National Book Festival 2013 Webcasts

Sep. 21, 2013. Paolo Bacigalupi appears at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival. Speaker Biography: Paolo Bacigalupi is the science fiction writer of "The Windup Girl," "Ship Breaker" and the National Book Award finalist "Zombie Baseball Beatdown". He has worked as an environmental newspaper editor, which exposed him to scientific journalists' discoveries that have served as his inspiration. "I get to take their nightmares and translate that into my fiction," he told Publishers Weekly. His works have been featured in "The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction" and "Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine" and have garnered many awards, including the Michael L. Printz, the Hugo, the Nebula, the Locus, the Compton Crook, the John W. Campbell Memorial, the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial and several international awards. For transcript, captions, and more information, visit https://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6053

Sep. 21, 2013. Jane Paley appears at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival, accompanied by her rescue dog, Hooper, and spoke about how pets can encourage children to read. Speaker Biography: Jane Paley is the author of "Hooper Finds a Family: A Hurricane Katrina Dog's Survival Tale," the story of a yellow lab lost in Louisiana during Hurricane Katrina, who was rescued after the storm and adopted by Jane and her family in New York. Narrated by Hooper, the book re-imagines the dog's adventures during and after Katrina on his journey to find a loving family. Now a registered therapy dog, Hooper builds children's confidence by "actively listening" as they read aloud. Paley is an Emmy-award winning television producer, who has written and produced family-oriented programs for ABC, HBO, PBS and Lucasfilm, among others. For transcript, captions, and more information, visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6229

Sep. 20, 2013. The National Book Festival Gala 2013 from the Library of Congress featured presentations by Don DeLillo, Cristina Garcia, Jon Klassen, William P. Jones and Juan Felipe Herrera. For transcript, captions, and more information, visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6206

William P. Jones appears at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival, Sep. 22, 2013. Speaker Biography: William P. Jones is an associate professor of history at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He is the author of "The Tribe of Black Ulysses: African American Lumber Workers in the Jim Crow South," about the previously ignored story of African American men employed in the lumber industry in the Southern United States. The book received the H.L. Mitchell Award of the Southern Historical Association in 2006. Jones's articles have appeared in The Nation, New Labor Forum and the Journal of Urban History. His new book is "The March on Washington: Jobs, Freedom and the Forgotten History of Civil Rights." For transcript, captions, and more information, visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6145

Taylor Branch appears at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival, Sep. 21, 2013. Speaker Biography: The civil rights era has profoundly shaped the writing of Taylor Branch. His trilogy, "America in the King Years," was intensively researched over a period of 24 years. The first book in the series, "Parting the Waters," won the Pulitzer Prize. His eight-year project to gather a sitting president's comprehensive oral history on tape resulted in 1990's "The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President." In 2011, The Atlantic Monthly published Branch's highly influential and controversial article "The Shame of College Sports." Most recently, he has returned to the civil rights period for "The King Years: Moments in the Civil Rights Movement," which presents 18 singular moments from the entire era. For transcript, captions, and more information, visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6143

Walter Stahr appears at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival, Sep. 21, 2013. Speaker Biography: Walter Stahr has only turned to writing books relatively recently. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1982 and joined a Washington law firm. From 1986 to 1999, he worked in Hong Kong as a lawyer. Stahr then published his first book in 2005: "John Jay: Founding Father." Publishers Weekly said Stahr managed to make the conservative and sober Jay "an appealing figure accessible to a large readership, [placing] Jay once again in the company of America's greatest statesmen, where he unquestionably belongs." In his biography of the 16th president's secretary of state, "Seward: Lincoln's Indespensable Man," Walter Stahr "sheds new light on this complex and central figure" in American history. For transcript, captions, and more information, visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6144

Steve Vogel appears at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival, Sep. 21, 2013. Speaker Biography: As a reporter on the national staff of The Washington Post, Steve Vogel covers the federal government and the military and veterans. He reported on the 9/11 terrorist attack on the Pentagon and the building's reconstruction. In 2007, he published "The Pentagon: A History." In "Through the Perilous Fight: Six Weeks That Saved the Nation," Vogel "does a superb job of bringing this woeful tale to life" (The Washington Post), when Rear Adm. George Cockburn steered a small squadron of British naval vessels into the Chesapeake Bay and managed to become "the most hated man in America as he enthusiastically plundered whatever he laid his eyes on." For transcript, captions, and more information, visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6142

