Events Calendar

2019 National Book Award Nonfiction Longlisters Hanif Abdurraqib (Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest) and Iliana Regan (Burn the Place) discuss the intersection of food, music, and identity, and how memoir helps shape our understanding of the arts, ourselves, and one another. Presented in partnership with Coahoma Community College, the Coahoma County Higher Education Center, and Carnegie Public Library’s Community Book Talks Lecture Series.

Moderated by Lisa Lucas, Executive Director of the National Book Foundation.

Novelists Lisa Ko (The Leavers, National Book Award Finalist) and Helen Phillips (The Need, National Book Award Longlister) visit Kirkwood Community College to discuss the bond between mother and child, and the ways family can be torn apart and woven back together again across borders, identity, and alternate realities.

2019 National Book Award Nonfiction Longlisters Hanif Abdurraqib (Go Ahead in The Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Question) and Iliana Regan (Burn the Place) continue their conversation mainstage at the twenty-seventh Oxford Conference of the Book. Abdurraqib and Regan discuss the heart of food, music, and place—from the makings of an iconic rap group to a Michelin-starred restaurant—and the power of personal storytelling.

Moderated by Lisa Lucas, Executive Director of the National Book Foundation.

2019 National Book Award Longlister Helen Phillips (The Need) will read at Mission Creek Festival’s public keynote in the Old Capital Museum.

The National Book Foundation returns to Sam Houston State University for the 2020 National Book Awards Festival featuring a cross-genre conversation on storytelling, recognition, and resonating with audiences from Texas to Tennessee with poet Diana Khoi Nguyen (Ghost Of), fiction author Kimberly King Parsons (Black Light: Stories), and Young People’s Literature author Christopher Paul Curtis (The Journey of Little Charlie).

Moderated by Bryan Washington, 5 Under 35 Honoree and author of Lot: Stories.

This program is supported by SHSU’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences and the MFA Program in Creative Writing.

Eat, Drink & Be Literary brings major contemporary authors to BAMcafé for intimate readings, engaging discussions, and a festive meal.

Presented in partnership with Brooklyn Academy of Music

Moderated by Parul Sehgal

“one of the most dizzyingly accomplished of our writers” —Gary Shteyngart

Sigrid Nunez has published seven novels, including A Feather on the Breath of God, The Last of Her Kind, Salvation City, and, most recently, The Friend, which was a New York Times bestseller and won the 2018 National Book Award for Fiction. Her other honors include four Pushcart Prizes, a Whiting Award, a Berlin Prize Fellowship, and the Rome Prize in Literature. Her work has appeared in several anthologies, including The Best American Short Stories 2019 and four anthologies of Asian American literature. She is also the author of Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag. Her eighth novel, What Are You Going Through, will be published by Riverhead Books in September. Nunez lives in New York City.

Moderator: Parul Sehgal 

Parul Sehgal is a book critic at The New York Times. She was previously a columnist and senior editor at The New York Times Book Review. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, Slate, Bookforum, The New Yorker, Tin House, and The Literary Review, among other publications. She is the recipient of the Nona Balakian Award from the National Book Critics Circle for her criticism and teaches at New York University.

Limited Ticket Availability