The 12th Library of Congress National Book Festival is part of a larger Library of Congress "Celebration of the Book" in 2012 and 2013. The celebration encompasses several events and an exhibition, which opened this past June in the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building, featuring "Books That Shaped America." 

If you can't attend as we are unable to, remember that C-Span's BookTV is holding approximately fifteen and a half hours of coverage on both Saturday and Sunday, September 22 and 23: 

Renowned authors US Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, David and Julie Nixon Eisenhower, Jeff Kinney, Gail Tsukiyama, Susan Hertog, Lien-Hang Nguyen and Christopher Paolini will join a speakers’ lineup of more than 100 authors, including Mario Vargas Llosa, T.C. Boyle, Geraldine Brooks, Patricia Cornwell, Jeffrey Eugenides and poet Nikky Finney at the 12th annual Library of Congress National Book Festival, on Saturday, Sept. 22, and Sunday, Sept. 23, 2012, between 9th and 14th streets on the National Mall. The event, free and open to the public, will run from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. on Saturday and from noon to 5:30 p.m. on Sunday, rain or shine.

Other authors and poets slated to appear at the festival include Bob Balaban, Donna Britt, Lois McMaster Bujold, Robert Caro, Stephen L. Carter, Sandra Cisneros, Michael Connelly, Junot Diaz, Thomas Friedman, John Green, Joy Harjo, Steve Inskeep, Walter Isaacson, Jewel, Philip Levine, Mike Lupica, Lois Lowry, David Maraniss, Melissa Marr, Walter Dean Myers, Mary Pope Osborne, Chris Raschka, Marilynne Robinson, Lisa Scottoline, Jean Edward Smith, R.L. Stine, Elizabeth Dowling Taylor, Susan Tejada, Craig Thompson, Colson Whitehead and Daniel Yergin.

The 2012 National Book Festival will feature authors, poets and illustrators in several pavilions, including two on Sunday only: Sci Fi/Fantasy/Graphic Novels and Special Presentations. Festival-goers can attend talks by their favorite poets and authors, purchase books and get books signed, have photos taken with characters from children’s television shows and participate in a variety of activities. An estimated 200,000 people attended the festival in 2011.

Details about the Library of Congress National Book Festival can be found on its website at www.loc.gov/bookfest/.

 "The book’s role in passing knowledge from person to person, from generation to generation, is unique and irreplaceable," said Librarian of Congress James H. Billington.

Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa, winner of the 2010 Nobel Prize for Literature, has used his writing to oppose authoritarianism and to condemn societies that fetter personal freedom. His works include "The Time of the Hero" (1963), "The Green House" (1966), "Conversation in the Cathedral" (1969), "The War of the End of the World" (1987), "The Storyteller" (1987) and "The Dream of the Celt" (2010). In the early 1970s Vargas Llosa began to advocate democracy and the free market. In the late 1980s he ran unsuccessfully for the presidency of Peru, recorded in his memoir "A Fish in the Water" (1993).

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