Letters About Literature, a Library of Congress national writing competition, has announced its winners for 2019. The national program asks students in grades 4 to 12 to write to an author about how his or her work affected their lives. More than 29,000 students from across the country participated in this year’s initiative.

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The 2019 Library of Congress National Book Festival will offer an outstanding lineup of authors for readers of all ages for the festival’s 19th year, with more than 140 nationally recognized authors, poets and illustrators, as well as the addition of stages devoted to science and international subjects.

On Saturday, Aug. 31, at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, doors will open at 8:30 a.m., with programs beginning at 9 a.m. and running until 8 p.m.

The stellar lineup includes U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, eminent historians David McCullough and Michael Beschloss, celebrity D.C. chef and humanitarian José Andrés, graphic novel superstar Raina Telgemeier and Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction recipient Richard Ford.

The 2019 festival also will invite visitors to Explore America’s Changemakers, part of a yearlong initiative coinciding with a series of exhibitions, events and programs at the Library. Among numerous festival programs dedicated to the theme of Changemakers, a special panel will feature new books on Winston Churchill by Andrew Roberts, Frederick Douglass by David Blight and visionary women including Rachel Carson, Jane Jacobs, Jane Goodall and Alice Waters, by Andrea Barnet.

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Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden today announced the appointment of Joy Harjo as the nation’s 23rd Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry for 2019-2020. Harjo will take up her duties in the fall, opening the Library’s annual literary season on Sept. 19 with a reading of her work in the Coolidge Auditorium.

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Michelle Light, formerly director of Special Collections and Archives at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, has been named director of the Library of Congress Special Collections Directorate.

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Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden today announced that Jane Sánchez, the law librarian of Congress, has been named the deputy librarian for Library Collections and Services, effective June 10.

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Local educators across the nation have been selected from a pool of more than 280 applicants to participate in the Library of Congress’ Summer Teacher Institute, part of the Teaching with Primary Sources program.

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The John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress today announced the appointment of Frances Lee, Princeton University professor of politics and public affairs, as the inaugural chair in congressional policymaking at the Library.

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The Library of Congress today announced the appointment of 40 undergraduate and graduate students to its highly competitive Junior Fellows summer intern program. This year’s Junior Fellows program, which runs from May 28 to Aug. 2, includes 32 special projects across divisions of the Library of Congress. The program will expose the Junior Fellows to the breadth and depth of the work that takes place at the world’s largest library.

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World renowned opera singer and recitalist Jessye Norman has donated thousands of items documenting her illustrious 50-year career to the Library of Congress. The acquisition was announced on Thursday evening during a conversation with the celebrated soprano in the Coolidge Auditorium before an enthusiastic crowd. The audience listened to Norman discuss her decades-long career, her role as a trailblazer in classical music and her passion for mentoring young artists. The program was part of the Music Division’s “Concerts from the Library of Congress” series.

The collection of about 29,000 items consists of musical arrangements written specifically for Norman, including orchestrations of songs by George and Ira Gershwin and the sacred music of Duke Ellington; business papers related to Norman’s opera and concert performances; publicity materials; concert and opera programs; mockups of album art work; fan mail; recordings; and professional and amateur photographs, providing a visual record of her legacy as a performer.

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Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden announced today that Richard Ford, author of “Independence Day” – the first novel to win both the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award – will receive the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction during the 2019 Library of Congress National Book Festival on Aug. 31.

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Historical news reports and breaking news bulletins published by the Washington bureau of The Associated Press from 1915 to 1930, documenting a full chronology of world and national events, have been digitized and are now available online from the Library of Congress.

The collection includes news dispatches from key moments in history, from the sinking of the Lusitania ocean liner in 1915, drawing the U.S. into World War I, through the roaring 1920s to the stock market crash of 1929 and the outbreak of the Great Depression.

The AP collection includes 375 volumes of wire copy, totaling more than 387,000 images.

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The John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress today announced the appointment of Simon Martin, an anthropologist and specialist in Maya hieroglyphic writing, as the 2019-2020 Jay I. Kislak Chair for the Study of the History and Cultures of the Early Americas. Martin will begin his tenure in November 2019.

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In commemoration of the 75th anniversary of D-Day, the Allied invasion of Normandy during World War II, the Veterans History Project (VHP) at the Library of Congress today launched an interactive online experience that features unique journeys of veterans who were part of the invasion.

The digital efforts include an interactive Story Map, “D-Day Journeys: Personal Geographies of D-Day,” and a new online website feature, “D-Day: 75th Anniversary.” 

The Story Map draws from VHP collections, and chronicles the individual journeys of four veterans who took part in the invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944: Preston Earl Bagent, Robert Harlan Horr, John William Boehne III and Edward Duncan Cameron.

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The National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS) at the Library of Congress will honor two of its cooperating libraries for their outstanding service to readers who are visually or physically disabled.

The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (CLP-LBPH) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, will receive the Regional Library of the Year Award, while the Staunton Talking Book Center (TBC) in Staunton, Virginia, will receive the Sub-regional Library/Advisory and Outreach Center of the Year Award.

The awards will be presented at an event in the historic Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., on May 16.

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Festival Lineup on Aug. 31 Features José Andrés, Barbara Kingsolver, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Among Dozens of Authors

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will be among the featured speakers at the 2019 Library of Congress National Book Festival, along with dozens of best-selling authors, novelists, historians, poets and children’s writers, the Library announced today. This year’s festival will be held Saturday, Aug. 31, from 8:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C.

Ginsburg will discuss her book “My Own Words,” a collection of writings and speeches from throughout her life, discussing gender equality, the workings of the Supreme Court, interpreting the U.S. Constitution, being Jewish, and the law and lawyers in opera. The book, written with her authorized biographers, was Ginsburg’s first book since becoming a Supreme Court justice in 1993. It’s been called witty, engaging, serious and playful.

