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!
Professor and writer Roxane Gay is best known for her feminist works, such as “Bad Feminist.” Time magazine called the book, “a manual on how to be human.” Linda Holmes, a pop culture correspondent for NPR, welcomed Gay to the Contemporary Life stage of the 2017 Library of Congress National Book Festival to discuss the author’s latest collection of stories,”Difficult Women,” and her recent memoir, “Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body”. When Holmes asked Gay why she wrote “Hunger,” the reply was typical of Gay’s frankness and honesty: “The thing I want to write about least is fatness, and my body. … That’s when I knew … this is the book I’m going to have to write. Because the things I like writing about the least end up, oftentimes, being the most intellectually satisfying.” Q&A begins at 28:00.
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.