The free festival will feature award-winning and bestselling authors such as Julia Alvarez, George Saunders, Jeff Hiller, Megha Majumdar, Arnie Segovia, and more
Festival Features Local, Regional, and National Authors
The San Antonio Book Festival (SABF) is excited to announce its 2026 author lineup, featuring over 110 notable local, regional, and national authors who will participate in the Festival. This year’s lineup features nationally renowned authors such as Julia Alvarez, George Saunders, Jeff Hiller, Megha Majumdar, Arnie Segovia, and more. The free Festival will take place Saturday, April 11, 2026, from 9am to 5pm at the Central Library and UT San Antonio Southwest Campus in downtown San Antonio.
The 14th annual San Antonio Book Festival is a free, family-friendly event that draws more than 22,000 festivalgoers 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. All Festival authors can be found at sabookfestival.org, where a detailed schedule will be available in mid-March.
New this year is a special ticketed event that kicks off the Festival weekend. SABF will feature Jenna Bush Hager to celebrate her new publishing imprint, Thousand Voices, and its latest book, Liar’s Dice, by debut novelist Juliet Faithfull. This event will be held the evening of Thursday, April 9, at the Central Christian Church. Tickets include a signed copy of the book and can be purchased here.
The 2026 Festival will assemble a wide array of authors—for readers of all ages—who will travel across Texas and the nation for the completely free Festival on Saturday, April 11.
“As we celebrate our 14th year, we’re thrilled to welcome the entire community to this free event in the heart of downtown San Antonio. Our lineup this year features a wonderful mix of local, regional, national, and international authors across many genres. There truly is something for everyone from creative memoirs to serious history, from poetry to cooking. On the fiction side there is every genre, including horror, mystery and thriller, romance and romantasy, and so many more.” said Lisa Ayres, executive director of the San Antonio Book Festival.
She continued: “We hear so much in the news about the decline in reading for pleasure, even as research continues to show its importance for both health and quality of life. Reading can help reduce stress, improve cognition, strengthen empathy, and sharpen critical thinking. We want to welcome both avid readers and those who hope to become avid readers to the festival. Come discover an author, find a new book to love, and reconnect with the joy of reading.”
The SABF team is thrilled to welcome award-winning and bestselling authors to the Festival, including George Saunders, a Booker Prize Winner. His latest novel, Vigil, spins a tale that encompasses life and death, good and evil, and the thorny question of absolution. National Book Award Finalist Megha Majumdar joins us with her new novel, the Oprah Book Club pick A Guardian and a Thief. Set in a near-future Kolkata, the book paints a portrait of two families discovering how far they will go to secure their children’s futures. Emmy Award–winning actor and San Antonio native Jeff Hiller joins us for his hilarious memoir, Actress of a Certain Age: My Twenty-Year Trail to Overnight Success, sharing his journey of clawing, scraping, and brawling to Hollywood’s lower middle-tier in a session for anyone who has a dream they’re chasing, and chasing, and chasing.
SABF will feature a robust lineup of poets. Beloved novelist and poet Julia Alvarez will also participate in this year’s Festival. Her new collection of poetry, Visitations, traces her life through memories of her childhood, the smell of sancocho and sofrito, and the experiences that forged her. MacArthur “Genius” Fellow Reginald Dwayne Betts reminds us in Doggerel that as our lives are broken and put back together, the only witness often barks instead of talks.
For the first time since 2019, the Festival will feature cookbook authors in conversation. Some of the cookbooks and food-centered authors include Arnie “ArnieTex” Segovia, whose YouTube channel has a following of millions. For authentic Mexican cooking combined with a little bit of Texas and open-fire barbecue, come to the session featuring his new book, ArnieTex: Over 100 Recipes for Mexican-American Cooking and Texas-Style BBQ. The “Internet’s Mushroom Auntie,” Gabrielle Cerberville, has long shared her extensive technical knowledge of plants, fungi, and ecology with her 1.1 million TikTok followers. Now, with her stunningly illustrated Gathered: On Foraging, Feasting, and the Seasonal Life, she brings her foraging techniques and recipes to the page. The James Beard–nominated chefs from San Antonio’s Curry Boys restaurant, Andrew Ho, Andrew Samia, and Sean Wen, combine Texas barbecue techniques with Thai flavors in their brand-new cookbook, Asian Smoke: Thai and Southeast Asian Barbecue from the Curry Boys.
