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Now Open! Welcome to the 2020 National Book Festival

Posted by: John Sayers

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Welcome to the 2020 Library of Congress National Book Festival, our 20th annual celebration of American ingenuity — and our first virtual festival!

The special Virtual Festival Platform is now open, where you can watch author talks, engage in scheduled live Q&A sessions and experience a wealth of activities related to reading, authors and literacy. The emphasis for today, Friday, September 25, is children’s and teen’s authors. Live Q&As with authors begin at 11 a.m. and will include Chelsea Clinton, Jessica & Parker Curry, Kwame Mbalia, Pam Muñoz Ryan and Veronica Chambers on the Children’s Stage; and Gene Luen Yang, Becky Albertalli, Aisha Seed and Mike Curato on the Teens Stage. Dozens of author talks can be selected and viewed on demand, as well!

Also, don’t miss the wealth of other great activities and fascinating presentations from our Roadmap to Reading, to a virtual selection of the best of the Library of Congress, to engaging activities from our partners and sponsors.

After our special Children’s and Teen’s day today, come back tomorrow and Sunday for an avalanche of additional talks, presentations, Q&As and activities, from our old-favorite stages like Fiction, Poetry & Prose and History & Biography to new and rebooted stages such as Science, Understanding Our World and Family, Food & Field.

Get ready — get set — go!

Screen shot of Virtual Festival Platform

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 can support the festival, too, by making a gift now.

Comments (7)

  1. Donna Price says:

    Thank you for this storytelling festival

  2. Mark says:

    The Poetry list of readers is awfully short.

  3. Javier Velazquez says:

    Thanks for sharing

  4. Gwen Kinsey says:

    I am having trouble navigating in between pre-recorded videos and live sessions. So much here and love the menu. Tried logging on early this morning go watch videos but at 6am they hadn’t been released. Really appreciate the effort but if there is a next time, please make it easier to toggle back and forth or release videos day before.

    • John Sayers says:

      Thanks for your comments! The videos on all of the stages were premiered at 9am today (Saturday) with the launch of the festival, except for those from the Children’s and Teens stages, which were premiered yesterday as part of a day set aside for them. All of the festival videos are now available on the Virtual Festival Platform as well as the Library’s YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/loc and the Library’s main website at https://www.loc.gov/collections/event-videos/?sb=date_desc , except for the Live Q&As, which will be recorded as they happen and will go up on those sites soon. Hope this helps!

  5. Lita Arnold says:

    I just want to say that I loved this year’s virtual book festival and wouldn’t mind if it continued in this format into the future. It was such an easy way to get around and listen to the authors’ presentations and the follow-up Q&As. I hope both will be posted for viewing by the nation’s many readers. An important feature where I’m concerned was that all the videos I viewed were captioned. The Q&As were not, but a transcript was made available. Great job, LOC!!

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