The New Orleans Book Festival will need bigger rooms at Tulane University this March, as the three-day celebration of writing, business and culture returns with more than 100 authors, the festival announced this week.
The festival unveiled a starting lineup of writers including pundits such as David Brooks and Kara Swisher; philanthropist Darren Walker of the Ford Foundation; novelists such as Zachary Lazar and Jesmyn Ward; and experts in many fields including journalist Michael Lewis, historians C.W. Goodyear and Annette Gordon-Reed, New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman and documentarian Ken Burns.
First Lady of the United States Jill Biden, center, listens to a panel discussion with authors Geraldine Brooks, Sadeqa Johnson, Katy Simpson Smith and moderator Morgan Babst during the New Orleans Book Festival at Tulane University in New Orleans, Friday, March 10, 2023. (Photo by Sophia Germer, NOLA.com, The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate)
More authors are likely to be added to the event, organizers said.
The festival, March 14-16, will highlight a collaboration with New Orleans Entrepreneur Week with a crossover day of programming on Thursday ahead of the book festival's opening keynote session.
New Orleans culture will be celebrated with cooking demonstrations and music.
"We have a big old cooking tent, and we’ll have a lot of music," said co-chair Walter Isaacson, a history professor at Tulane and bestselling author.
As the increasingly popular, free event on the Uptown campus enters its third year, organizers are planning for larger crowds, festival co-chair Cheryl Landrieu said.
People sit in the overflow room of the United Airlines Stage to listen to a discussion called Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe with Brian Greene and moderator Walter Isaacson during the New Orleans Book Festival at Tulane University in New Orleans, Friday, March 10, 2023. (Photo by Sophia Germer, NOLA.com, The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate)
"We’re going to program more and larger venues," she said. "It was standing-room-only in some of the venues last year, and we want everyone to be able to experience this."
Landrieu has been delighted to see school groups showing up to fan out across the campus to hear first-hand from accomplished writers.
Family Day at the Fest, on Saturday in the Devlin Fieldhouse, focuses on literacy advancement, with readings and literary-themed activities for children in partnership with the Scholastic Corporation.
More than 5,000 free children's books were distributed to the community last year.
The book festival and Entrepreneur Week are a welcoming environment for ideas, culture and innovation, said Jon Atkinson, CEO of The Idea Village, the local business accelerator which produces NOEW.
The combination of events is a great opportunity for networking by creative people, he said.
Idea Village CEO Jon Atkinson has been at the helm of the organization since 2018.
"Historically, Book Fest has hosted a lot of innovation-related authors," Atkinson said. "That’s a big part of what we’re excited about: to plug in with what’s happening locally, and to put local people on the same stage, so to speak, as these national and global thought leaders."
The Idea Village’s annual IDEApitch competition, showcasing companies competing for an investment prize, will take place March 14, on Tulane’s campus just before the Book Fest keynote.
Gayle Benson, owner of the New Orleans Saints and a major local philanthropist, is the book festival's honorary co-chair.
With major players in business, philanthropy, media and entertainment, the festival continues to leverage the appeal of New Orleans to gather top-tier thinkers.
Isaacson is former CEO of the Aspen Institute in Washington and the biographer of transformative people including Leonardo Da Vinci, Albert Einstein and most recently Elon Musk. His vision for the book fest is no less ambitious: to build a networking and innovation event to rival those in America's largest cities.
"The goal is to build a festival week that is about books and ideas, and entrepreneurship. And eventually we may end up with a larger third-coast festival here," he said.
The celebration of national, regional and local authors is free and open to the public.
A full schedule of sessions and events will be released at the end of February. For more information, visit bookfest.tulane.edu.
Authors appearing at the 2024 festival include:
- Stacey Abrams
- Jessica Abughattas
- Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
- Iñaki Alday
- Kwame Alexander
- Libby Connolly Alexander
- Kurt Andersen
- Raymond Antrobus
- Tank Ball
- John M. Barry
- James G. Basker
- Ruth Behar
- Caryn Cosse Bell
- Thomas Beller
- Jason Berry
- Charles Blow
- Leanne Boucher Gill
- Toya Boudy
- Douglas Brinkley
- David Brooks
- Ken Burns
- Richard Campanella
- Emmeline Clein
- Emma Cline
- Jefferson Cowie
- John Currence
- Charity Dean
- Kyle DeCoste
- Maureen Dowd
- Jeff Duncan
- Jonathan Eig
- Drew Faust
- Betsy Fischer Martin
- Richard Ford
- Big Freedia
- Cheryl Gerber
- Eddie S. Glaude Jr.
- Steve Gleason
- C. W. Goodyear
- Annette Gordon-Reed
- Maggie Haberman
- Steven Hahn
- Gregg Hecimovich
- Yuri Herrera
- Ladee Hubbard
- John Huey
- K. Ibura
- Martin Indyk
- Walter Isaacson
- Sheila Johnson
- T. R. Johnson
- Margarita Jover
- Sal Khan
- Rob Lalka
- Mitch Landrieu
- John H. Lawrence
- Kiese Laymon
- Zachary Lazar
- Michael Lewis
- David Lipsky
- Bettina Love
- Wesley Lowery
- David Magee
- Dr. Sharon Malone
- Cynthia Manick
- Jonathan Martin
- Rachel Louise Martin
- Bethany McLean
- Adm. William H. McRaven
- Corey J. Miles
- Michelle Miller
- Jamila Minnicks
- Jerry Mitchell
- Helen Molesworth
- Marc Morial
- Adm. Mike Mullen
- Adam Nagourney
- Viet Thanh Nguyen
- Joe Nocera
- Michele Norris
- Jessica Norwood
- Lawrence O'Donnell
- Brandan “bmike” Odums
- Annie Murphy Paul
- Imani Perry
- Gen. David H. Petraeus
- Yolanda Pierce
- Karisma Price
- Emily Raboteau
- Adolph Reed
- Emilie Rhys
- Peter Ricchuiti
- Nathaniel Rich
- Jeffrey Rosen
- Maurice Carlos Ruffin
- Katy Simpson Smith
- Clint Smith
- Tracy K. Smith
- Anne Snyder
- Michael Strecker
- Sheila Sundar
- Kara Swisher
- Jake Tapper
- Wright Thompson
- Amor Towles
- Darren Walker
- K. L. Walther
- Jesmyn Ward
- Howard Scott Warshaw
- Heather Watts
- David Weill
- Jake Weisberg
- Jay Wellons
- Brittany N. Williams
- Damian Woetzel.