Kenneth W. Mack appears at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival, Sep. 21, 2013. Speaker Biography: Kenneth W. Mack is the inaugural Lawrence Biele Professor of Law at Harvard University and the co-faculty leader of the Harvard Law School Program on Law and History. His research and writing have focused on the legal and constitutional history of American race relations. His 2012 book, "Representing the Race: The Creation of the Civil Rights Lawyer," was selected as a Top 50 Nonfiction Book of the Year by The Washington Post. Before joining the faculty at Harvard Law School, he clerked for Judge Robert L. Carter in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and practiced law in the Washington, D.C., office of the firm Covington & Burling. For transcript, captions, and more information, visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6139

Sheila Miyoshi Jager appears at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival, Sep. 22, 2013. Speaker Biography: Sheila Miyoshi Jager is chair of the Department of East Asian Studies at Oberlin College. Her articles have appeared in such prestigious publications as the Journal of Asian Studies, New Literary History, Public Culture and Japan Focus. Her first book on Korean nationalism was "Narratives of Nation Building in Korea: A Genealogy of Patriotism. She followed that with "Ruptured Histories: War, Memory and the Post-Cold War in Asia," which explores how the major East Asian states have undergone a profound reassessment of their experiences from World War II to Vietnam following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Her new book focuses on a topic much in the news. "Brothers at War: The Unending Conflict in Korea" is a military, political and cultural history of the war, seen as spanning from 1945 to the present, and its global impact told from the American, North and South Korean, Soviet-Russian and Chinese perspectives. For transcript, captions, and more information, visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6140

A. Scott Berg appears at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival, Sep. 22, 2013. Speaker Biography: With the publication of his first book, "Max Perkins: Editor of Genius," in 1978, A. Scott Berg won a National Book Award. His third book, "Lindbergh," about the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1998. Just 12 days after Katharine Hepburn died in 2003, Berg published "Kate Remembered," based on his 20-year friendship with the actress. Berg is well-known for the exhaustive research he does for his works, and he began research in 2000 for his just-published biography, "Wilson," about the onetime president of Princeton University, governor of New Jersey and 28th president of the United States. For transcript, captions, and more information, visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6136

Marie Arana appears at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival on Sep. 21, 2013. Speaker Biography: The daughter of a Peruvian father and an American mother, Marie Arana was born in Lima, Peru, and when she was 9, she moved to New Jersey. Arana is a former editor of The Washington Post's Book World and is now a writer-at-large for that newspaper. Her work is bicultural, reflecting her life as both a U.S. and Peruvian citizen. Arana's memoir, "American Chica: Two Worlds, One Childhood," was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2001. Her novels "Cellophane" and "Lima Nights" were published to critical acclaim. Arana has recently turned to biography with "Bolivar: American Liberator," which The Washington Post described as "magisterial in scope, written with flair and an almost cinematic sense of history happening." For transcript, captions, and more information, visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6141

Kay Bailey Hutchison appears at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival, Sep. 21, 2013. Speaker Biography: Former Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison served in Congress's upper chamber from 1993 to 2013, representing her home state of Texas. She was the fifth-most senior woman senator when she left office. Hutchison most recently was on the Appropriations; Commerce, Science and Transportation; Veterans' Affairs; and Rules and Administration committees. The former Texas treasurer (1991-93) is also an author, and her books include "American Heroines: Female Role Models in America" and "Leading Ladies." She has turned to her birthplace for her latest book, "Unflinching Courage: Pioneering Women Who Shaped Texas." For transcript, captions, and more information, visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6138

David Nasaw appears at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival, Sep. 21, 2013. Speaker Biography: The Arthur M. Schlesinger professor of history at City University of New York, David Nasaw excels at writing both scholarly and popular books. His scholarly works include "Schooled to Order: A Social History of Public Schooling in the United States" and "Children of the City: At Work and at Play." He has also written best-selling and highly regarded biographies of some of America's most fascinating characters: "The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst," "Andrew Carnegie" and his most recent, "The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy." The New York Times heaped praise on the book, calling it "riveting history" a book hard to put down, a garland not lightly bestowed on a cinder block numbering 787 pages of text." For transcript, captions, and more information, visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6137

