Welcome to our ongoing celebration of the Library of Congress National Book Festival. Each weekday, we will feature a video presentation from among the thousands of authors who have appeared at the National Book Festival and as part of our new year-long series, National Book Festival Presents. Mondays will feature topical nonfiction; Tuesday: poetry or literary fiction; Wednesday: history, biography, memoir; Thursday: popular fiction; and Friday: authors who write for children and teens. Please enjoy, and make sure to explore our full National Book Festival video collection!
Siddhartha Mukherjee, winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction for “The Emperor of All Maladies,” his “biography of cancer,” came to the Contemporary Life stage of the 2011 Library of Congress National Book Festival. According to the physician, researcher and science writer, “Illness has the capacity … to become a mechanism by which we come to understand a culture. It becomes a mechanism by which we view the world.” Washington Post senior writer and editor Frances Sellers introduces Mukherjee. Q&A begins at 31:25.
The 2020 Library of Congress National Book Festival will celebrate its 20th birthday this year. You can get up-to-the-minute news, schedule updates and other important festival information by subscribing to this blog. The festival is made possible by the generosity of sponsors. You too can support the festival by making a gift now.