Authors Set for the 2013 National Book Festival

Other poets and authors slated to appear at the festival include Katherine Applegate, Rick Atkinson, Paolo Bacigalupi, Nicholson Baker, Bonnie Benwick, A. Scott Berg, Holly Black, Monica Brown, Steve Coll, Susan Cooper, Justin Cronin, Matt de la Peña, Katherine Erskine, Richard Paul Evans, Brian Floca, Eric Gansworth, Albert Goldbarth, Mark Helprin, Gilbert Hernandez, Jaime Hernandez, Juan Felipe Herrera, Jennifer and Matthew Holm, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Pati Jinich, Adam Johnson, William P. Jones, Cynthia Kadohata, Jamaica Kincaid, Matthew J. Kirby, Jon Klassen, Kirby Lawson, Grace Lin, Mario Livio, Rafael López, Kenneth W. Mack, William Martin, Ayana Mathis, James McBride, D.J. MacHale, Heather McHugh, Lisa McMann, Terry McMillan, Elizabeth Moon, Christopher Myers, Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, Kadir Nelson, Patrick Ness, Katherine Paterson, Daniel Pink, Andrea and Brian Pinkney, Matthew Quick, Lesa Cline-Ransome and James Ransome, Vaddey Ratner, Christel Schmidt, Jon and Casey Scieszka, Chad "Corntassel" Smith, Andrew Solomon, Sonya Sones, Walter Stahr, Manil Suri, James L. Swanson, Mark Teague, Evan Thomas, Steve Vogel, Dean Young, Charles Whelan and Henry Wiencek.

The 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival will feature authors, poets and illustrators in several pavilions, including two Sunday-only pavilions: Graphic Novels/Science Fiction and Special Presentations. Festival-goers can meet and hear firsthand from their favorite poets and authors, get books signed, have photos taken with PBS storybook characters and participate in a variety of activities. An estimated 210,000 people attended in 2012.

Details about the Library of Congress National Book Festival can be found on 

its website at www.loc.gov/bookfest/. The website offers a variety of features, and new material will be added to the website as authors continue to join this year’s lineup.

The 13th Library of Congress National Book Festival is part of a larger Library of Congress "Celebration of the Book" in 2012 and 2013. This year’s celebration is focused on "Books That Shaped the World."

"Books shape lives and change history," said Librarian of Congress James H. Billington. "We join readers the world over in celebrating the book’s unique role in transmitting knowledge, wisdom, culture and enjoyment."

?? Margaret Atwood, a native of Canada, has authored more than 50 works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and children’s literature. She is best known for her novels including "The Handmaid’s Tale," "The Blind Assassin" (which won the Booker Prize in 2000), "Oryx and Crake," "The Year of the Flood" and her latest book, "MaddAddam."

?? Marie Arana is an author, literary critic, former books editor at The Washington Post, and former executive vice president at Simon & Schuster Publishers and Harcourt Brace & Co. Her memoir "American Chica," about her childhood in Peru, was a finalist for the National Book Award and the PEN-Memoir Award. Her novels, "Cellophane" and "Lima Nights" were named among the best books of the year. Her current book is "Bolívar: American Liberator." She is writer-at-large for The Washington Post.

?? Taylor Branch is the author of "Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63"; "Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963-65"; "At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-1968"; and "The Clinton Tapes." He has won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

?? Don DeLillo has written 15 novels, including "Underworld," "Falling Man," "White Noise," and "Libra." He has won the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the Jerusalem Prize for his overall body of work, and the William Dean Howells Medal from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2010, he was awarded the PEN/Saul Bellow Prize. Last year he received the Carl Sandburg Literary Award for his body of work.

?? As a student in grade school, Khaled Hosseini was reading Persian poetry as well as Farsi translations of novels ranging from "Alice in Wonderland" to Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer series. His best-selling debut novel, "The Kite Runner," had a lengthy run as a best-seller and was made into a movie; the book drew on his experiences as a child in Afghanistan. He has since written "A Thousand Splendid Suns" and his latest novel, "And the Mountains Echoed."

?? Named one of the most important writers of the 20th century by Writer’s Digest, author, poet and essayist Barbara Kingsolver is the author of more than a dozen books including "The Poisonwood Bible," "The Bean Trees," "Homeland," "The Lacuna," "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life" and "Flight Behavior." She has won numerous literary awards and in 2000 received the National Humanities Medal, the highest U.S. honor for service through the arts.

?? Novelist, poet, essayist and short-story writer Joyce Carol Oates has written more than 50 novels and eight volumes of poetry and has won numerous honors including the National Book Award for her novel "Them." Her first novel was published when she was 28 and she continues to craft new work continuously while teaching at Princeton. She was an NEA Fellow and also received the PEN/Malamud Award for her lifetime of literary achievement. Her other novels include "You Must Remember This," "Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart," "Solstice," and "Marya: a Life."

?? Katherine Paterson, a two-time winner of the Newbery Medal (for "Bridge to Terabithia" and "Jacob Have I Loved" and the National Book Award (for "The Great Gilly Hopkins" and "The Master Puppeteer") is known for her support of literacy promotion in addition to her extensive body of work. She recently served as the Library of Congress National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature.

?? U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey is the author of four poetry collections and a book of creative nonfiction. Her numerous honors include the Pulitzer Prize and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her first book of poems, "Domestic Work," won the inaugural 1999 Cave Canem Poetry Prize and was published by Graywolf Press. Her subsequent poetry collections include "Bellocq’s Ophelia," "Native Guard" and "Thrall." In 2010, Trethewey published "Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast," a memoir that details the struggles of her family living in Mississippi in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. She teaches English and creative writing at Emory University.

?? Internationally known artist Suzy Lee, who has illustrated several books including "Open This Little Book" by Jesse Klausmeier and was the author and illustrator of "Wave," will create the art for the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival poster and will speak at the festival.

Representatives from across the United States and its territories will celebrate their unique literary offerings in the Pavilion of the States. The Let’s Read America Pavilion will offer reading activities that are fun for the whole family. The Library of Congress Pavilion will showcase treasures in the Library’s vast online collections and offer information about Library programs.

The 2013 National Book Festival is made possible through the generous support of National Book Festival Board Co-Chairman David M. Rubenstein; Charter Sponsors the Institute of Museum and Library Services, Target, The Washington Post and Wells Fargo; Patrons the National Endowment for the Arts and PBS KIDS; Contributors AT&T and Digital Bookmobile Powered by OverDrive; and--in the Friends category--The Hay- Adams, the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Thanks also to C-SPAN2’s Book TV, The Junior League of Washington and The Links.

The Library of Congress, the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution, is the world’s preeminent reservoir of knowledge. Many of the Library’s rich resources and treasures may be accessed through its website, www.loc.gov.