The Texas Book Festival announced its first handful of writers.
Authors include Screen Actors Guild Award recipient and nine-time NAACP Image Award winner Omar Epps; Good Morning America Book Club Pick author and Women’s Prize finalist Angie Cruz; Texas literary legend and author of seventy-three New York Times bestsellers Sandra Brown; Pulitzer Prize finalist and Guggenheim Fellow biologist David George Haskell, and New York Time bestselling children’s author-illustrator and Caldecott medalist Michaela Goade.
After two years of virtual and hybrid programming, the fest returns in person November 5–6 in downtown Austin. The full lineup will be announced in September.
Austin-based authors named to the line-up include Elizabeth McCracken, whose latest novel “The Hero of This Book” is due in October, and poet Roger Reeves whose recent volume “Best Barbarians” was received with critical acclaim.
“There’s something special about seeing authors in-person again,” says festival literary director Matthew Patin. “Virtual programming provided us, and continues to provide, creative opportunities, yet nothing quite matches an author visiting Austin once more. In pre-COVID times we took a physical appearance for a given, but now it feels that much more valuable and important.
The 15 authors announced so far:
- Vishwesh Bhatt, “I Am From Here: Stories and Recipes from a Southern Chef”
- Sandra Brown, “Overkill”
- Sandra Cisneros, “Woman Without Shame: Poems”
- Angie Cruz, “How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water”
- Erin Entrada Kelly, “Those Kids from Fawn Creek”
- James Kirchick, “Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington”
- Omar Epps, Nubia: “The Awakening”
- Sidik Fofana, “Stories from the Tenants Downstairs”
- Michaela Goade, “Berry Song”
- Xochitl Gonzalez, “Olga Dies Dreaming”
- David George Haskell, “Sounds Wild and Broken: Sonic Marvels, Evolution’s Creativity, and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction”
- Elizabeth McCracken, “The Hero of This Book”
- Matt de la Peña, “Patchwork”
- Mary Laura Philpott, “Bomb Shelter: Love, Time, and Other Explosives”
- Roger Reeves, “Best Barbarian: Poems”
