The Texas Book Festival Takes Place November 16–17 in Downtown Austin.

The Texas Book Festival, the largest book event in Texas and one of the premier literary Festivals in the nation, returns for its 29th year! Located inside the Texas Capitol and nearby tents and venues along Congress Avenue and 11th Street in Austin, the free event will bring more than 275 of the year’s leading writers to the Lone Star State for engaging panel discussions about their latest works. Additionally, attendees can look forward to book signings, food trucks, cooking demonstrations, and a Saturday night Lit Crawl in East Austin. The full schedule and author lineup is available online. 

Schedule highlights on Saturday, November 16 include:

Central Presbyterian Church

11:30 AM Inheritance & Identity: Unraveling the Past to Shape the Future with Rachel Khong & Téa Obreht
Téa Obreht, The Morningside, and Rachel Khong, Real Americans, discuss family, displacement and the quest for identity in their latest novels. Obreht weaves a tale of a young girl in a decaying city grappling with the magical folktales of her lost homeland, meanwhile, Khong explores three generations of Chinese Americans navigating class, race and inheritance in a fractured American landscape. Through lyrical storytelling and intimate character studies, these authors explore how our personal and ancestral pasts shape the futures we’re trying to create.

2:45 PM: Literary Legends on Writing Fiction Inspired by Personal Narratives with Claire Messud & Jane Smiley
Literary legends Claire Messud and Jane Smiley discuss their latest novels, This Strange and Eventful History and Lucky respectively. Messud’s new novel follows members of the French Algerian Cassare family over seven decades, from displacement during World War II to a granddaughter’s desire to tell their stories in 2010, and the complexities of family dynamics along the way. Smiley’s book is the first-person coming-of-age story of folksinger Jodie Rattler, who has experienced good fortune since age six but longs for something just out of reach. Learn how the authors drew from their real-life experiences and family histories to create sweeping stories and characters with rich interior lives.

State Theatre

10:30 AM: Powerful and Personal Narrative Nonfiction about Life & Death in Mexico with Angela Garcia & Cristina Rivera Garza:
Two genre-defying, eye-opening works of narrative nonfiction by two Latina professors and authors. Garcia’s The Way that Leads Among the Lost combines research and anthropological fieldwork with the author’s personal history in this examination of the little-known world of anexos, community drug rehab centers in Mexico that serve as a refuge from violent drug wars, but also employ violent tactics of their own. Twenty nine years after her sister’s murder, Rivera Garza travels to Mexico City in search of unresolved answers, which she documents in her Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir, Liliana’s Invincible Summer. Through letters, police reports, notebooks and interviews, Rivera Garza reveals the extent of the normalized gender-based violence that took her sister’s life while confronting her own trauma.

4:15 PM: Rumaan Alam in Conversation about Entitlement
Rumaan Alam discusses his new book Entitlement with award-winning author Elizabeth McCracken. A national bestseller, Entitlement is a propulsive novel about money, morality, race, and privilege that follows an idealistic young woman who goes to work for an aged billionaire.

Schedule highlights on Sunday, November 17 include:

State Theatre 

12:15 PM What Makes a Monster? Stephen Graham Jones on I Was A Teenage Slasher
New York Times bestselling horror writer, Stephen Graham Jones will discuss his latest novel, I Was a Teenage Slasher in this session moderated by acclaimed writer, director and showrunner Noah Hawley. Set in Lamesa, Texas, Jones’ haunting story is told from the perspective of a young murderer, cursed to kill for revenge. Learn how Jones creates an empathetic monster and sends chills up readers’ spines.

1:30 PM: Michele Norris in Discussion about Our Hidden Conversations
“Race. Your Thoughts. Six Words. Please Send.” Over half a million Americans answered this six-word prompt on award-winning journalist Michele Norris’ The Race Card Project website. These responses inspired Norris’ newest book Our Hidden Conversations, a collection of thoughtful, sometimes humorous and unflinchingly honest stories. Join her in conversation with Dr. Peniel Joseph, a UT Austin professor and founding director of the LBJ School’s Center for the Study of Race and Democracy, for a discussion about how Americans truly view race and identity.

2:45 PM: Hanif Abdurraqib in Conversation about There’s Always This Year
Award-winning poet, essayist and cultural critic Hanif Abdurraqib and Miwa Messer, executive producer and host of Barnes & Noble’s Poured Over podcast discuss There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension. Abdurraqib’s uniquely crafted memoir contemplates community, place, belonging, kinship, hope, love, and existence — all poetically intertwined through the unifying thread of basketball.

Texas State Capitol Auditorium

11:15 AM The Art of Mystery with Jean Hanff Korelitz & Liz Moore
Acclaimed authors Jean Hanff Korelitz and Liz Moore discuss the art of mystery and suspense fiction writing. In The Sequel, Korelitz explores the cost of success in the cutthroat world of publishing through the eyes of a literary widow whose life is upended when an inconvenient story resurfaces, threatening to reveal dark secrets about her late husband and family. In The God of the Woods, Moore takes readers to a summer camp in the Adirondack mountains, where the disappearance of a teenage girl sets off a chilling investigation, unearthing long-buried secrets that could ruin a family dynasty. Discover how these talented authors weave suspense, family secrets and complex characters into their compelling narratives.

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Jose Rodriguez is the Communications & PR Coordinator at Texas Book Festival and a contributing editor for STORY magazine.