Don DeLillo appears at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival, September 21, 2013. Speaker Biography: Don DeLillo is one of America's most acclaimed writers. His postmodern novels such as "Mao II," "Libra" and "Underworld" have been showered with many awards. DeLillo's 1985 novel, "White Noise," won the National Book Award., and in 2006 a New York Times survey of writers and literary experts named "Underworld" the No. 2 American novel of the past 25 years. DeLillo is the first recipient of the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction, which he received prior to this presentation. "The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories" is DeLillo's most recent volume. For transcript, captions and more information, visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6159

Susan Cooper appears at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival. Speaker Biography: Susan Cooper is the author of the classic five-book series "The Dark Is Rising," which won a Newbery Medal, a Newbery Honor Award and two Carnegie Honor Awards. Cooper has also received the Margaret A. Edwards Award from the American Library Association for a "significant and lasting contribution to young adult literature." Born in England, Cooper was a reporter and feature writer for the London Sunday Times before coming to live in the United States. Her writing includes books for children and adults, a Broadway play, films and Emmy-nominated screenplays. "Ghost Hawk" is her latest novel. For transcript, captions and more information visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6126

Suzy Lee appears at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival. Speaker Biography: Award-winning picture and book illustrator Suzy Lee is this year's National Book Festival poster artist. Lee was born in Seoul, South Korea, and her books have been published internationally in many languages. In 2010 her book "Shadow" was selected as a Best Illustrated Children's Book by The New York Times. "Wave" was chosen in 2008 as a Best Children's Book by both School Library Journal and Publishers Weekly. Her recent work can be found in Jesse Klausmeier's "Open This Little Book." For transcript, captions and more information visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6128

Rick Atkinson appears at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival. Speaker Biography: A three-time Pulitzer Prize winner, Rick Atkinson has received plaudits for both his contemporary reportage as well as his historical writing. Atkinson has been a reporter for The Kansas City Times and The Washington Post. His first book was "The Long Gray Line: The American Journey of West Point's Class of 1966. Time magazine and The Washington Post both labeled the book "brilliant." In 2002, Atkinson published the first volume of his Liberation Trilogy, "An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943," to widespread acclaim. Equally praised was the second volume, "The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944." The final volume is "The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945," which The Wall Street Journal has called "magnificent." For transcript, captions and more information visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6123

Justin Cronin appears at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival. Speaker Biography: Justin Cronin's new novel, "The Twelve," is the second in his much-praised Passage Trilogy. The first in the series was "The Passage," and the final volume, "The City of Mirrors," will be published next year. The trilogy has been optioned for the movies. Over the course of four novels he has already won the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Stephen Crane Prize and the Whiting Writer's Award. He is a fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts. Cronin's apocalyptic saga features vampire-like creatures called "virals" and the survivors who are trying to cope with them. For transcript, captions and more information visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6124

Mary Kay Zuravleff appears at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival. Speaker Biography: Washington, D.C., resident Mary Kay Zuravleff is receiving rave reviews for her latest novel, "Man Alive!" She has been on the faculties of Johns Hopkins University, George Mason University and the University of Maryland. "Man Alive!" is vividly alive and breathing. A sparkling book," said National Book Award winner Alice McDermott. Zuravleff is on the board of the PEN/Faulkner Foundatioon and has received the Rosenthal Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. For transcript, captions and more information visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6121

Jeff Chu appears at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival. Speaker Biography: Jeff Chu has interviewed presidents and Britney Spears, Sen. John Warner and Ben Kingsley. His work has appeared in Time, Conde Nast Portfolio and Fast Company magazine, where he writes on international affairs, social issues and design. Chu is the nephew and grandson of Baptist preachers and an elder at the Old First Reformed Church in Brooklyn, N.Y. Last year, he took part in the Seminar on Debates in Religion and Sexuality at Harvard Divinity School. His new book is "Does Jesus Really Love Me? A Gay Christian's Pilgrimage in Search of God in America." For transcript, captions and more information visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6122

