2022 Author Lineup Announced!

Texas Book Festival is excited to announce the full lineup for its annual festival featuring nationally and critically recognized authors, including Angie Cruz, Omar Epps, Janet Evanovich, Anand Giridharadas, Gabino Iglesias, Margo Price, Rebecca Roanhorse, and more. The 27th annual Texas Book Festival, returning in person after two years of virtual and hybrid programming, will take place on November 5 and 6, 2022, in the State Capitol and along Austin’s iconic Congress Avenue.

The 2022 festival lineup features nearly 300 national and Texas authors, including debut and bestselling writers, celebrated chefs including Top Chef finalist Chris Scott and James Beard Award recipient Vishwesh Bhatt, beloved children’s illustrators and authors, and more, connecting attendees with their favorite authors in many genres and introducing readers to new literary talents. The 2022 festival will also showcase previously announced authors Sandra Brown, David George Haskell, Michaela Goade, and more.

YA  & Children’s programming

Numerous young-adult and children’s book authors are a part of this year’s TBF lineup, including Maggie Stiefvater, Aiden Thomas, Natalia Sylvester, R. M. Romero, Carole Boston Weatherford, Michaela Goade, David Bowles, David Levithan, and Mac Barnett.

Texas Authors

Texas authors featured at this year’s festival include Robert Draper, Simran Jeet Singh, LaToya Watkins, Will Hurd, Leon and Tiffany Chen, May Cobb, Alex Kiester, Katherine McGee, Amanda Eyre Ward, Amy Kim Kibuishi, Lise Olsen, Evan Griffith, Natalia Sylvester, and many more.

Book Sales

All Festival titles will be available in the official BookPeople Texas Book Festival online bookstore. BookPeople is the official bookseller for the Texas Book Festival. BookPeople donates a portion of every book sold through the online Festival store and at the Festival back to the Texas Book Festival. Thank you for supporting authors and readers in Texas! Check out the full Festival book list!

Check out the full author list!

 

Morning Glories: Storytime with Nicholas Solis

Join us on Tuesday, September 20, at 10:00 a.m. as the Texas Book Festival partners with Waterloo Greenway to kick off their fall Morning Glories series. Morning Glories is a free early childhood education series that provides hands-on activities and programs focusing on literacy, bilingual storytelling, music and dance workshops, cultural learnings, and nature play.

Don’t miss this outdoor storytime with Austin author Nicholas Solis and his presentation of his new book, My Town / Mi Pueblo. This event will take place on the Meredith Heritage Tree Deck at 1301 Trinity St. We hope to see you there!

THANK YOU TO OUR PARTNERS

Logo - Waterloo Greenway

Bring Reading Rock Stars to your school!

UPDATE: Thank you for your interest in the Reading Rock Stars program. The application submission window is now closed.


Want to bring Reading Rock Stars to your school? Since the inception of the Reading Rock Stars program, the Texas Book Festival has donated more than 151,000 books to students in Title I schools and provided 675 author visits.

Applications will be accepted no later than Friday, June 17, 2022.

Applications for 2022 Texas Library Grants

UPDATE: Thank you for your interest in the Texas Library Grant. The submission window is now closed and we are no longer accepting applications. Please contact michelle@texasbookfestival.org with any questions.

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Libraries across Texas can now apply for a 2022 grant to help expand their library collections and share the diversity and breadth of literature with their communities.

These Texas Book Festival Collections Enhancement Grants are made possible by funds raised at the annual Festival and through TBF’s generous donors. Since 1996, the organization has funded 1,169 grants totaling over $3 million to 600+ libraries in every corner of the state. Read more here to see which Texas libraries received grants in 2021.

The 2022 application is now closed. The application submission deadline was Tuesday, May 31.

Visit our library grants page for more information!

Reading Rock Stars Austin 2021

This fall, Texas Book Festival hosted visits from twenty-two exciting authors with nine Title I elementary schools in the Austin area as part of our Reading Rock Stars program. During these highly-anticipated visits, students had the opportunity to hear from authors about their writing journeys and craft, listen to stories, and ask questions.

