smart romantic comedy about an upscale wedding planner and her congressman brother, New Yorkers of Puerto Rican descent, who
Leslie Jordan, the Emmy Award winning comic actor turned Instagram star turned author, brings his "How Y'all Doing?" to the National Book Festival. His short video riffs on being short, Southern and gay have charmed millions of viewers since he started posting them during the COVID-19 pandemic. The 67-year-old has more than 100 film and television credits, including turns on hit series such as "Will and Grace" and "American Horror Story." He's currently starring in "Call Me Kat" with Mayim Bialik.
Mitch Albom, the sportswriter and novelist, sits down at the National Book Festival to talk about the 25th anniversary of "Tuesdays with Morrie," his 1997 memoir that has sold more than 17 million copies, been turned into a movie and a stage play and been published in more than 45 countries. Albom has gone on to write a string of No. 1 bestselling novels, each drawing on religious faith and inspiration. His latest, "The Stranger in the Lifeboat," was published late last year.
Among the oddest items in the Llibrary of Congress is a slice of cake from the glamorous wedding of General Tom Thumb (Charles Stratton) and Lavinia Warren, at New York's Metropolitan Hotel in 1863. The wedding was the social event of the season, with thousands in attendance. Stratton was, at the time, a major star for promotor P.T. Barnum, drawing on his dimunitive height of 35 inches as an attraction. The Library still has the the slice of cake, now nearly 160 years old.
One of the Library's most unusual holdings is hair -- lots of it. The Library has locks and tresses and strands from people in the arts such as Ludwig van Beethoven, Walt Whitman and Edna St. Vincent Millay; presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, James Madison and Ulysses S. Grant; and any number of famous women, including Lucy Webb Hayes (first lady and spouse of President Rutherford B. Hayes); Confederate spy Antonia Ford Willard; Clare Boothe Luce and unidentified hair from Clara Barton’s diary. Nearly all of the hair stems from the 18th and 19th centuries, in the era before photographs were common and lockets of hair were seen as tokens that could be anything from romantic to momentous.
Lamont Dozier, one third of Motown’s key hit-writing team, Holland-Dozier-Holland, has died at 81. It’s difficult to imagine the soundtrack of the 1960s without him. I chatted with him earlier this year, when the trio’s “Reach Out I’ll Be There,” was inducted into the 2022 class of the National Recording Registry. Here’s the story …
David McCullough, one of the nation's most decorated historians and authors, died today at the age of 89. A writer who valued deep research and lively narratives, he was a good friend of American readers and a good friend of the Library and its patrons.