Southern Festival of Books Announces Lineup of Award-Winning Authors, Poets, and Literary Legends

UPDATE: See the full list of confirmed festival authors here, and read all Chapter 16‘s coverage of festival books here.

Humanities Tennessee today announced the initial lineup of award-winning, bestselling authors who will headline the 36th Annual Southern Festival of Books, taking place at Bicentennial Mall, the Tennessee State Museum and Tennessee State Library Oct. 26-27, 2024.

One of the oldest and largest literary events in the country, the festival will be open to the public 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday, October 26, and 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sunday, October 27, for panel sessions, discussions, and readings from a wide variety of genres including fiction and nonfiction, young adult literature, poetry, science fiction, and mystery.  Featured festival books will be available for purchase and can be signed by authors throughout the weekend. Parnassus Books is the festival bookseller. 

Returning for the second year, a designated Student Day will be held on Thursday, October 24, welcoming 500 high school students from Metro Nashville Public Schools for author meet-and-greets, writing exercises, and book giveaways courtesy of Parnassus Books Foundation and Dollar General Foundation.

A series of community events will take place throughout the week of the festival. These will include:

• An evening with Erik Larson at Paschall Theater at Montgomery Bell Academy on Thursday, October 24. Ticket purchase includes a signed copy of Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War. Tickets, which support Humanities Tennessee, can be purchased here.
• The second annual Southern Festival of Books Writer’s Workshop in partnership with The Porch on Friday, October 25. The one-day workshop will be held at the Tennessee State Museum with workshops led by Darnell Arnoult, Ann Powers, Justin Taylor, and more. Visit porchtn.org or humtn.org for registration information.
• A special presentation by Eric Dawson’s Suttree’s Knoxville: A Hymn to the Past in Film and Music on Saturday, October 26. This interactive experience features documentary footage from the era of Cormac McCarthy’s novel, paired with music developed by William Tyler and short readings from the novel.
• The Women’s National Book Association Coffee with Authors will be held on Saturday, October 26. Visit wnbanashville.org for more details.

The festival weekend will feature appearances from approximately 150 authors, offering attendees the opportunity to connect with their favorite writers through a series of live events, panels, book signings and more. The 2024 roster includes legendary musical artist Joan Baez; bestselling authors TJ Klune, Lisa Unger, and Renee Watson; 2023 Pulitzer Prize winner Jayne Anne Phillips, and Nashville-based authors Ann Patchett, Alice Randall, and Margaret Renkl, among others.

“Every year, the Southern Festival of Books attracts some of the most dynamic, successful, and talented authors from around the world, and this year’s festival is no exception,” said Humanities Tennessee Executive Director Tim Henderson. “We are honored and excited to welcome these brilliant writers to Nashville for a weekend celebrating the written word. In addition to our amazing lineup of authors, the festival offers a wide array of programming for the entire family, from live music to puppetry to theater. It’s truly an event the whole family can enjoy, and we can’t wait to see everyone this year.”

Major appearances and events for the 2024 Southern Festival of Books will include:

• JOAN BAEZ (When You See My Mother, Ask Her to Dance: Poems): Joan Baez is a dynamic force of nature. Her commitment to music and social activism has earned global recognition, ranging from induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame to the Ambassador of Conscience Award, Amnesty International’s highest honor. Retired from active performing since 2019, she has devoted much of her time to the Mischief Makers series of paintings, portraits that immortalize risk-taking visionaries she has known, who have brought about social change through history, from Dr. Martin Luther King and Bob Dylan to the Dalai Lama and Patti Smith.
• TJ KLUNE (Somewhere Beyond the Sea – Cerulean Chronicles, 2): TJ Klune is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling, Lambda Literary Award-winning author of The House in the Cerulean Sea, Under the Whispering Door, In the Lives of Puppets, the Green Creek Series for adults, the Extraordinaries Series for teens, and more.
• JAYNE ANNE PHILLIPS (Night Watch: A Novel): Winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, Jayne Anne Phillips is the author of Black Tickets, Machine Dreams, Fast Lanes, Shelter, MotherKind, Lark and Termite, and Quiet Dell. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Bunting Fellowship, and two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships. Winner of an Arts and Letters Award and the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she was inducted into the Academy in 2018. A National Book Award finalist, and twice a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, she lives in New York and Boston.
• ANN PATCHETT (Tom Lake: A Novel): A bestselling author and a Pulitzer Prize finalist, Ann Patchett is the author of nine novels. She has been the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including a National Humanities Medal, England’s Women’s Prize, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Book Sense Book of the Year, a Guggenheim Fellowship, The Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Prize, The Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, the American Bookseller’s Association’s Most Engaging Author Award, and the Women’s National Book Association’s Award. At the 2024 Southern Festival of Books, Patchett will appear in two separate sessions, in conversation with Andrew Dubus III and with Simon van Booy.
• LISA UNGER (The New Couple in 5B: A Novel): Lisa Unger is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author. Her books are published in 32 languages, with millions of copies sold worldwide. In 2019, she received two Edgar Award nominations, an honor held by only a few writers including Agatha Christie. Her work has been named on “Best Book” lists from Today, People, GMA, EW, Amazon, IndieBound and many others. She has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, NPR, and Travel+Leisure.
• RENÉE WATSON (skin and bones: a novel): Renée Watson is a No. 1 New York Times bestselling author. Over the past decade, she has written fifteen young adult books, which have sold over a million copies. She received a Coretta Scott King Award and a Newbery Honor for Piecing Me Together and high praise for 1619 Project: Born on the Water. Watson is on the Council of Writers for the National Writing Project and is a member of the Academy of American Poets’ Education Advisory Council. She is also a writer-in-residence at The Solstice Low-Residency MFA Creative Writing Program.

