Community & Educational Outreach

The San Antonio Book Festival partners with select authors who make visits to area schools and teach lessons in the days leading up to the Festival. During the 2019 Book Festival weekend, nine SABF authors visited seven schools, impacting nearly 1,500 students. In 2018, Jason Reynolds (For Every One and Sunny), winner of the Kirkus Prize, the National Book Award, Newbery Award, and more, visited Roosevelt High School, Ed White Middle School, and Bibliotech East, presenting to nearly 1,200 students. In the past, Jack Gantos (The Key that Swallowed Joey Pigza), spoke at an Education Service Center-Region 20 evening event for librarians and teachers and spent the day teaching writing classes to three different grades at KIPP’s Camino Academy and Un Mundo Dual Language Academy.

While SABF is committed to expanding these author visits throughout the calendar year, due to popular demand, we have migrated this valuable program to an application system. If you are a teacher, librarian, or school administrator interested in booking one of these meaningful teaching sessions, please visit the Authors in Schools page or sign up for our newsletter to be informed when there is a call for applications.

For the past seven years, SABF has selected student presenters from area schools to introduce authors at Festival sessions. This provides a wonderful opportunity for students to practice public speaking and develop their writing skills as they draft their author introductions.

As of January 2020, the Festival has streamlined this process and will select a partner school to introduce all middle grade and YA authors. SAReads, SABF’s largest educational partner, will coordinate student introductions in the Hawn Holt Children’s Reading Tent.