The lineup of guest authors for the 2022 San Antonio Book Festival, set to take place May 21, has been announced.
Then 10-year-old festival continues to adapt to significant disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic, having migrated online in 2020 and incorporated videoconferencing technology in 2021 to grow the number and range of participating authors.
This year the daylong festival returns to its physical footprint in the heart of downtown, located in and around the Central Library and the Southwest School of Art campus, despite construction on the library from the 2017 municipal bond.
Book Festival Executive Director Lilly Gonzalez said festival planning began in the fall, before the omicron wave reached San Antonio and pandemic conditions were still uncertain. In planning the 2022 festival, she said organizers focused on crafting a safe environment while returning to an in-person event.
“We’re still very much living with COVID,” Gonzalez said. However, she expressed confidence that “should anything get worse in terms of the climate of the pandemic, we have backup plans, we have contingency plans, and, of course, keeping the safety of our authors and our audience [is] at the forefront.”
Festivalgoers will notice a reduction in indoor venues to allow for proper social distancing. Online presentations, featured in a special video tent, will continue to be part of the proceedings.
While the lineup includes nationally renowned authors such as Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Jericho Brown, novelist and memoirist Sandra Cisneros, Natalie Diaz, National Book Award winner Julia Glass, Pulitzer winner Margo Jefferson and Emma Straub, the usual focus on Texas and San Antonio authors will maintain.
San Antonio’s mayors past and present will feature in multiple presentations, to include Phil Hardberger with a new book on Hardberger Park, former mayor and Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff speaking on The Mayor and the Judge: The Inside Story of the War Against COVID that recounts his work with Mayor Ron Nirenberg in managing the pandemic, Henry Cisneros presenting his new book The Texas Triangle: An Emerging Power in the Global Economy and Julián Castro making an appearance in a new children’s book by Monica Brown, along with brother Joaquin.
Local bookstore Nowhere Bookshop will be the festival’s official bookseller, and the Book Appétit Literary Feast fundraiser will be held May 19 at the Witte Museum.
For updates and more information, visit the book festival’s website.
2022 San Antonio Book Festival lineup
- Julissa Arce You Sound Like a White Girl: The Case for Rejecting Assimilation
- Dalia Azim Country of Origin: A Novel
- Rebecca Balcárcel Shine On, Luz Véliz!
- David Baldacci Dream Town: An Archer Novel
- Mac Barnett First Cat in Space Ate Pizza
- Chris Barton Moving Forward: From Space-Age Rides to Civil Rights Sit-Ins with Airman Alton Yates
- Ruth Behar Tía Fortuna’s New Home: A Jewish Cuban Journey
- Juli Berwald Life on the Rocks: Building a Future for Coral Reefs
- Sarah Bird Last Dance on the Starlight Pier: A Novel
- David Bowles The Witch Owl Parliament (Clockwork Curandera #1), My Two Border Towns
- H.W. Brands Our First Civil War: Patriots and Loyalists in the American Revolution
- Stephen Briseño The Notebook Keeper: A Story of Kindness From the Border
- Jericho Brown The Tradition
- Monica Brown Small Room, Big Dreams: The Journey of Julián and Joaquin Castro
- Lan Samantha Chang The Family Chao: A Novel
- Wondra Chang Sonju
- Henry Cisneros The Texas Triangle: An Emerging Power in the Global Economy
- Sandra Cisneros Martita, I Remember You
- Paloma and Cariño Cortez Camilla La Mágica Makes Tamales
