Festival Day at this year’s Brooklyn Book Festival fell on September 22nd, 2019. The day’s events drew notable members of the book industry, such as Jenny Han (author of the To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before series), Sarah Dessen (YA romance writer of works including Along for the Ride, Lock & Key, and This Lullaby), Robert Gottlieb (editor of many Toni Morrison novels published at Knopf), and Emma Straub (author, and owner of Brooklyn bookstore Books are Magic).
Actress Jessica Lange also came to the festival, and spoke on the panel titled “PowerHouse Arena Presents Landscapes & Street, Photographers in Their Time.” She has published four photography books, and came to discuss her most recent, Highway 61.
The festival also hosted a multitude of white tents lining the plaza surrounding Brooklyn Borough Hall. Here, festival goers could purchase books and merch from some of the event’s vendors, and other imprints and presses.
Hidden among the tents was a red truck, brought to the festival by House of Speakeasy, an organization dedicated to bringing books to communities in need, and bringing authors to audiences. The truck mimics a food truck, but instead of a counter to order food, it had a bookshelf, hosting a small library on of titles available for readers to peruse and purchase. Read more on House of Speakeasy’s truck, officially labeled, “SpeakUp,” as well as its other literature programs, here.