WASHINGTON–聽 An astronaut, an award-winning journalist and a Poet Laureate walk into a bar.
No, it鈥檚 not the beginning of a bad joke, and they鈥檙e actually walking into the Washington Convention Center.
Buzz Aldrin, Tom Brokaw and Juan Felipe Herrera are three of the more than 175 authors participating in the on Saturday, Sept. 5.
The doors of the convention center will open to the public at 9 a.m. and events will begin at 10 a.m.
This year marks the 200th anniversary of the Library鈥檚 acquisition of Thomas Jefferson鈥檚 personal library. To commemorate it, the festival鈥檚 theme is a quote from Jefferson himself: 鈥淚 cannot live without books.鈥�
The festival will feature presentations from authors on many different subjects. The presentations will be held at themed pavilions on topics such as food, children, history, poetry and prose, and biography and memoir, among others.
The events will continue into the evening, with special programs beginning at 7:15 p.m. These will include a youth poetry slam, a graphic novels 鈥渟uper session,鈥� a multimedia presentation on 鈥済reat Books to Great Movies鈥� and a 鈥渞omance fiction鈥�-themed pavilion.
All-day festivalgoers may get hungry. There are a number of dining options inside the convention center, and even more down the street in Chinatown.
To help attendees get the most out of their festival experience, the Library of Congress has created a free app for the event, which you can download .
The app has a complete list of events and locations, as well as visitors maps and social media content. You can even create your own custom schedule of events.
For those who can鈥檛 make it to the festival this year, the festival鈥檚 website and app have something called an 鈥渁ctivity feed,鈥� which allows people to follow along with the day鈥檚 events through a super-sized, photo-heavy twitter feed of posts tagged with the festival鈥檚 #NatBookFest15.
If you do make it down to the convention center for the festival, share your photos and ideas with the #NatBookFest15 hashtag to see them appear in the activity feed.