Henry Wiencek appears at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival. Speaker Biography: Literary critic Jonathan Yardley called Henry Wiencek's "Master of the Mountain" "brilliant," even as its author has been the subject of scathing criticism for his unflattering portrait of Thomas Jefferson. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "The Hemingses of Monticello," Annette Gordon-Reed, said it "fails as a work of scholarship." Wiencek told The New York Times that historians "are trying to discredit this. It presents an image they don't like." Wiencek depicts the third president as a cruel slaveholder who valued money much more than the principles he espoused as a founding father. For transcript, captions and more information visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6130

Phyllis Reynolds Naylor appears at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival. Speaker Biography: Phyllis Reynolds Naylor says she has so many ideas for books that the hardest part of writing for her is focusing only on the book she is currently writing. She says she doesn't really have any spare time because "if I'm not writing, I'm thinking about writing." To date, she has written more than 135 books, including, including the Newbery Award-winning "Shiloh" and the "Alice" series. There are 28 books in this popular series, including the final one, "Now I'll Tell You Everything." For transcript, captions and more information visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6127

Daniel Pink appears at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival. Speaker Biography: Daniel Pink is fascinated by the way the workplace is changing, and his five books have all been best-sellers. His articles on business and technology have appeared in many publications, including The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Wired. He has also provided his expertise to CNN, CNBC, ABC, NPR and other networks worldwide. In his book "Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates," Pink overturned conventional wisdom about achieving high performance in employees. His new book is "To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Persuading, Convincing and Influencing Others." For transcript, captions and more information visit www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6119

Evan Thomas appears at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival. Speaker Biography: Noted journalist and author Evan Thomas is well-known to viewers of the Washington public affairs show "Inside Washington." He has worked for Time magazine and was assistant managing editor at Newsweek. His 2010 book "The War Lovers: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, and the Rush to Empire" was called an "engrossing history" by The New York Times. Thomas has since turned to the 34th president in "Ike's Bluff: President Eisenhower's Secret War to Save the World," an account of how, according to Thomas, the underrated Eisenhower saved the world from nuclear destruction. For transcript, captions and more information visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6125

Charles Wheelan appears at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival. Speaker Biography: Charles Wheelan is a journalist, book author and onetime candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives. He is also a regular contributor to "The Motley Fool" radio program on NPR. Wheelan's first book, "Naked Economics," introduced lay readers to the intricacies of that social science. And what his first book did for economics, "Naked Statistics," his second book, did for that field of study. Wheelan has now written "The Centrist Manifesto," which offers detailed guidance to forming a new party that will champion America's political center. For transcript, captions and more information visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6120

Ayana Mathis appears at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival. Speaker Biography: Oprah Winfrey said she was so "astonished" after reading just one chapter of Ayana Mathis's "The Twelve Tribes of Hattie" that she had to name it as a selection for her Oprah's Book Club 2.0. The novel covers several decades in a family's journey from the segregated South. According to The New York Times, "Mathis has a gift for imbuing her characters' stories with an epic dimension that recalls Toni Morrison's writing, and her sense of time and place and family will remind some of Louise Erdrich, but her elastic voice is thoroughly her own -- both lyrical and unsparing, meditative and visceral, and capable of giving the reader nearly complete access to her characters' minds and hearts." For transcript, captions and more information visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6129

Denise Kiernan appears at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival. Speaker Biography: The work of Denise Kiernan has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Village Voice, Ms., and many other publications. Her varied career includes serving as head writer for the television quiz show "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" during its first season. Kiernan's most recent book is the New York Times best-seller "The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II." It conveys the story of the young women who lived in a secret government city while working on the Manhattan project. For transcript, captions and more information visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6131

Christel Schmidt appears at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival. Speaker Biography: The Library of Congress is the major repository for the films of Mary Pickford, and Christel Schmidt is the leading expert on Pickford's films. Schmidt is a film historian who co-edited "Silent Movies: The Birth of Film and the Triumph of Movie Culture" in 2007, and she has received two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The Mary Pickford Foundation and Women Film Pioneers have both made use of her work. Schmidt's fellowships have resulted in "Mary Pickford: Queen of the Movies," a book researched at the Library of Congress. For transcript, captions and more information visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6135

