The free festival will feature award-winning and bestselling authors like Martín Espada, Stephen Graham Jones, Nita Prose, Cristina Rivera Garza,
and more
Festival Features Local, Regional, and National Authors
The San Antonio Book Festival is excited to announce its 2025 author lineup, which includes over 100 notable local, regional, and national authors who will be participating in the festival. This year’s lineup includes nationally renowned authors such as Nate DiMeo, Stephen Graham Jones, Erin Entrada Kelly, Nita Prose, Cristina Rivera Garza, and more. The free festival will take place Saturday, April 12, 2025 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Central Library and UTSA Southwest Campus in downtown San Antonio.
The 13th annual San Antonio Book Festival is a free, family-friendly event that draws anywhere from 15,000 to 20,000 festival goers to downtown San Antonio for a full day of author presentations, panel discussions, book sales, signings, activities for children and teens, and food trucks. SABF showcases debut authors and established writers, introducing attendees to new literary talents and connecting them with their favorite authors. A detailed festival schedule will be available in late March.
The 2025 festival will assemble a wide array of authors—for readers of all ages—who will travel across Texas and the nation for the one-day festival.
“The Book Festival lineup is guaranteed to entertain and enlighten,” says SABF Literary Director Anna Dobben. “SABF will have our first romantasy panel – an incredibly popular genre that mixes fantasy and romance. But there are all sorts of books to fall in love with at the book festival, from picture books to thrillers and horror to nonfiction focusing on history, climate change, and our cultural landscape. We can’t wait to hear the compelling, fun, and thought-provoking stories from our featured authors!”
The SABF team is thrilled to welcome award-winning and bestselling authors to the festival, including Martín Espada, a National Book Award Winner. His latest collection of poetry, Jailbreak of Sparrows, reveals the ways the ordinary becomes extraordinary. Pulitzer Prize Finalist and National Book Award Finalist Laila Lalami will also participate in this year’s festival. Her new novel, The Dream Hotel, is a prescient, near-future adventure about a fallible algorithm that determines criminality based on citizens’ dreams. Longtime podcast host Kelsey McKinney will present her New York Times-bestselling You Didn’t Hear This From Me: (Mostly) True Notes on Gossip, which breaks down the differences between harmless rumors and outright lies to show the important role gossip plays in human connection.
Bestselling author and NPR host Linda Holmes will also participate in this year’s festival. The author of Evvie Drake Starts Over and Flying Solo is known for her romantic and witty stories. Her latest novel, Back After This, follows a podcast producer who agrees to host a series about modern dating that jeopardizes her chance at finding real love. The festival will also feature the young adult authors Erin Entrada Kelly and Kwame Mbalia’s new book, On Again, Awkward Again. The two-time Newbery Medal winner and Marvel Comics writer have teamed up for an engaging – and understandably awkward – teen love story.
The festival caters to readers of all ages with plenty of picture books, early reader, middle grade, and additional young adult titles. Joining the festival this year is children’s author Matt de la Peña, who was the first Latine author to win the prestigious Newbery Medal in 2016. His picture book, Home, is a deeply moving ode to the places we feel safe, loved, and true to ourselves. Author and illustrator Breanna Carzoo brings her signature style to The Squish and its character Sandcastle, who must try to be bigger and taller and stronger… but is that enough to stop all the squishes?
For older kids, the festival will also feature the works of early reader and middle grade authors like Greg Foley and Adrianna Cuevas. In Cuevas’s work for middle graders, What Fell From the Sky, E.T. meets true Texas history in a tale about friendship, mystery, and lingering grief. In Dex Dingo: World’s Best Greatest Ever Inventor, Dex wants to be the “world’s greatest ever” at… something. This graphic novel for early readers by Guinness World Record holder Foley is full of imagination and vigor.
Families with small children can plan to spend the entire day at the Book Festival. In addition to all of the author presentations intended for kids (like an illustrator sketch off!), there will be a free performance by Magik Theatre, interactive activities by local nonprofits, and H-E-B, the children’s area sponsor, will provide complimentary snacks.
Young adult authors participating in this year’s festival include the New York Times bestselling author Farrah Rochon, whose new book Bemused is the untold origin story of the five Muses from Hercules. National Book Award Finalist Huda Fahmy joins the San Antonio Book Festival with a funny and poignant graphic novel, Huda F Wants to Know?, about a big family change that throws one teen’s life out of control.
A wide range of authors from throughout Texas will be joining the festival this year, including two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Joe Holley with Native Texan: Stories from Deep in the Heart, a collection of his popular newspaper column; the journalist Richard Parker with a history of El Paso in The Crossing: El Paso, the Southwest, and America’s Forgotten Origin Story; romance author Etta Easton, whose novel The Love Simulation will have readers swooning; New York Times horror book reviewer Gabino Iglesias with the stunningly visceral House of Bone and Rain; and the bestselling Texas legend Stephen Harrigan with his part-memoir, part-puzzle, Sorrowful Mysteries: The Shepherd Children of Fatima and the Fate of the Twentieth Century.
Numerous authors will represent the festival’s host city and county, including Naomi Shihab Nye with Grace Notes: Poems about Families and, with Marion Winik, I Know About a Thousand Things: The Writings of Ann Alejandro of Uvalde, Texas; and Lupe Ruiz-Flores with The Pecan Sheller, an inspiring middle grade story set in 1930s San Antonio about resourcefulness, resilience, and love.
“On April 12, we are throwing a party for pages! We have a stellar lineup, filled with literary talent, and there will be compelling discussions relating to both national and local conversations,” continues SABF Literary Director Anna Dobben. “This free, family-friendly event will get everybody excited about books and reading.”
Locally owned and operated bookstore Nowhere Bookshop will be the Festival’s official bookseller. Book sales and signings will all happen at the Nowhere Bookshop tent in the Festival Marketplace (UTSA Southwest Campus parking lot).
