National Book Festival

Katherine Neville speaking at the National Book Festival:
Group photo at the breakfast before The National Book Festival

Above is the group photo of all of us at the breakfast, just before the festival, that was hosted by The Washington Post. Among the friends and fellow Mystery-Thriller writers I got to chat with were Jodi Picoult, Lee Child, Lisa Scottoline, David Baldacci, S.J. Rozan, and Michael Connelly.

You’ll find me standing on the upper left-hand balcony beside Nicholas Sparks, Michael Connelly and Lisa Scottoline, and you can also pick out Lee Child and John Grisham in the background. Kneeling at the left foreground is S.J. Rozan, and at center you will see the “young adult” (YA) writer Judy Blume and the ever-wonderful, multiple-award-winning historian, Annette Gordon-Reed. Among the many other writers I got to meet that day included John Irving, Julia Alvarez, and Basque historian Mark Kurlansky.

You can watch many of these authors as they pay tribute to their love of libraries in my Video Series celebrating the Smithsonian Libraries’ 50th Anniversary.

(in foreground) S. J. Rozan, Mark Kurlansky, Julia Alvarez, and John Irving

(in background) Michael Connelly, Lisa Scottoline, Lee Child, John Grisham, Nicholas Sparks, Katherine Neville, James Swanson, Jodi Picoult, and others