Tamora Pierce appears at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival. Speaker Biography: Tamora Pierce says she grew up poor, "but we always had a lot of books. Books are still the main yardstick by which I measure true wealth." Her family struggled, and Pierce struggled for a long time before she could earn a living as a writer. She became well-known when she published her first series, "The Song of the Lioness." This year, Pierce received the Margaret A. Edwards Award from the American Library Association for her "lasting and significant contribution to young adult literature." Her new novel is "Battle Magic." For captions, transcript, and more information visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6065

Roxana Robinson appears at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival. Speaker Biography: Roxana Robinson is the author of four previous novels, three collections of short stories and the biography "Georgia O'Keeffe: A Life." Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, More and Vogue, among other publications. Her new novel is "Sparta," which focuses on the unique estrangement that modern soldiers face as they attempt to rejoin the society they've fought for. The Washington Post's Jonathan Yardley calls her "one of our best writers." For captions, transcript, and more information visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6062

Richard Peck appears at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival. Speaker Biography: Richard Peck is a prolific author of children's books and has won almost every children's literature award, including the Margaret A. Edwards Award, the Newbery Medal, the Scott O'Dell Award and the Edgar, and he has twice been nominated for a National Book Award. He was the first children's author ever to have been awarded a National Humanities Medal. His new book is "The Mouse with the Question Mark Tail." For captions, transcript, and more information visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6095

Wesley Granberg-Michaelson appears at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival. Speaker Biography: Wesley Granberg-Michaelson served for 17 years as general secretary of the Reformed Church in America, a Protestant denomination that began in the United States in the 1620s. Previously, Granberg-Michaelson served for six years as director of Church and Society for the World Council of Churches in Geneva, Switzerland (1988-1994). In 1984, Granberg-Michaelson completed his theological education at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Mich. His books include "Unexpected Destinations: An Evangelical Pilgrimage to World Christianity" and, most recently, "From Times Square to Timbuktu: The Post-Christian West Meets the Non-Western Church." For captions, transcript, and more information visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6082

Stuart Eizenstat appears at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival. Speaker Biography: Stuart E. Eizenstat has held senior U.S. government positions in three presidential administrations, in the White House, the State Department and other agencies. He has been the U.S. ambassador to the European Union and the deputy secretary of the Treasury. At the same time, he has served as a leader in the Jewish community, having led American and international Jewish groups and institutions and having received numerous awards from Jewish organizations and academic institutions. Eizenstat is the author of "Imperfect Justice: Looted Assets, Slave Labor and the Unfinished Business of World War II." His latest book is "The Future of the Jews: How Global Forces Are Impacting the Jewish People, Israel and Its Relationship with the United States." For captions, transcript, and more information visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6104

Veronica Roth appears at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival. Speaker Biography: Veronica Roth hit it big with her debut trilogy, "Divergent," which has been optioned for the movies. She wrote the first book in the series instead of doing her college homework. "Insurgent" is the second book in the series, and the final volume is "Allegiant." The series is set in a dystopian Chicago, the city where Roth lives. In the "Divergent" world, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue. For captions, transcript, and more information visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6064

Sonya Sones appears at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival. Speaker Biography: Sonya Sones has taught film at Harvard University and worked in Hollywood as a film editor. After her daughter was born, she started a hand-painted line of children's clothing. She became bored with "trying to come up with one more cute little dinosaur design." So she turned to writing. She began to write rhymed picture books for kids. Sones now writes young-adult and adult novels in verse. Her young-adult novels include her newest, "To Be Perfectly Honest (A Novel Based on an Untrue Story)," as well as "Stop Pretending," "One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies," "What My Mother Doesn't Know" and its companion, "What My Girlfriend Doesn't Know." For captions, transcript, and more information visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6098

Mark Helprin appears at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival. Speaker Biography: Mark Helprin's three collections of short stories, six novels and three children's books cannot be defined as belonging to any particular literary movement. Time magazine once said, "He lights his own way." The New Yorker published his work for nearly 25 years, and his essays on politics and aesthetics routinely appear in The Atlantic Monthly, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. Helprin is a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome and a former Guggenheim Fellow. His latest novel is "In Sunlight and in Shadow." For captions, transcript, and more information visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6061