The Festival caters to readers of all ages with plenty of picture books, early-reader, middle-grade, and young-adult titles. For grade-schoolers and middle-graders, the Festival features an especially robust lineup. John Patrick Green will appear with the latest in his InvestiGators series; Shannon Messenger will present the second part of the graphic-novel adaptation of her Keeper of the Lost Cities series; and Natalie Riess and Sara Goetter will also appear with their latest graphic-novel adaptation of the Warriors series. Many of these books have been popular for decades and will appeal to Generation Alpha through Millennial readers.
For teens, the Festival will also feature the New York Times bestselling author Dustin Thao, whose books are a TikTok sensation. His new book, You’ve Found Oliver, will break readers’ hearts wide open. Xan Kaur joins us with her New York Times bestselling horror novel for young adults, When Devils Sing, in which four unlikely allies investigate a local teen’s disappearance—and find themselves entangled in a messy web of secrets and lies.
Families with small children can plan to spend the entire day at the Book Festival. Our children’s lineup includes local author Tiffany Hammond and her #1 New York Times bestselling picture book, A Day with No Words, a beautiful story about an autistic boy and his mother spending the day together in their community. Author-illustrator Zeke Peña will feature his Caldecott-honored, Texas-set Sundust. In addition to all of the author presentations intended for kids (like an illustrator sketch-off in the McNutt Garden Gazebo), there will be appearances from costumed children’s book characters, a free performance by Magik Theatre, interactive activities by local nonprofits, and complimentary snacks provided by H-E-B, the children’s area sponsor.
A wide range of Texas authors will be attending the Festival this year, including Pulitzer Prize–winner Lawrence Wright, who joins us with his new novel, The Human Scale. Former Texas Poet Laureate Amanda Johnston’s Praisesong for the People: Poems from the Heart and Soul of Texas celebrates everyday people in the Lone Star State. Two academics (and pop-culture lovers), Larissa M. Mercado-López and Yndalecio Isaac Hinojosa, celebrate a famous singer in The Selena Reader: Remembering the Queen of Tejano. Acclaimed historian Bryan Burrough dives into myth, Texas history, and Hollywood in The Gunfighters: How Texas Made the West Wild.
Numerous authors will represent the festival’s host city and county, including three former mayors (Henry Cisneros, coauthor of The Austin–San Antonio Megaregion: Opportunity and Challenge in the Lone Star State; Ron Nirenberg, coauthor of Nirenberg: The Education of a Texas Public Servant; and Nelson W. Wolff, author of The Elysian Fields of Baseball: The Spiritual Evolution of America’s Game).
Local young-adult novelist Marcia Argueta Mickelson’s new book, The Writing Room, is all about a teen finding her voice and creating change. Nowhere Bookshop owner and popular blogger Jenny Lawson is back with How to Be Okay When Nothing Is Okay: Tips and Tricks That Kept Me Alive, Happy, and Creative in Spite of Myself.
The San Antonio Book Festival is also pioneering additional partnerships in the community through collaborations with UTSA Arts, the Carver Community Cultural Center, Gemini Ink, Writers’ League of Texas, and Ruby City, among others.
“We work hard to build an author lineup that reflects San Antonio culture, and there will be discussions related to both local and national conversations,” said Anna Dobben, literary director of the San Antonio Book Festival. “The Festival gives form to curiosity – we invite everyone to hear authors talk about their stories, and the stories behind their books. These stories will make you laugh, make you sad, make you upset about the state of the world, and make you feel inspired. Adventure isn’t just found in distant or expensive travel–it’s found at the completely free, family-friendly Book Festival at the heart of downtown San Antonio.”
The full author lineup can be viewed HERE. The locally owned and operated Nowhere Bookshop will be the Festival’s official bookseller. Book sales and signings will all happen at the Nowhere Bookshop tent in the Book Sales & Signing area. To learn more about the Festival, visit sabookfestival.org/.