• ACE ATKINS (Don’t Let the Devil Ride: A Novel): Ace Atkins is an award-winning, New York Times bestselling author who started his writing career as a crime beat reporter in Florida. Don’t Let the Devil Ride is his thirtieth novel. His previous novels include eleven books in the Quinn Colson series and multiple true-crime novels based on infamous crooks and killers. In 2010, he was chosen by Robert B. Parker’s family to continue the iconic Spenser series, adding ten novels to the franchise.
• KATHERINE APPLEGATE (Mouse and His Dog: A Dogtown Book): Katherine Applegate is the No. 1 New York Times bestselling author of beloved and award-winning books for young readers, including Odder, Home of the Brave, Crenshaw, Wishtree, Willodeen, and The One and Only Ivan, for which she won the Newbery Medal. She is also the author of the Animorphs series, and a beginning reader series, Doggo and Pupper, illustrated by Charlie Alder.
• SLOANE CROSLEY (Grief is for People): Sloane Crosley is the author of the bestselling novels Cult Classic and The Clasp and three essay collections: Look Alive Out There and the New York Times bestsellers I Was Told There’d Be Cake and How Did You Get This Number. A two-time finalist for The Thurber Prize for American Humor, she is also a contributing editor for Vanity Fair and her work has appeared in publications including Esquire, the New York Times Book Review, the New York Review of Books, and Vogue. Grief Is for People is her first full-length nonfiction work.
• RACHEL KHONG (Real Americans: A Novel): Rachel Khong is the author of Goodbye, Vitamin, winner of the California Book Award for First Fiction and named a Best Book of the Year by NPR; O, The Oprah Magazine; Vogue; and Esquire. Her work has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, The Cut, The Guardian, The Paris Review, and Tin House. In 2018, she founded The Ruby, a work and event space for women and nonbinary writers and artists in San Francisco’s Mission District.
• LIZ MOORE (The God of the Woods: A Novel): Liz Moore is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel Long Bright River, which was a Good Morning America Book Club pick and one of Barack Obama’s favorite books of the year, as well as the acclaimed novels Heft and The Unseen World. A winner of the 2014-2015 Rome Prize in Literature, she lives in Philadelphia.
• BETH REVIS (The Fate of Magic: A Novel): Beth Revis is a New York Times bestselling author with books available in more than twenty languages. She writes science fiction, fantasy, and contemporary novels, including Across the Universe, Star Wars: Rebel Rising, Give the Dark My Love, and A World Without You.
• RON RASH (The Caretaker: A Novel): Ron Rash is the author of the PEN/Faulkner finalist and New York Times  bestselling novel Serena, in addition to the critically acclaimed novels The Risen, Above the Waterfall, The Cove, One Foot in Eden, Saints at the River, and The World Made Straight; five collections of poems; and seven collections of stories, among them Burning Bright, which won the 2010 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, Nothing Gold Can Stay, a  New York Times bestseller, and Chemistry and Other Stories, which was a finalist for the 2007 PEN/Faulkner Award. Three times the recipient of the O. Henry Prize, his books have been translated into seventeen languages. He teaches at Western Carolina University.
• PENG SHEPHERD (All This and More: A Novel): Peng Shepherd was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona, and has lived in Beijing, Kuala Lumpur, London, New York, and Mexico City. Her second novel, The Cartographers, became a national bestseller, was named a Best Book of 2022 by The Washington Post, and received a 2020 fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her debut, The Book of M, won the 2019 Neukom Institute for Literary Arts Award for Debut Speculative Fiction, and was chosen as a best book of the year by Amazon, Elle, Refinery29, and The Verge, as well as a best book of the summer by the Today show and NPR’s On Point.

Local authors of note, in addition to those mentioned above, include Sarah Adams, Anne Byrn, RJ Jacobs, Joy Jordan-Lake, Andrew Maraniss, Jonathan Metzl, Ann Powers, Liz Riggs, and Jared Sullivan.

For a full lineup of festival authors, visit sofestofbooks.org. Additional authors and other special announcements will be added to the list every Friday.

In addition to 75 sessions over two days, the festival features over 60 vendors and food trucks, and three performance stages. A music stage focuses on the incredible talent of the Nashville music community, and the performing arts stage offers theater, spoken word, and poetry throughout the weekend. The festival children’s stage and activity center features authors, musicians, performers, crafts, character costumes, and parties celebrating beloved children’s books.

The always popular Authors in the Round Dinner, chaired by Allison Stansberry will be held on Friday, October 25, at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. Authors in the Round, which allows guests to dine alongside more than 40 regionally and nationally known authors, is the festival’s signature fundraiser, ensuring that Humanities Tennessee can present the annual festival free of charge.

For a regularly updated list of all authors, please visit sofestofbooks.org/authors To learn more about the Southern Festival of Books and to stay updated on festival announcements, please follow us on Twitter (@SoFestofBooks), Facebook (@SoFestofBooks) and on Instagram (@sofestofbooks).

ABOUT THE SOUTHERN FESTIVAL OF BOOKS

The Southern Festival of Books is presented by Humanities Tennessee, a nonprofit organization that promotes humanities education across Tennessee. The festival is proudly sponsored by the Metro Nashville Arts Commission, National Endowment for the Arts, Tennessee Arts Commission, Nashville Public Library, Ingram Content Group, Vanderbilt University, Parnassus Books and the Nashville Scene.

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