The National Book Festival is an American event that the Library of Congress organizes annually on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Held in early autumn, the festival attracts tens of thousands of people each year (in 2011, nearly 200,000 were in attendance). Over fifty nationally published authors, illustrators, and poets are invited for lectures, readings, interviews, and book signings. The Festival also features various child-oriented attractions.
First Lady Laura Bush first hosted the festival when it was established in 2001 and continued through 2008. Previously, as First Lady of Texas, Laura Bush helped establish the Texas Book Festival. The honorary co-chairs from 2008 to 2012 have been President and Mrs. Obama.
Librarians from libraries across the country are invited every year to represent each state. In 2012, the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and commercial sponsors such as Target and AT&T help provide funding for the event.
Famous quotes containing the words national, book and/or festival:
“...America has enjoyed the doubtful blessing of a single-track mind. We are able to accommodate, at a time, only one national hero; and we demand that that hero shall be uniform and invincible. As a literate people we are preoccupied, neither with the race nor the individual, but with the type. Yesterday, we romanticized the “tough guy;” today, we are romanticizing the underprivileged, tough or tender; tomorrow, we shall begin to romanticize the pure primitive.”
—Ellen Glasgow (1873–1945)
“Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests, and mines, and stone quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Marry, I cannot show it in rhyme, I have tried; I can find no rhyme to “lady” but “baby”Man innocent rhyme; for “scorn,” “horn”Ma hard rhyme; for “school,” “fool”Ma babbling rhyme; very ominous endings. No, I was not born under a rhyming planet, nor I cannot woo in festival terms.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)