Boston Book Festival 2019

Tim O’Brien is best known for his acclaimed semi-autobiographical novel of the Vietnam War, The Things They Carried, as well as the National Book Award winner Going After Cacciato. His latest, Dad’s Maybe Book, is a love letter to his two sons, begun when they were very small and added to over a fifteen-year period. As an older dad, O’Brien was uncertain how much time he would have with his sons, so he wrote to offer them glimpses into the life and times, but also the abiding concerns, of their father. Full of wisdom and humor, Dad’s Maybe Book is both a touching celebration of fatherhood and a poignant memoir of a life in letters. O’Brien will be in conversation with Chris Walsh, who directs the writing program at Boston University and is the author of Cowardice: A Brief History.

We are proud and honored to present historian David W. Blight to speak about his Pulitzer Prize–winning biography, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. Blight’s biography is as remarkable as his subject. In vivid prose, he examines the life of one of American history’s towering figures: a former slave who achieved international fame as an abolitionist, author, orator, political philosopher, and women’s rights advocate. Douglass was a prophet for the destruction and rebirth of the nation, and he lived to see it happen. He also lived to see the promise of Emancipation betrayed by Reconstruction, Jim Crow laws, and the reign of terror against blacks. Join us to hear David W. Blight speak about the extraordinary life and genius of Frederick Douglass. After a brief talk, Blight will be interviewed by Harvard professor Elizabeth Hinton, author of From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime.

Beloved reporter, historian, author, and friend Tony Horwitz died suddenly shortly after the publication of his latest book, Spying on the South: An Odyssey Across the American Divide. In that work, Tony followed the path through the American South of Frederick Law Olmsted, who, before he became a renowned landscape architect, was an undercover correspondent for the New York Times. Tony explored the racial and political divides plaguing the United States, using a perch on a barstool to find his informants. As always, his reportage is infused with his trademark humor in the face of things a Massachusetts Yankee finds difficult to hear. An all-star panel of Tony’s friends and colleagues will discuss Tony’s life and work. Join Harvard historian and lawyer Annette Gordon-Reed, author of The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, which was awarded a Pulitzer Prize; Yale historian David W. Blight, whose Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for history; and Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Ron Suskind, a former Wall Street Journal colleague of Tony’s and author of Life Animated, Hope in the Unseen, and The Way of the World, for a tribute to Tony Horwitz.

We are pleased to feature the authors of two of the year’s most electrifying memoirs in this session. Many BBF fans will remember Saeed Jones as the engaging host of the 2016 fiction keynote with Colson Whitehead. He’s back at the BBF with How We Fight for Our Lives, a coming-of-age memoir that “marks the emergence of a major literary voice,” according to Kirkus Reviews. His poetically told story of growing up black and gay in the South reflects on overarching concerns about race, queerness, power, love and grief. Cyrus Grace Dunham’s A Year Without a Name is a searing and honest account of growing up alienated from one’s own body. Coming to terms with no longer wanting be called Grace and then with the decision to become Cyrus was only the first step in their trans experience, one that, as Kirkus Reviews puts it, “defies categorization as much as it defies resolution.” This is sure to be a riveting and powerful convo moderated by Arielle Gray, WBUR’s arts engagement producer for the ARTery. Sponsored by Creative Nonfiction.