- Steven L. Davis Viva Texas Rivers!: Adventures, Misadventures, and Glimpses of Nirvana along Our Storied Waterways
- Navdeep Dhillon Sunny G’s Series of Rash Decisions
- Natalie Diaz Postcolonial Love Poem
- William A. Dupont Bridging Cultures: Reflections on the Heritage Identity of the Texas-Mexico Borderlands
- Eve L. Ewing Electric Arches
- Kali Fajardo-Anstine Woman of Light
- Ted Flato Lake|Flato Houses: Respecting the Land
- Fernando Flores Valleyesque: A Novel
- Laura Gao Messy Roots: A Graphic Memoir of a Wuhanese American
- Adriana M. Garcia Where Wonder Grows
- Xavier Garza Vincent Ventura and the Curse of the Weeping Woman / Vincent Ventura y la Maldición de la Llorona, La Llorona Can’t Scare Me / La Llorona No Me Asusta
- Julia Glass Vigil Harbor
- Raúl Gonzales aka Raúl the Third The Witch Owl Parliament (Clockwork Curandera #1)
- Katie Gutierrez More Than You’ll Ever Know
- Phil Hardberger Phil Hardberger Park: A Story in Photographs
- Stephen Harrigan The Leopard Is Loose: A Novel
- Shawn Harris First Cat in Space Ate Pizza
- David Hassler Dear Vaccine: Global Voices Speak to the Pandemic
- Kelly Lytle Hernandez Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire and Revolution in the Borderlands
- Lizz Huerta The Lost Dreamer
- Margo Jefferson Constructing a Nervous System
- Alaya Dawn Johnson The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories of Dirty Computer
- Mat Johnson Invisible Things
- Varian Johnson Playing the Cards You’re Dealt
- Eliza Kinkz Goldie’s Guide to Grandchilding
- David Liss The Peculiarities
- Danny Lore The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories of Dirty Computer
- Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir
- Tyler Meier Dear Vaccine: Global Voices Speak to the Pandemic
- Martha Menchaca The Mexican American Experience in Texas
- Lupe Mendez Why I Am Like Tequila: Poems
- Marcia Mickelson Where I Belong
- Char Miller West Side Rising: How San Antonio’s 1921 Flood Devastated a City and Sparked a Latino Environmental Justice Movement
- Tomás Q. Morín Let Me Count the Ways: A Memoir, Machete: Poems
- Evan Morris Lake|Flato Houses: Respecting the Land
- Regina Moya The Last Butterfly/La Última Mariposa
- Alessandra Narváez Varela Thirty Talks Weird Love
- Naomi Shihab Nye The Turtle of Michigan
- Suzanne Olhmann Shadow Migration: Mapping a Life
- Lise Olsen Code of Silence
- Emily X.R. Pan An Arrow to the Moon
- Joe Pappalardo Red Sky Morning
- Jasmine Paul A Boy, a Budget, and a Dream
- Mary Laura Philpott Bomb Shelter: Love, Time, and Other Explosives
- Joshua Prager The Family Roe: An American Story
- Barbara Ras The Blues of Heaven: Poems
- Justin Reynolds It’s The End of the World and I’m In My Bathing Suit
- Roberto “Dr. Cintli” Rodriguez Writing 50 Years (más o menos) Amongst the Gringos
- Harriet D. Romo Bridging Cultures: Reflections on the Heritage Identity of the Texas-Mexico Borderlands
- Ito Romo The Border is Burning
- Renato Rosaldo The Chasers
- Andrea Vocab Sanderson She Lives in Music
- Richard Santos Trust Me
- William Jack Sibley Here We Go Loop De Loop
- ire’ne lara silva Hibiscus Tacos
- Emma Straub This Time Tomorrow: A Novel
- Stacey Swann Olympus, Texas: A Novel
- Natalia Sylvester Breathe and Count Back from Ten
- Carmen Tafolla The Last Butterfly/La Última Mariposa
- Don Tate Pigskins to Paintbrushes
- Sheree Renee Thomas The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories of Dirty Computer
- Alexandra van de Kamp Ricochet Script
- Vauhini Vara The Immortal King Rao: A Novel
- Ursula Villarreal-Moura Math for the Self-Crippling
- Lance Scott Walker DJ Screw: A Life in Slow Revolution
- Nelson Wolff The Mayor and the Judge: The Inside Story of the War Against COVID
- Jenny Tinghui Zhang Four Treasures of the Sky
- Jennifer Ziegler Worser
