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Posted by: Neely Tucker
Venture Smith dictated his life story in 1798, making it the first slave narrative in the United States. The Library's original copy is extremely rare. Smith's story is also one of the very few narratives by enslaved people who could recount their early life in Africa.
Posted in: African American History, Rare Book and Special Collections, Writers
Posted by: Neely Tucker
The 2021 National Book Festival will run online from Sept. 17-26, featuring more than 100 novelists, poets, non-fiction authors, chefs and lifestyle gurus.
Posted in: Books, Events, National Book Festival, Writers
Posted by: Neely Tucker
Abraham Lincoln, with little formal education, studied a popular textbook, "English Grammar in Familiar Lectures" on his own while in his 20s. Through it, he gained a mastery of the language that would give the nation some of its most enduring speeches.
Posted in: Abraham Lincoln, Civil War, U.S. Presidents, Writers
Posted by: Neely Tucker
LeVar Burton, fresh from a hosting "Jeopardy," turns his attention to hosting a special edition of the Library's 2021 National Book Festival, a one-hour special on PBS that is studded with some of the world's brightest literary stars.
Posted in: Events, National Book Festival, News, Writers
Posted by: Neely Tucker
Jade Snow Wong was a pioneering Asian American writer, businesswoman and artist. Her memoir, "Fifth Chinese Daughter," became a mid-century landmark of Asian American letters, while her ceramic works were shown in some of the nation's premier museums. The Library holds her papers.
Posted in: Asian American, Asian American History, Writers
Posted by: Neely Tucker
Sybille Jagusch, chief of the Library's Literature Center, has just published "Japan and American Children's Books," a gorgeously illustrated volume that details how Japan and Japanese culture has been portrayed in American children's books over the past two centuries.
Posted in: Asian American, Asian American History, Kids, Library Work and Employees, News, Researcher Stories, Writers
Posted by: Wendi Maloney
Author Nelson Johnson, a former lawyer and judge in New Jersey, used the Library's collections to inform his bestselling "Boardwalk Empire," turned into a hit HBO series; and his new historical novel about Clarence Darrow, "Darrow's Nightmare."
Posted in: Researcher Stories, Writers
Posted by: Neely Tucker
Novelist, short-story and essayist Joy Williams, known for books such as "State of Grace" and "The Quick and the Dead," has won the 2021 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction.
Posted in: Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction, Writers
Posted by: Neely Tucker
The photographs of Bernard Gotfryd, now free for anyone to use from the Library's collections, are a remarkable resource of late 20th-century American pop-culture and political life, as he was a Newsweek staff photographer based in New York for three decades. He was also a Holocaust survivor who wrote about the experience with grace and courage.
Posted in: Holocaust, Jewish American History, New Online, Photos, World War II, Writers