Author Margarita Engle, Photo by Marshall W. Johnson - Courtesy of The National Book Festival - Click to enlarge
The 10th annual National Book Festival, organized and sponsored by the Library of Congress, will take place on the National Mall between 3rd and 7th streets, on Saturday, September 25. About 130,000 people attended the festival in 2009. The 70 participating authors will include international best-selling authorKen Follett; Rae Armantrout, winner of this year’s Pulitzer Prize for poetry; National Book Award winner Julia Glass; Pat Mora, one of the nation’s most beloved writers for children; and Elizabeth Kostova, author of the worldwide sensations "The Historian" and "The Swan Thieves." President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama will be honorary chairs of the festival. There will be several special events during the week preceding the main event. Authors and illustrators will make their presentations in pavilions designated for Children, Teens & Children, Fiction & Mystery, Poetry & Prose, History & Biography and Contemporary Life. Festival-goers can meet and hear presentations from their favorite authors, have books autographed, have photos taken with PBS storybook characters and join in a variety of learning activities.
Author M.S. Merwin - Photo courtesy of The National Book Festival - Click to enlarge
Page one of the U.S. Constitution - Image courtesy of The National Archives - Click to enlarge
The National Archives will present a panel discussion marking the 90th Anniversary of Women’s Suffrage on Thursday, August 26 in the William G. McGowan Theater. The discussion, titled Ain’t I a Woman: A Complicated Story of Women’s Suffrage in Black and White will be presented in partnership with the Sewell-Belmont Houseand Museum and the National Park Service’s Mary McLeod Bethune Council House. The topic will be the women’s suffrage movement and its lasting impact on race and gender in the U.S. Dr. Ida Jones, assistant curator of manuscripts at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center of Howard University, will moderate the discussion, which will analyze the women’s rights movement “through the unique, historic, and parallel perspectives of the historic houses and museum." The panelists will include Dr. Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, professor of history at Morgan State University; Dr. Ann Gordon, research professor and editor of the Stanton and Anthony Papers at Rutgers University; and journalist Mary Walton, author of A Woman’s Crusade: Alice Paul and the Battle for the Ballot.
The National Archives Experience will host a Panel Discussion on The State of the Constitution: What Every American Should Know on Tuesday, September 21 in the William G. McGowan Theater. The Center for the Constitution at James Madison’s Montpelier has been conducting a nationwide survey of people in the U.S. to study the public’s understanding of American constitutional principles. Many constitutional scholars across the country responded, and the results will be revealed during the 4th Annual Claude Moore Lecture. The distinguished panel includes constitution scholar Michael Meyerson of the University of Baltimore Law School; Chuck Quigley, executive director of the Center for Civic Education; and Cokie Roberts, senior news analyst for National Public Radio. The panel will be moderated by Michael Quinn, who is president of the Montpelier Foundation.
The National Archives will present author James L. Swanson in a discussion of his newest book Bloody Crimes: The Chase for Jefferson Davis and the Death Pageant for Lincoln’s Corpse on Thursday, September 30 in the William G. McGowan Theater. The book is the sequel to his award-winning work Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer. The saga continues “as Swanson weaves together the stories of two fallen leaders as they made their last journeys through a wounded nation.” Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley will join Mr. Swanson in the discussion, and a book signing will follow the program.
Author James Swanson, at right, and the cover of his new book - click to enlarge
Ambassador Andrew Young - courtesy of The Charles Guggenheim Center for the Documentary Film at the National Archives - Click to enlarge
Also on September 30, The Charles Guggenheim Center for the Documentary Film at the National Archives will screen From King to Congress in the William G. McGowan Theater. The film is about Ambassador Andrew Young’s campaign in 1972 to become the first African American from the deep South to be elected to the U.S. Congress since the Reconstruction. Andrew Young had been one of Martin Luther King’s closest allies during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Academy Award-winning filmmaker Charles Guggenheim produced the 52-minute documentary in 1974. After the screening, Ambassador Young and Diane Rehm, host of The Diane Rehm Show on National Public Radio, will discuss the documentary and Young’s distinguished record of service to the nation.
Diane Rehm, host of The Diane Rehm Show - courtesy of The Charles Guggenheim Center for the Documentary Film at the National Archives - Click to enlarge
Poet Edward Hirsch - Photo by Julie Dermansky - Courtesy of the Folger - Click to enlarge
The International Spy Museum will present a talk by author Emil Draitser titled Stalin’s Romeo Spy: The Remarkable Rise and Fall of the KGB’s Most Daring Operative on Thursday, September 30. The subject, Dmitri Bystrolyotov was a glamourous man who was a linguist, sailor, artist, doctor, lawyer…..and a spy for Stalin’s Soviet Union. By seducing a female French diplomat, the wife of a British official, a female Gestapo officer and other women, he obtained many secrets for his masters in Moscow - until he fell out of favor. Mr. Draitsser was once a journalist in the Soviet Union and is now a professor at Hunter College in New York.
The Folger Shakespeare Library will present a conversation with poet Edward Hirsch, moderated by poet Judith Harris, in the Folger Elizabethan Theatre on Tuesday, September 28. Mr. Hirsch’s poetry collections include The Living Fire and Special Orders. He has also written the prose volumes titled The Demon and the Angel: Searching for the Source of Artistic Inspiration; Responsive Reading; How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry; and Poet's Choice, a collection of his weekly essay-letters that ran in Washington Post Book World. He was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2008. Visit www.folger.edu/wosummary.cfm?woid=603
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