National Book Festival - Washington DC - Saturday August 12, 2023

I'll be at the National Book Festival this year, my first since COVID. Happy to plan a meet-up if others are going.

Featured authors include: Elliot Page, Matthew Desmond, George Saunders, TJ Klune, Rebecca Makkai, R.J. Palacio, Chasten Buttigieg, Meg Medina, K. A. Applegate

https://www.loc.gov/events/2023-national-book-festival
"Join us in the nation’s capital at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center on Saturday, August 12, from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. (doors open at 8:30 a.m.). If you can't join us in Washington, D.C. for a day of free talks and activities, several programs will be livestreamed, and video of all talks can be viewed online after the Festival concludes."

Oh, they moved it off of Labor Day Weekend.
I'll check to see if my wife wants to go.

Hmm, probably not, but it's a little bit tempting.

I'm still planning on going. Getting kind of excited; I just noticed Grady Hendrix will be there, and also John Scalzi being interviewed by Linda Holmes

*looks at schedule, gets overly confused*
Um, if we have a meet up, I might come alone, just to say hi to folks and show off my book. But not sure I understand the structure of the festival any more.
And the only author I'm interested in doesn't speak until 5:45 pm.

>5 gilroy: The structure is the same, it's just that they have author talks year-round as well. You can filter the schedule by date to just the 12th to see the ones that will be part of the one-day festival: https://www.loc.gov/events/2023-national-book-festival/schedule/?dates=2023-08-1...

>6 norabelle414: It's been a few years since I went last. The structure of the rooms is different. It's no longer by genre but other "unique" names.
Discovery Stage, Creativity Stage, Inspiration Stage...

I already knew about the filter. That's part of how I discovered the strange "stages."

Oh I wasn't really paying attention to what room they were in, I just filtered by the genres I'm interested in.

I ended up having a great time, I didn't realize how much I had missed it until I was there.

I saw Grady Hendrix and Tananarive Due talk about horror


TJ Klune talked about his newest book In the Lives of Puppets and his Roomba named Hank


Trang Thanh Tran talked about her debut book She Is a Haunting, about a queer teen who goes to visit her dad in Vietnam and ends up in a house haunted by the ghosts of French colonists


Shelby Van Pelt talked about Remarkably Bright Creatures and Henry Hoke talked about Open Throat


John Scalzi talked about The Kaiju Preservation Society (interviewed by Linda Holmes


I went back and forth about whether I wanted to buy any books and didn't end up going to to the bookseller until almost 7pm, by which point they were almost out of books. All they had left were...the two I wanted to buy, the authors of which were still signing. Fate, obviously, so I bought them and got them signed.

(I did want to buy Trang Thanh Tran's book and Grady Hendrix's latest as well but we'll ignore that because...fate)

An incredible time all around.

I had other life issues come up and ended up not going.

New thread for this year's festival here: https://www.librarything.com/topic/361962