The 10th Annual Festival will Return to In Person and Feature More than 90 Authors
We are excited to announce our 2022 author lineup, which includes nationally renowned authors such as Julia Glass, Sandra Cisneros, Jericho Brown, Margo Jefferson, Natalie Diaz, Emma Straub and more. The free festival will take place Saturday, May 21, 2022 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Central Library and Southwest School of Art in downtown San Antonio.
2022 marks the 10th anniversary of the festival and the return to an in-person format after the event was canceled in 2020 and held virtually in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The festival will kick off at 9:30 a.m. with an opening ceremony featuring remarks by Mayor Ron Nirenberg and SABF’s director. Special performances will include poetry by Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson and Naomi Shihab Nye.
SABF is a free, family-friendly event that draws more than 18,000 festival goers to downtown San Antonio for a full day of author presentations, panel discussions, book sales, signings, children’s and teen activities, 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 April.
“For our 10th anniversary, we could not be more thrilled to return to being in person at the Library, which has recently been restored to its glorious ‘enchilada red’ hue,” said SABF’s Executive Director Lilly Gonzalez. “Reading is a solitary act, and for the past two years, Texas readers have been plunged deeper into isolation, with books serving as a vital gateway to connecting with the world. Book festivals foster a sense of community and inspire people to think beyond their individual experiences. It feels extra special to be able to come together for this milestone year.”
The 2022 SABF will bring together a wide variety of authors from across Texas and the nation, including notable award-winning writers like Jericho Brown, winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in poetry with The Tradition; Sandra Cisneros whose career spans four decades and includes works like The House on Mango Street, Marita, I Remember You and more; novelist Julia Glass (Vigil Harbor), who previously won the National Book Award for Fiction for her book Three Junes; and Emma Straub, the New York Times–bestselling author of The Vacationers and All Adults Here, will also join the festival this year to promote her latest novel This Time Tomorrow.
In addition to the in-person events, the festival will also include an all-virtual tent featuring a small number of pre-recorded sessions. Pulitzer Prize winner Margo Jefferson will be among the authors participating virtually with her new memoir and cultural criticism entitled Constructing a Nervous System. Her 2006 biography, On Michael Jackson, received critical acclaim, as did her 2015 book, Negroland: A Memoir. David Hassler and Tyler Meier will also be among the virtual participants with their poetry book, Dear Vaccine: Global Voices Speak to the Pandemic, a collection of letter poems that address aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic including: isolation, gratitude, grief, vaccine clinic, nostalgia, and possibility. Journalist Joshua Prager will be attending virtually with his book, The Family Roe, a careful examination of one of the US Supreme Court’s most controversial and well known cases, Roe v. Wade.
The festival will also bring plenty of Texas authors to the festival, such as Fernando A. Flores, whose book Valleyesque – one of The Millions Most Anticipated Books of 2022 – captures the spirit of the Texas-Mexico border; Austin-based Sarah Bird (Last Dance on the Starlight Pier) with her sweeping novel that brings to spectacular life the enthralling worlds of both dance marathons and the family-run empire of vice that was Galveston in the1930s; and Stephen Harrigan, the critically-acclaimed author of 12 books of fiction and nonfiction, with his latest novel, The Leopard is Loose.
In honor of its hometown, SABF is also excited to welcome local San Antonio authors to the lineup for 2022, including former Mayor of San Antonio, Phil Hardberger, who will be promoting his photography book, Phil Hardberger Park: A Story in Photographs; Katie Gutierrez with her debut suspense novel, More Than You’ll Ever Know, about a woman leading a double life that leads to a murder and a true-crime writer that becomes obsessed with telling the story; and Judge Nelson Wolff with his latest book, The Mayor and the Judge: The Inside Story of the War Against COVID.
SABF will also host a variety of children’s book authors, including local writers, Chef Cariño Cortez and Stephen Briseño. Chef Cariño Cortez’s book, Camilla La Mágica Makes Tamales, is a story about the true magic behind her family’s traditional tamales and the generations of love passed down in each bite. Chef Cortez is a third-generation food enthusiast and chef for La Familia Cortez restaurants. Stephen Briseño’s book, The Notebook Keeper: A Story of Kindness From the Border, is an inspiring story about a mother and daughter who are denied entry at the U.S. border and must find the refugee in charge of “the notebook,” an unofficial ledger of those waiting to cross into the US. Also joining the festival this year is New York Times bestselling children’s author Mac Barnett. His newest graphic novel with award-winning illustrator Shawn Harris, The First Cat in Space Ate Pizza, will debut this May.
The full 2022 author lineup can be viewed here.
Locally owned and operated bookstore Nowhere Bookshop will be the Festival’s official bookseller. The Book Festival’s singular fundraiser, the Book Appétit Literary Feast, featuring On Animals author Susan Orlean, will take place on Thursday, May 19, 2022 at the Witte Museum. To support the 10th annual SABF by purchasing a table for the Book Appétit Literary Feast, click here.