The 25th anniversary Virginia Festival of the Book will be held March 20-24, 2019, in various locations in Charlottesville and Albemarle County.
The 2019 Festival will feature the following headliners, representing some of today’s most acclaimed authors working broadly across genres and topics:
- Laurie Halse Anderson is a New York Times bestselling author whose books have sold more than eight million copies. A two-time National Book Award finalist and a Margaret A. Edwards Award winner, she is an advocate for diversity in publishing, a member of RAINN’s National Leadership Council, and has been honored for her battles for intellectual freedom. Her forthcoming book, SHOUT (March 2019), is a free-verse memoir of sexual assault and a love letter to anyone with the courage to say #MeToo.
- READ & LEAD LUNCH: Barbara Ehrenreich is the author of over a dozen books, including the New York Times bestseller Nickel and Dimed. Winner of the 2018 Erasmus Prize for her work as an investigative journalist, she has a PhD in cellular immunology and writes frequently about health care and medical science, among other topics. Her recent book,Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer, explores how to live joyously, while accepting our mortality.
- Jarrett Krosoczka is a New York Times bestselling author/illustrator with more than thirty published books to his credit. He is a two-time winner of the Children’s Choice Book Awards Third to Fourth Grade Book of the Year and has been a Will Eisner Comic Industry Award finalist. He is currently on the longlist for the 2018 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. His forthcoming book, Hey, Kiddo (October 2018), is a graphic novel memoir of growing up grappling with a mother’s addiction and an absentee father
- Jason Reynolds is a New York Times bestselling author, Newbery Award honoree, Printz Award honoree, National Book Award honoree, and a two-time Walter Dean Myers Award winner, and has received numerous other accolades. His forthcoming book, Lu (October 2018), is the fourth book in Reynolds’ bestselling Track series for young readers, which tells the tale of an albino athlete struggling to overcome his own ego.
- LITERARY LUNCHEON: Lisa See is the New York Times bestselling author of The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane, Dreams of Joy, which debuted at number one, and many other novels. She has been honored as National Woman of the Year by the Organization of Chinese-American Women and was the recipient of the Chinese American Museum’s History Makers Award. Her forthcoming book, The Island of Sea Women (March 2019), introduces readers to the fierce and unforgettable female divers of Korea’s Jeju Island and the dramatic histories that shaped their lives.
- CRIME WAVE BRUNCH: Don Winslow is the New York Times bestselling author of The Force, the international bestseller The Cartel, and other novels. Several of his books have been made into movies or are in development. A former investigator, anti-terrorist trainer, and trial consultant, Winslow lives in California. His forthcoming book, The Border(February 2019), is the explosive conclusion to the epic Cartel trilogy, which examines the drug war from both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.
In making these announcements, Virginia Festival of the Book director Jane Kulow said, “As we honor the twenty-five year history of the Festival and set a course for the coming quarter-century, we are so excited to present these authors, whose work will encourage discourse and inspire a love of reading for all ages. Each author writes books that are engaging and that broaden one’s thinking, whether it’s through personal examinations of addiction or sexual assault, or well-researched and immersive fiction and nonfiction that humanizes America’s War on Drugs, the eternal quest to live longer, or twentieth-century history in Korea. For this landmark year, we have selected Festival headliners whose work responds to inspiration from the past while also posing questions about what we will be reading twenty-five years from now.”
Tickets for select Festival programs go on sale at VaBook.org on Thursday, September 27, 2018 at 9:00 AM. Additional details, speakers, and programs will be announced on VaBook.org as they are confirmed.
The Festival is also still accepting submissions in all genres for general programming. Submission guidelines and the online form to submit are available at VaBook.org/Submissions. Only online submissions will be accepted. The deadline to submit is October 1, 2018.
Share
Contributors
