Albany Book Festival to Bring Acclaimed Authors, Book Lovers to Campus

Logo reads "Celebrating Seven Years! Albany Book Festival Saturday September 21 2024"
The 7th annual Albany Book Festival will take place Saturday in the Campus Center.

ALBANY, N.Y. (Sept. 17, 2024) — The New York State Writers Institute will host the seventh annual Albany Book Festival this Saturday, bringing a diverse mix of over 30 award-winning, bestselling and local authors and poets to the University at Albany campus.  

The festival, which is free and open to the public, will take place from 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the Campus Center.

“We are proud to present the seventh annual Albany Book Festival, a community-wide celebration that brings together acclaimed authors and enthusiastic readers in a celebration of literature,” said Paul Grondahl, Opalka Endowed Director of the New York State Writers Institute. 

Stacks of books on a table

In addition to special events, panel discussions, book signings and a local author marketplace, there will be activities for children in the morning and open mic readings throughout the day for UAlbany students, the Hudson Valley Writers Guild and young local writers published in Skribblers Magazine.

“We have organized the daylong program around topics that will be entertaining, illuminating and at times challenging,” Grondahl said. “Themes range from thrillers to time travel and multiverses; Latino spirit to recipes for cultural preservation; heartbreak on the Southern border to a cultural history of beavers, the rodent that helped create Albany.”

Panels will include:  

  • The Latino Spirit: A conversation with Luis A. Miranda, author of the new memoir Relentless: My Story of the Latino Spirit That Is Transforming America (2024), with UAlbany President Havidán Rodríguez
  • Reverberations of the Unabomber: A conversation with David Kaczynski, the younger brother of domestic terrorist Ted Kaczynski and author of Every Last Tie: The Story of the Unabomber and His Family
  • Planet on Fire with Sunil Amtrith, author of The Burning Earth (Sept. 2024), and William Bryant Logan, author of the 1995 classic, Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth
  • Rethinking God with Sarah McCammon (The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church) and Shalom Auslander, author of the new memoir Feh (2024)
  • Queer Childhood with Mike DeSocio, author of Morally Straight: How the Fight for LGBTQ+ Inclusion Changed the Boy Scouts ― and America (2024), and James Frankie Thomas, author of Idlewild (2023)
  • Recipes for Cultural Preservation with Marisel Salazar (Latin-ish: More Than 100 Recipes Celebrating American Latino Cuisines), Taffy Elrod and Alliah Agostini (The Juneteenth Cookbook: Recipes and Activities for Kids and Families to Celebrate). Moderated by Susie Davidson Powell, dining critic for the Albany Times Union.
  • Voices and Views from the Expanding Security State with UAlbany professors Ed Schwarzschild and Danny Goodwin, co-authors of Job/Security: A Composite Portrait of the Expanding American Security Industry (August, 2024)
  • Beavers, the Rodent that Built Albany with Leila Philip, author of Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America. Moderated by Maeve McEneny, Director of Community Engagement, Discover Albany.
  • Kamala, Beyonce, and Black Female Power with Tanisha C. Ford, author of Our Secret Society: Mollie Moon and the Glamour, Money, and Power Behind the Civil Rights Movement (2023), and Martha S. Jones, author of Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All (2020), and with Janell Hobson (When God Lost Her Tongue: Historical Consciousness and the Black Feminist Imagination)
  • Heartbreak on the Southern Border with Elizabeth Camarillo Gutierrez, author of the new memoir, My Side of the River (2024), and Ruben Reyes Jr., author of There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven (Aug. 2024).

Ahead of the book festival, the NYS Writers Institute will host two online workshops for writers.

Jenny Milchman, a Catskills writer and Mary Higgins Clark award-winning author of five novels, will lead a workshop on Tuesday at 7 p.m. titled, “What Scares You? Putting Fear on the Page to Thrill Your Readers.” Register here.  

C.M. Waggoner, an upstate New York native whose third book, The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society, is out this month, will also lead a workshop on Thursday at 7 p.m. titled “From Rough Draft to Pitch-Worthy: Getting Your Novel Prepared to Publish.” Register here.

To view the full list of panels and participating authors, visit www.albanybookfestival.com.

Free parking for Saturday’s festival will be available in the Dutch Quad faculty/staff, Dutch Quad student and Podium West lots.