Clear up your schedule and some shelf space: Award-winning country star Margo Price and former Texas Congressman Will Hurd have just been announced as part of this year’s Texas Book Festival (Nov. 5-6, online and at the Texas State Capitol).
The festival opened up its lineup back in July with a first flush of 15 writers, including that This Is Us star Omar Epps would be bringing his upcoming debut novel, Afrofuturist drama Nubia: The Awakening. That was followed in August with word that Janet Evanovich, author of the Stephanie Plum mysteries, was joining the list of authors in attendance.
Now its added the entire author roster, with 300 writers, novelists, journalists, and poets in attendance. Here are just a few highlights:
• Illinois-to-Nashville transplant Margo Price has that modern troubadour energy, and since the Grammy-nominated musician released her third album, That’s How Rumors Get Started, she’s also written her first book, Maybe We’ll Make It: A Memoir.
• Former Republican congressman Will Hurd has become a symbol for the potential of the Republican party to come back from the ever-widening Trump sinkhole. Earlier this year he published his first book, American Reboot: An Idealist’s Guide to Getting Big Things Done.
• Award-winning Former New York Times columnist Anand Giridharadas comes at the political fight for the soul of America from a much more progressive viewpoint with The Persuaders: At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy, featuring interviews with high profile names like Sen. Bernie Sanders and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as well as conversations with the ordinary members of movements dedicated to preserving rights.
• Legendary French chef and 24-time James Beard award winner Jacques Pépin has written more recipe books than most people have had hot dinners, starting with 1967’s The Other Half of the Egg and continuing now with his latest, The Art of the Chicken, a personal celebration of his admiration for that most adaptable of meats and the bird that has come to represent France.
• Rebecca Roanhorse’s speculative fiction rocked the genre world with her debut Locus-winning novel, Trail of Lightning, and its depiction of Navajo protagonists and traditions in a modern fantasy setting – a style she continues with her latest book, Race to the Sun, before taking a leap into a historical supernatural West with her upcoming book, Tread of Angels.
• Fans of Disney’s Brave get to experience the further adventures of the boisterous and trouble-causing Merida in Bravely, the spinoff novel from Maggie Stiefvater, author of the Books of Faerie and The Wolves of Mercy Falls quartet.
Find the complete lineup at texasbookfestival.org.
Follow all our coverage at austinchronicle.com/texas-book-festival.
This article appears in September 2 • 2022.