Children holding the book "The Color Corrector"

Texas Book Festival’s Reading Rock Stars program is a hands-on literacy initiative that sends nationally recognized authors into Title I schools in Texas to inspire young readers with dynamic presentations. With generous donations from our sponsors, Texas Book Festival funds and coordinates these author visits and provides copies of visiting authors’ books to children and to their school’s library. Since the program began, Texas Book Festival has provided more than 133,000 books to students and hosted 400+ author visits. Reading Rock Stars is currently partnered with schools in Austin, Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, and the Rio Grande Valley.

Author, Gloria Amescua, greeting student

students seated in library

Thank you to our Reading Rock Stars sponsors who provide books and author visits to thousands of children in Title I elementary schools throughout Texas!

Meet the 2021 Kirkus Prize Finalists

UPDATE: This session is now streaming. Watch the full panel here!

Kirkus Reviews, the nation’s leading prepublication journal of book reviews, is proud to sponsor the annual Kirkus Prize, which bestows $150,000 divided by three winning writers. At this panel, you’ll hear a group of finalists of this year’s Prize—some of this year’s most intriguing and insightful writers—talk about their most recent books.

Panelists: Young Readers’ Literature

  • Wai Chim (author, The Surprising Power of a Good Dumpling)
  • Sharon G. Flake (author, The Life I’m In)
  • Nikki Grimes (author, Legacy)
  • NoNieqa Ramos (author, Your Mama)
  • Jacqueline Alcántara (illustrator, Your Mama)
  • Carole Boston Weatherford (author, Unspeakable)

Nonfiction

  • Brian Broome (author, Punch Me Up to the Gods)
  • Dara Horn (author, People Love Dead Jews)
  • Tiya Miles (author, All That She Carried)
  • Katherine E. Standefer (author, Lightning Flowers)

Fiction

  • Mariana Enriquez (author, The Dangers of Smoking in Bed)
  • Megan McDowell (translator, The Dangers of Smoking in Bed)
  • Jocelyn Nicole Johnson (author, My Monticello)

In partnership with Kirkus Reviews


  • Moderator: Tom Beer, Kirkus Reviews editor in chief
  • Format: This is a live, virtual event on CrowdCast (RSVP link above).
  • Chat: Feel free to use the chat box in CrowdCast to share your thoughts and virtually cheer for and share kudos with the session’s participants! Disorderly comments will be removed immediately. Please refer to the code of conduct

2021 Texas Writer Award Recipient: Don Tate

The Texas Book Festival awards the Texas Writer Award each year to a Texas author who has made a significant contribution to the literary arts. Previous recipients include Tim O’Brien, Sarah Bird, Sandra Cisneros, Steven Weinberg, and Pat Mora.

This year, we are honored to name Don Tate as the recipient of the 2021 Texas Writer Award.  

Don’s story:

“Born with a pencil in his hand,” Don recalls that for as early as he can remember, he was always drawing and making things with his hands. He felt that he was always an artist.

What Don didn’t see himself as, or didn’t think it was possible to imagine himself as, however, was a writer. Don wasn’t a reader in his youth. He didn’t see himself represented in books and believed that the world of writers and words were for white people.

But he had an aunt, Eleanor E. Tate, who was a trailblazer. She was the first black journalist at the Des Moines Register and also wrote young adult fiction. When one of her books, Just an Overnight Guest, was adapted for TV, Don attended the premiere at the Des Moines Public Library. For Don, “it was the moment I realized I could be a book creator. It gave me permission to dream.”

Don moved to Austin in 1999 to work at the Austin American-Statesman as graphics reporter, a career he had started in Iowa at the Des Moines Register. Joining the Austin chapter of the Society of Children’s Writers and Illustrators (SCWBI), he credits the encouragement he found within the children’s book writing community, and especially the mentoring he received from Cynthia Leitich Smith, as instrumental in launching his career as an illustrator and writer.

Don’s first book publication as an illustrator was Say Hey: A Song of Willie Mays, followed by many book illustrator credits including Summer Sun Risin’, Black All Around!, Ron’s Big Mission, She loved Baseball: The Effa Manley Story, Duke Ellington’s Nutcracker Suite, Hope’s Gift, The Cart That Carried Martin, and The Amazing Age of John Roy Lynch.

It Jes’ Happened: When Bill Traylor Started to Draw marked Don’s debut as an author and was illustrated by R. Gregory Christie. For his very first book, Don was recognized as the Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Honor winner in 2012.

He wrote and illustrated his next book, Poet: The Remarkable Story of George Moses Horton (Peachtree Publishers, 2015). Poet went on to receive multiple awards and Don made history as the first two-time recipient of an Ezra Jack Keats award.

