Mingle With 40,000 Lit Lovers At The 2012 Texas Book Festival

Author, actress and comedian Amy Sedaris participates in a book signing at Texas Book Festival

Click Play on the podcast player above to listen to this week’s episode of the Austinot Podcast.

Since 1995, the Texas Book Festival has been an annual highlight in Austin. Imagine endless rows of beautiful books to peruse on the Capitol grounds, the chance to run into your favorite author (or a Pulitzer Prize winner), and a schedule as packed and complicated as SXSW’s.

Now stop imagining, and just go. You’ll find the Festival taking place tomorrow and Sunday.

Plus, it’s free.

What You’ll See at This Year’s Texas Book Festival

This year, the festival expects 40,000 people to attend. Over 250 nationally-recognized authors will be reading their work, participating in panels and hosting book signings.

Cooking demonstration at Texas Book Festival

There’s a cooking tent too!

The theme for this year is Latino Literature. Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Diaz will actually be presenting on his short story collection in the House of Representatives Chamber on Sunday. And how cool is that?

There will be options for kids, so bring the whole family. There will also be food vendors on Congress between 10th and 11th, and the Capitol Grill on level E1 in the Capitol will be open for lunch and snacks on Saturday and Sunday.

There’s so much more to talk about, but we’ll end by highlighting the Lit Crawl on Saturday night. Participants get to hop between six different venues on the Eastside, experiencing “readings and screenings and literary mayhem in places you’d never anticipate.” The map is already up, so get planning.

See? We told you your kids would enjoy themselves

Important Links

Don’t forget, this article just represents an overview of the Texas Book Festival. You’ll learn so much more by listening to our podcast episode at the top of this article. We made it just for you!