The National Student Poets Program returns to the National Book Festival and will confer the nation's highest honor for youth poets presenting original work. Outstanding high school poets whose work exhibits exceptional creativity, dedication to craft and promise are selected annually for a year of service as literary ambassadors for poetry, encouraging a wide range of youth to explore and develop new creative capabilities. For captions, transcript, and more information visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6115

Nicholson Baker appears at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival. Speaker Biography: Nicholson Baker is the author of novels and nonfiction works and a winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. He has published widely, including in Harper's, The New York Review of Books and The New Yorker. His fiction works focus more on characterization than on narrative and often feature use of the stream-of-consciousness technique. Baker is also an activist for the preservation of old newspapers and is the founder of the American Newspaper Repository, now housed at Duke University. His books include "The Anthologist" and "Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization." His new novel is "Traveling Sprinkler." For captions, transcript, and more information visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6099

Mark Teague appears at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival. Speaker Biography: Mark Teague's highly original stories have been published internationally to great acclaim for nearly two decades. His numerous awards and honors include both the Book Sense Book of the Year Award and the Christopher Medal, and his titles regularly appear on the best-seller lists of The New York Times and Publishers Weekly. His series about Mrs. LaRue is widely popular. Another series, "How Do Dinosaurs ...," has sold more than 14 million copies. Teague's latest in the series is "How Do Dinosaurs Say I'm Mad?" For captions, transcript, and more information visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6091

Mario Livio appears at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival. Speaker Biography: Mario Livio is a senior astrophysicist at the Hubble Space Telescope Science Institute. He joined the institute in 1991 as head of the Archive Branch and also served as the head of the institute's Science Division. In addition to his scientific interests, Mario is a self-proclaimed art fanatic who owns hundreds of art books. During the past few years, he has combined his passions for science and art in five popular books, including "he Golden Ratio," "The Equation That Couldn't Be Solved" and "Is God a Mathematician?" His new book is "Brilliant Blunders: From Darwin to Einstein -- Colossal Mistakes by Great Scientists That Changed Our Understanding of Life and the Universe." For captions, transcript, and more information visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6071

Manil Suri appears at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival. Speaker Biography: Manil Suri was born in Bombay and is a professor of mathematics and an affiliate professor of Asian studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He has received a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation. Suri is read around the world and his novels have been published in 27 languages. He is the author of the novels "The Death of Vishnu," "The Age of Shiva" and the recently published "The City of Devi." In 2000, Time magazine named him as "a person to watch." For captions, transcript, and more information visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6084

James L. Swanson appears at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival. Speaker Biography: Presidential historian James L. Swanson is the Edgar Award-winning author of the New York Times best-sellers "Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer" and its sequel, "Bloody Crimes: The Funeral of Abraham Lincoln and the Chase for Jefferson Davis." His other works include the young-adult best-seller "Chasing Lincoln's Killer." He has two new books out this fall: "End of Days: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy" and, for young adults, "The President Has Been Shot! The Assassination of John F. Kennedy." He has held a number of government and think-tank posts in Washington, D.C., including at the U.S. Department of Justice. For captions, transcript, and more information visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6060

The Center for the Book in the Library of Congress and its reading promotion partner, the National Children's Book and Literacy Alliance, present a young people's Literary Lights Readers Theater program. Readers Theater is a dramatic presentation of a work in script form, similar to a radio play. Literary Lights presenters include favorite young people's authors Katherine Paterson, Jon Scieszka, Grace Lin and Susan Cooper, and the program will showcase their books. Special guests Carol Rasco, president and CEO of Reading Is Fundamental, and literacy advocate Lynda Johnson Robb will also take part. For captions, transcript, and more information visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6085

Matthew J. Kirby appears at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival. Speaker Biography: Matthew J. Kirby is the critically acclaimed author of the middle-grade novels "Icefall," which won the Edgar Award for Best Juvenile Mystery; "The Clockwork Three"; "Infinity Ring Book 5: Cave of Wonders," published in September 2013; and "The Lost Kingdom," also published in September 2013. He was born in Utah and grew up in Maryland, California and Hawaii. He currently lives in Utah, where he is working on his next novel. For captions, transcript, and more information visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6092

