Taylor Branch, Barbara KingsolverNational Book Festival, Katherine Paterson, Ntasha Trethewey: Authors at the National Book Festival

Taylor Branch, Barbara Kingsolver, Katherine Paterson, Natasha Trethewey: Authors at the National Book Festival

As a student in grade school, Khaled Hosseini was reading Persian poetry as well as Farsi translations of novels ranging from Alice in Wonderland to Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer series. His best-selling debut novel, The Kite Runner, had a lengthy run as a best-seller and was made into a movie; the book drew on his experiences as a child in Afghanistan. He has since written A Thousand Splendid Suns and his latest novel, And the Mountains Echoed.

Named one of the most important writers of the 20th century by Writer’s Digest, author, poet and essayist Barbara Kingsolver is the author of more than a dozen books including The Poisonwood Bible, The Bean Trees, Homeland, The Lacuna, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life and Flight Behavior. She has won numerous literary awards and in 2000 received the National Humanities Medal, the highest US honor for service through the arts.

Novelist, poet, essayist and short-story writer Joyce Carol Oates has written more than 50 novels and eight volumes of poetry and has won numerous honors including the National Book Award for her novel "Them." Her first novel was published when she was 28 and she continues to craft new work continuously while teaching at Princeton. She was an NEA Fellow and also received the PEN/Malamud Award for her lifetime of literary achievement. Her other novels include You Must Remember This, Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart, Solstice, and Marya: a Life.

Katherine Paterson, a two-time winner of the Newbery Medal (for Bridge to Terabithia and Jacob Have I Loved and the National Book Award (for The Great Gilly Hopkins and The Master Puppeteer) is known for her support of literacy promotion in addition to her extensive body of work. She recently served as the Library of Congress National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature.

US Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey is the author of four poetry collections and a book of creative nonfiction. Her numerous honors include the Pulitzer Prize and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her first book of poems, Domestic Work, won the inaugural 1999 Cave Canem Poetry Prize and was published by Graywolf Press. Her subsequent poetry collections include Bellocq’s Ophelia, Native Guard and Thrall. In 2010, Trethewey published Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

Library of Congress Opened Two Exhibits This Past Summer

The illustration is by Oliver Smith for the stage set of Don Giovanni

The Library of Congress is presenting two new exhibitions . One will celebrate opera, the majestic art form that has transfixed audiences for more than 400 years, and the other will mark what Martin Luther King Jr. called "the greatest demonstration for freedom in the nation’s history."

A Night at the Opera opened in the Performing Arts Reading Room Gallery on the first floor of the Library’s James Madison Building, 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington DC. The exhibition will be on view through Saturday, Jan. 25, 2014.

A Day Like No Other: Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington in the Graphic Arts Galleries on the ground level of the Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 First St. S.E., Washington, DC. That exhibition will be on display through Saturday, March 1, 2014.

A Night at the Opera, a 50-item display, will feature manuscript and printed scores, librettos, photographs, correspondence and set designs, dating from the late 18th century through the beginning of the 20th century. The exhibit also will commemorate the bicentennials of iconic opera composers Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner, both born in 1813. Highlights include holograph manuscript (in the composer’s own handwriting) scores by Verdi and Wagner, as well as extremely rare librettos from the premiere performances of Verdi’s "Aida" (Cairo, 1871) and Wagner’s "Lohengrin" (Weimar, 1850). Other items include early printed scores of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s "Don Giovanni" and Verdi’s "Macbeth" with evocative illustrated title pages.

A Night at the Opera will feature a number of items on display for the first time, including set designs for "Don Giovanni" and Georges Bizet’s "Carmen" by Oliver Smith (1918-1994) and a colorful set design by Italian Art Nouveau artist Galileo Chini (1873-1956), created for the first production of Giacomo Puccini’s "Turandot" at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan in 1926.

A Day Like No Other: Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington opened exactly 50 years after the historic day when 250,000 people participated in the largest non-violent demonstration for civil rights that America had ever witnessed. With a rallying cry of "jobs and freedom," a diverse crowd gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial to urge Congress to act on proposed legislation.

The exhibit consists of 40 black-and-white images. These photographs — from newspaper and other media photographers, independent photojournalists and people who participated in the march — represent the cross-section of individuals who were there.

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Taylor Branch, Barbara Kingsolver, Katherine Paterson, Natasha Trethewey: Authors at the National Book Festival

Library of Congress Opened Two Exhibits This Past Summer

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