2013 National Book Festival

Jennifer Gavin from the Library of Congress speaks with Shiela Corley, president of the Junior League of Washington, a key volunteer support group for the 2013 National Book Festival on September 21-22, 2013, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.BiographyShiela Corley joined the Junior League of Washington in 2003, and her first experience was volunteering at the National Book Festival where she worked the book signing line for Julie Andrews. Corley was honored to receive the Presidential Award for Excellence in Community Support in 2007 and 2009. In 2008, she co-chaired the 50th Anniversary of Holiday Shops. Outside of the Junior League, Corley is manager of the Environmental and Economic Survey Section for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and teaches in the pre-school department at First Baptist Church Alexandria.

Jennifer Gavin from the Library of Congress speaks with Joyce Carol Oates, who will appear at the 2013 National Book Festival on September 22, 2013, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.BiographyNational Book Award winner (for “them,” 1970) Joyce Carol Oates has published more than 40 novels as well as plays, short stories, novellas, poetry and nonfiction. She writes for approximately eight hours every day – in longhand. Oates has also received the PEN/Malamud Award for excellence in short fiction and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. She currently teaches at Princeton University, where she is a professor of creative writing. Her newest books are “The Accursed,” a historical novel with elements of the supernatural, and “Evil Eye: Four Novellas of Love Gone Wrong.”

Francisco Macias from the Library of Congress speaks with Marie Arana, who will appear at the 2013 National Book Festival on September 21, 2013, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.BiographyThe daughter of a Peruvian father and an American mother, Marie Arana was born in Lima, Peru, and when she was 9, she moved to New Jersey. Arana is a former editor of The Washington Post’s Book World and is now a writer-at-large for that newspaper. Arana’s memoir, “American Chica: Two Worlds, One Childhood,” was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2001. Arana has recently turned to biography with “Bolívar: American Liberator,” which The Washington Post described as “magisterial in scope, written with flair and an almost cinematic sense of history happening.”

Francisco Macias from the Library of Congress speaks with Juan Felipe Herrera, who will appear at the 2013 National Book Festival on September 22, 2013, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.BiographyJuan Felipe Herrera is the Poet Laureate of California. He is a winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for “Half the World in Light” (2008) and has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. In 1990, Herrera was a distinguished teaching fellow at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop and he has taught elsewhere, including in prisons. His latest collection is “Senegal Taxi (Camino del Sol).”

Francisco Macias from the Library of Congress speaks with Juan Felipe Herrera, who will appear at the 2013 National Book Festival on September 22, 2013, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.BiographyJuan Felipe Herrera is the Poet Laureate of California. He is a winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for “Half the World in Light” (2008) and has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. In 1990, Herrera was a distinguished teaching fellow at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop and he has taught elsewhere, including in prisons. His latest collection is “Senegal Taxi (Camino del Sol).”

Sheryl Cannady from the Library of Congress speaks with William P. Jones, who will appear at the 2013 National Book Festival on September 22, 2013, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.BiographyWilliam P. Jones is an associate professor of history at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He is the author of “The Tribe of Black Ulysses: African American Lumber Workers in the Jim Crow South,” about the previously ignored story of African American men employed in the lumber industry in the Southern United States. The book received the H.L. Mitchell Award of the Southern Historical Association in 2006. Jones’s new book is “The March on Washington: Jobs, Freedom and the Forgotten History of Civil Rights.”

Guy Lamolinara from the Library of Congress speaks with Sheila Miyoshi Jager, who will appear at the 2013 National Book Festival on September 22, 2013, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.BiographySheila Miyoshi Jager is chair of the Department of East Asian Studies at Oberlin College. Her first book on Korean nationalism was “Narratives of Nation Building in Korea: A Genealogy of Patriotism. She followed that with “Ruptured Histories: War, Memory and the Post-Cold War in Asia.” Her new book focuses on a topic much in the news. “Brothers at War: The Unending Conflict in Korea” is a military, political and cultural history of the war, seen as spanning from 1945 to the present, and its global impact told from the American, North and South Korean, Soviet-Russian and Chinese perspectives.

Sheryl Cannady from the Library of Congress speaks with Jon Scieszka, who will appear at the 2013 National Book Festival on September 22, 2013, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.BiographyJon Scieszka was the first National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, a program sponsored by the Library of Congress Center for the Book and the Children’s Book Council. His zany, somewhat subversive sense of humor is evident in such best-sellers as “The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales” and “The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs.” He also has a book series and website that encourages boys to read more called Guys Read.” Scieszka’s new book is “Guys Read: Other Worlds.”