The 2019 festival will invite visitors to Explore America’s Changemakers, part of a yearlong initiative coinciding with a series of exhibitions, events and programs at the Library. Exhibitions opening this year will explore the fight for women’s voting rights and Rosa Parks’ groundbreaking role in civil rights history. Changemakers are everywhere. Everyday citizens become trailblazers and history makers, shaping America.

Among numerous festival programs dedicated to the theme of Changemakers, a special panel will feature new books on Winston Churchill by Andrew Roberts, Frederick Douglass by David Blight and visionary women including Rachel Carson, Jane Jacobs, Jane Goodall and Alice Waters, by Andrea Barnet.

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In celebration of Asian Pacific American Heritage month, the Library of Congress has digitized and made available online 1,000 Chinese rare books produced before 1796. The Chinese Rare Book Digital Collection includes the most valuable titles and editions housed in the Library’s Asian Division, some of which date as far back as the 10^th century and are the only extant copies in the world.

This new digital collection brings together printed books, manuscripts, Buddhist sutras, works with hand-painted pictures, local gazetteers and ancient maps, encompassing a wide array of disciplines and subjects in classics, history, geography, philosophy and literature.

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Handwritten letters, speeches, photographs and scrapbooks, created by American suffragists who persisted for more than 70 years to win voting rights for women, will be featured in a new exhibition at the Library of Congress. “Shall Not Be Denied: Women Fight for the Vote,” opening June 4, will tell the story of the largest reform movement in American history with documents and artifacts from the women who changed political history 100 years ago.

Drawing from the personal collections of Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, Mary Church Terrell, Carrie Chapman Catt, Harriet Stanton Blatch and others, along with the records of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and National Woman’s Party – all donated to the national library years ago – the exhibition will explore women’s long struggle for equality. “Shall Not Be Denied” will trace the movement from before the first women’s rights convention at Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, through the divergent political strategies and internal divisions the suffragists overcame, the parades and pickets they orchestrated for voting rights, and the legacy of the 19^th Amendment that was finally ratified in 1920.

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Walt Whitman in his younger years, as shown in this 1854 engraving by Samuel Hollyer used in the 1855 first edition of "Leaves of Grass." Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

The Library of Congress will celebrate the 200^thanniversary of American poet and changemaker Walt Whitman’s birthday in spring 2019 with a series of exhibits, public programs and a digital crowdsourcing campaign to showcase the Library’s unparalleled collections of Whitman’s writings and artifacts.

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In celebration of the Persian New Year, also known as Nowruz, the Library of Congress has digitized and made available online for the first time the Rare Persian-Language Manuscript Collection, which sheds light on scientific, religious, philosophical and literary topics that are highly valued in the Persian speaking lands.

This collection, including 150 manuscripts with some dating back to the 13^th century, also reflects the diversity of religious and confessional traditions within the Persian culture.

From the 10^th century to the present, Persian became the cultural language for a large region stretching from West Asia to Central and South Asia. Today, Persian is the native language spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and some regions of Central and South Asia and the Caucasus.

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The Library of Congress and "We Need Diverse Books" present “On Writing, Voice, and Courage: A Conversation with Walter Honorees,” a symposium on diverse children’s literature. 

Newbery Medalist and bestselling author Linda Sue Park will serve as the ceremony’s emcee. Christopher Myers, honored guest and son of the late Walter Dean Myers, will speak. Pura Belpré Award-winning author Meg Medina will act as Symposium Moderator.

The 2019 Walter Awards Ceremony will immediately follow the symposium.

The program is being streamed LIVE NOW!

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Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden has announced her selection of Karyn A. Temple to serve as the 13th Register of Copyrights. Temple has been Acting Register of Copyrights since Oct. 21, 2016.

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The Library of Congress has acquired a trove of letters from American artist Georgia O’Keeffe and her husband, the photographer and art promoter Alfred Stieglitz, shedding new light on art history as the correspondence is being made available to the public for the first time.

The collection is a set of mostly handwritten letters dating from 1929 to 1947, totaling 157 items. O’Keeffe and Stieglitz wrote the letters separately to their friend and artistic colleague, the filmmaker Henwar Rodakiewicz. The letters were preserved in private hands for decades in Santa Fe, New Mexico, never before seen by the public.

Now the collection is available to researchers in the Library’s Manuscript Division after the letters were acquired through a purchase and gift agreement in late 2018.

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The classic radio western “Gunsmoke”; Ritchie Valens’ groundbreaking 1958 sensation “La Bamba”; Sam & Dave’s 1967 hit single “Soul Man”; the revolutionary 1968 Broadway musical “Hair”; and Neil Diamond’s 1969 “Sweet Caroline,” which became a popular sports anthem, are the newest recordings inducted into the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress. Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden today named these and 20 other recordings as aural treasures worthy of preservation because of their cultural, historic and aesthetic importance to the nation’s recorded sound heritage.

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The papers of suffragist and political strategist Carrie Chapman Catt, including her time as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, have been digitized and are now available online for the first time from the Library of Congress.

The collection includes about 9,500 items dating primarily from 1890 to 1920 as Catt helped lead the fight for a federal suffrage amendment. The Catt Papers are online at: loc.gov/collections/carrie-chapman-catt-papers/about-this-collection/.

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Celebrated international superstars Emilio and Gloria Estefan, the 2019 recipients of the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, were the subject of a tribute concert by some of the nation’s top artists at an all-star celebration in the nation’s capital Wednesday evening, March 13. The PBS broadcast of the concert will air on May 3.

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