Lesa Cline-Ransome and James Ransome appear at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival. Speaker Biography: Lesa Cline-Ransome knew she wanted to be a writer by the time she reached middle school. She thought she wanted to be a journalist but later realized she was too shy to conduct interviews. Cline-Ransome became interested in children's books when she married her husband, James Ransome, an illustrator. It was also James who encouraged her to write books for young people. Cline-Ransome's new book with her husband is "Light in the Darkness," a story of slaves and their determination to learn how to read and write. Speaker Biography: The Children's Book Council named James Ransome as one of 75 authors and illustrators everyone should know. A member of the Society of Illustrators, Ransome has received both the Coretta Scott King Award for Illustration and the IBBY Honor Award for his book "The Creation." He also received the Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance award for his book "The Wagon." Ransome's work has been shown in group and solo shows throughout the country. He has collaborated with his wife, Lesa Cline-Ransome, on four books. Their latest work together is "Light in the Darkness." For captions, transcript, and more information visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6113

Graphic novelist Jaime Hernandez appears at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival. Speaker Biography: With brothers Mario and Gilbert, Jaime Hernandez created the widely acclaimed "Love and Rockets" comic book series. The Hernandezes grew up in a family of comic book lovers, and Jaime has said that "I wanted to draw comics my whole life." Jaime's contribution to "Love and Rockets" has been primarily the "Locas" stories, which focus on a group of Latinas in California, where he grew up. Jaime Hernandez's latest work is in "Love and Rockets: The Covers." For captions, transcript, and more information visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6107

Jonathan Hennessey appears at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival. Speaker Biography: A 10-year veteran of the film and television production industry, Jonathan Hennessey is a Los Angeles-based writer. His first graphic work was "Synchroni-City," and his upcoming work is "The Comic Book Story of Beer." Hennessey is also the author of "The United States Constitution: A Graphic Adaptation," on which he collaborated with illustrator Aaron McConnell. In their newest work, "The Gettysburg Address: A Graphic Adaptation," the duo commemorates the 150th anniversary of this pivotal battle of the Civil War and use Lincoln's address to tell the whole story of the war. For captions, transcript, and more information visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6103

Letters About Literature is a reading and writing contest that asks students nationwide to write a letter to an author whose book has influenced their lives. The contest, sponsored by the Library of Congress Center for the Book, attracts more than 50,000 entries annually. Some of this year's winners will read their letters at the 2013 National Book Festival. For captions, transcript, and more information visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6114

Lisa McMann appears at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival. Speaker Biography: Lisa McMann says that even though she thinks writing is "hard," she "wouldn't do anything else. There are a lot of disappointments and no guarantees. Be prepared to write a second or third or fifteenth novel if the first ones don't sell." McMann's books have sold, very well in fact. Her "Wake" trilogy is wildly popular. Her new novel is "Crash," the first book in her new "Visions" series. For captions, transcript, and more information visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6093

Kathryn Erskine appears at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival. Speaker Biography: National Book Award winner (2010, for "Mockingbird") Kathryn Erskine was born in the Netherlands and has lived in South Africa, Israel, Canada and Scotland. She currently lives in Virginia. She worked for a lawyer for many years but eventually decided to pursue her first love, writing. "Mockingbird" was about a girl with Asperger's. Her brother, whom she relies on to interpret her world, is murdered. In "Seeing Red," Erskine tackles the topic of race relations in the American South. For captions, transcript, and more information visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6100

Albert Goldbarth appears at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival. Speaker Biography: The poetry of Albert Goldbarth is widely praised, and he has published extensively, with more than 25 collections to his credit. He is the only writer to have twice won the National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry, for "Saving Lives" (2001) and "Heaven and Earth: A Cosmology" (1991). Goldbarth is a fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. In 2008, he received the Mark Twain Award for Humorous Poetry, awarded by the Poetry Foundation. Goldbarth's latest collection is "Everyday People." For captions, transcript, and more information visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6105