In recent years, Don has been busy as ever, publishing and illustrating books that celebrate the important stories and contributions of blacks in American history. Don is a 2021 Texas Book Festival author with his latest book, Pigskins to Paintbrushes: The Story of Football-Playing Artist Ernie Barnes. Passionate about raising the awareness of Black voices writing for young readers, Don is the founding host of The Brown Bookshelf. Don also gives so much of his time to inspire young readers through school visits to elementary schools across Texas and beyond. He participates frequently in Texas Book Festival’s Reading Rock Stars program as a featured author and illustrator.

Overcoming his insecurities about being a writer and as an award-winning author and illustrator of more than 80 books, Don reflects:

“What I discovered is that writing is just like illustrating, but using different tools. With illustration, I’m using my stylus and graphics program. With writing, I’m using nouns, verbs, and adjectives.”

 

2021 Festival Schedule

The 2021 hybrid Texas Book Festival schedule is here!

We’re excited to finally share our official 2021 schedule with you! This year’s Texas Book Festival kicks off on October 23 and runs through October 31 and features both virtual and limited in-person author appearances. The Fest begins the weekend of October 23 and 24 with virtual young adult Texas Teen Book Festival programming and virtual children’s programming, followed by virtual adult author programming from October 25 to 31.

Children’s programming continues with select in-person appearances by picture book authors at Symphony Square in downtown Austin on Saturday, October 30, followed by an in-person adult Lit Crawl which will take place from 5:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m CT. Adult author programming concludes the Festival with select in-person sessions at Austin Public Central Library on Sunday, October 31.

You can now register for all in-person sessions, which will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis to the capacity limit.

Due to Austin’s current Stage 4 Covid guidelines, we have put safety precautions in place to protect our attendees, authors, volunteers, and vendors. All attendees ages 2+ are required to wear a mask at all times. All attendees ages 18+ are required to provide either proof of vaccine or a negative Covid test performed no longer than 72 hours prior to the event. All venues will be at reduced capacity, and social distancing will be enforced.

We can’t wait to see you online and in-person, October 23-31! 

Announcing Book Tickets for R.J. Palacio!

Join us for a conversation with R.J. Palacio as she discusses her new book Pony on October 23 at 12 pm CT. Each ticket is $25 and includes the cost of the book, processing fees, and shipping. Books will come with a signed bookplate, while supplies last! This will be a virtual session.

Get tickets here!

Pony has so many topics to discuss for fifth grade and up. Thank you to Random House Children’s Books for creating this beautiful Pony discussion guide. Click to download, and contact bookfest@texasbookfestival.org if you have any trouble accessing the file.

R. J. Palacio is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Wonder, which has sold over 12 million copies worldwide. The book’s message inspired the Choose Kind movement and has been embraced by readers around the world, with the book published in over 50 languages. Wonder was made into a blockbuster movie starring Julia Roberts, Owen Wilson, and Jacob Tremblay. Palacio’s other bestselling books include 365 Days of Wonder: Mr. Browne’s Book of Precepts, Auggie & Me: Three Wonder Stories, the picture book We’re All Wonders, and the graphic novel White Bird, which is currently being filmed as a major motion picture starring Gillian Anderson and Helen Mirren. Palacio lives in Brooklyn with her husband, two sons, and two dogs.

Please direct questions to the Texas Book Festival at bookfest@texasbookfestival.org. Every book ticket sold and book purchased through the BookPeople Festival Store supports the Texas Book Festival and Festival authors. Thank you!

Announcing Book Tickets for Colson Whitehead!

Join us for a conversation with Colson Whitehead as he discusses his new book Harlem Shuffle on October 25 at 12:45 pm. Each ticket is $35 and includes the cost of the book, processing fees, and shipping. The first 100 ticket buyers will get a signed copy of Harlem Shuffle. This will be a virtual session.

Colson Whitehead is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of ten works of fiction and nonfiction, and is a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, for The Nickel Boys and The Underground Railroad, which also won the National Book Award. A recipient of MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships, he lives in New York City.

Get tickets here!

Please direct questions to the Texas Book Festival at bookfest@texasbookfestival.org. Every book ticket sold and book purchased through the BookPeople Festival Store supports the Texas Book Festival and Festival authors. Thank you!