Texas Book Festival

Join NUP authors Vievee Francis and Sebastián H. Páramo at the 2023 Texas Book Festival hosted in Austin, TX!

Texas Book Festival (TBF) began with a simple purpose: to bring authors and readers together in a celebration of literature and literacy. Founded in 1995 by Laura Bush (a former librarian and then First Lady of Texas), Mary Margaret Farabee, and a dedicated group of volunteers, the TBF set out to honor Texas authors, promote the joys of reading, and benefit the state’s public libraries. The first Festival took place in November 1996 and is now one of the nation’s premier annual literary events, featuring 300 authors of the year’s best books and drawing 50,000 book lovers.

Held each fall in and around the majestic State Capitol in downtown Austin, the annual Festival Weekend features a rich variety of author presentations and panels, book signings, cooking demonstrations, programs and activities for kids of all ages, food trucks, and exhibiting vendors from across the state and country. More than 50 volunteer committee chairs and 1000 volunteers help make the annual Festival possible. While remaining an important showcase for Texas authors, the Texas Book Festival hosts writers from all over the world and is honored to have a national reputation as one of the most prestigious and longest running book festivals in the country.

SEBASTIÁN H. PÁRAMO has published poems in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day, New England Review, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. He is the founding editor of The Boiler and serves as poetry editor for Deep Vellum. He lives in Texas.

VIEVEE FRANCIS is the author of three previous books of poetry: Blue‑Tail Fly; Horse in the Dark: Poems, winner of the Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize for a second collection; and Forest Primeval: Poems (TriQuarterly), winner of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and the 2017 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. In 2009 she received a Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award and in 2010 a Kresge Fellowship. She is an associate professor of English and creative writing at Dartmouth College and serves as an associate editor of Callaloo.