This weekend, the Texas Book Festival unites writers and readers from across the globe for the 30th year: A feat all the more impressive as uncovering erased histories, pushing the boundaries of fiction, and encouraging universal literacy – all essential to the festival’s mission – remain key targets of our increasingly widespread autocratic regimes.
Among works spanning identity and politics, homelessness and foreign policy, climate and tech, and music and culture, by authors ranging from celebrity scribes like Matthew McConaughey and Chelsea Handler to just-emerging authors, one specific theme appears in the 2025 Book Festival lineup: Texas. It seems obvious, but the event’s Lone Star programming proves as nuanced and expansive as the state itself. Take historian Benjamin Heber Johnson, who explores its complex, consequential roots in Texas: An American History, and scholar Jeff Roche, whose new offering The Conservative Frontier traces Texas’ role in the rise of the new right. They speak Saturday at the panel “Texas Takes Shape: Perceptions, Power and the Politics of Identity.” If you’re more interested in fiction, dog-ear Austin authors Emily Hunt Kivel and Fernando A. Flores, who present their latest works at the Michener Center-presented panel “Not the Texas You Know: Unconventional Takes on the Lone Star State” – or Lucas Schaefer and Callie Collins, the faces behind “Austin Calling: Debut Novels Set in the Heart of Texas.”
These are just some of the hundreds of authors appearing in Downtown Austin Nov. 8-9 for a mix of discussions, readings, and special events hosted in and around the Capitol. Thumb through the official Texas Book Festival guide, available as a handy pullout in this very newspaper, for more information.
This article appears in November 7 • 2025.