The Library will award the 2024 Prize for American Fiction to novelist and author James McBride, Librarian Carla Hayden announced today. McBride, 66, is the author of the hugely popular memoir "The Color of Water," novels such as “The Good Lord Bird” (winner of the 2013 National Book Award for Fiction) and, most recently "The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store," which received the 2023 Kirkus Prize for Fiction and was named Barnes and Noble’s 2023 Book of the Year. In 2016, he was awarded the the National Humanities Medal. He will be awarded the Prize for Fiction at the 2024 National Book Festival.
The Libarary's 2023 National Book Festival on August 12 features a stunning array literary stars including Amor Towls, Beverly Gage, Victor Lavelle, Elizabeth Acevedo, Rebecca Makkai, David Grann, S.A. Crosby, Cheuk Kwan and Tahir Hamut Izgil. Librarian of Congress will present the Prize for American Fiction to novelist George Saunders at day's end.
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.
This is a guest post by Guy Lamolinara of the Library’s Center for the Book. The loss of the incomparable writer Toni Morrison leaves a gaping hole in the literary landscape. Fortunately for us, before she died on Monday, she filled the world with prose that touched millions of readers worldwide. Through her novels, children’s …
On a dark and windy morning on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, 114 years ago this Sunday, Orville Wright took flight in a tiny airplane he and his brother Wilbur had painstakingly constructed. The 605-pound craft flew all of 120 feet and remained airborne only 12 seconds. After Orville’s first success, Wilbur set the …
The National Book Festival began in 2001 as a joint project of former first lady Laura Bush and the Library of Congress. A career librarian and a native of Texas, Bush proposed a national literacy event building on the success of the Texas Book Festival. Her idea took off: the National Book Festival has taken …
Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden announced today that Denis Johnson, author of the critically acclaimed collection of short stories “Jesus’ Son” and the novel “Tree of Smoke,” will posthumously receive the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction during the 2017 Library of Congress National Book Festival, Sept. 2. The National Book Festival and the …
(The following is a repost from the National Book Festival blog. The author is Lola Pyne of the Library’s Office of Communications.) Earlier this week, Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden made an exciting video announcement detailing the stellar authors who will headline this year’s Library of Congress National Book Festival. She was joined in front of a …
