Texas Teen Book Festival Keynote Speakers Revealed

AUSTIN, TX — Texas Teen Book Festival officials on Wednesday revealed the 2019 keynote speakers for the upcoming literary event: Award-winning, bestselling author Erika L. Sánchez and comedian/YouTube sensation Akilah Hughes.

The two authors will give the opening and closing talks for the one-day festival scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 12, on the campus of Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas.

Concurrent to the announcement, festival officials also opened submissions for the annual Fresh Ink Fiction Contest, which is free to enter and open to all Texas writers aged 11-18. Three winners will be awarded a $150 prize and an exclusive manuscript review. The deadline to submit is July 15, 2019.

Graphic courtesy of Texas Teen Book Festival.

The highly anticipated annual Texas Teen Book Festival — which draws thousands of teen and adult readers for a day of author discussions, book signings, creative workshops, special events for under-resourced students, and more — features more than 30 popular and acclaimed Young Adult authors. The event is free and open to the public.

“We’re thrilled to announce our 2019 keynote speakers, whose will help us open and close our one-day festival, will be writer and YouTube sensation Akilah Hughes and award-winning author Erika L. Sánchez,” TTBF programming director Meghan Goel said in a prepared statement. “Both Hughes and Sánchez bring wit, humor, and valuable realism to their important stories, and we cannot wait to celebrate their work at the Texas Teen Book Festival.”

AUTHOR DETAILS

• Akilah Hughes, a writer, comedian, and YouTuber residing in Brooklyn, NY, will be presenting her collection of humorous essays: Obviously: Stories from my Timeline. She’s been a digital correspondent for MTV, Fusion, Comedy Central, Crooked Media, and more. A Sundance Labs Fellow, Akilah most recently appeared on the HBO series special “Pod Save America.” Her comedic YouTube channel, “It’s Akilah, Obviously!” has amassed more than 150,000 subscribers.

Image courtesy of Texas Teen Book Festival.

For those unfamiliar with the work of Akilah Hughes, here's a sample:

• Erika L. Sánchez will be presenting her multiple award winning and New York Times best-selling novel, I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter. Sánchez is a poet, a feminist, and a cheerleader for young women everywhere. She was the sex and love advice columnist for Cosmopolitan for Latinas for three years, and her writing has appeared in Rolling Stone, Salon, and The Paris Review. Since she was a twelve-year-old nerd in giant bifocals and embroidered vests, Erika has dreamed of writing complex, empowering stories about girls of color–what she wanted to read as a young adult. She lives in Chicago, not far from the setting of I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter. Erika is fluent in Spanish, Spanglish, and cat.

Photo of Erika L. Sánchez courtesy of Texas Teen Book Festival.

Cover of I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sánchez courtesy of Texas Teen Book Festival.

Last year's festival drew more than 4,000 attendees, and featured 36 Young Adult authors (including keynote speakers Nic Stone and Neal & Jarrod Shusterman) participating in 20-plus panels and interactive workshops.

The Texas Teen Book Festival is presented in collaboration with Texas Book Festival, BookPeople, a dedicated team of librarians, and venue sponsor Southwestern University. The program is made possible in part by a grant from Humanities Texas, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

TTBF remains free and open to the public thanks to generous donors, sponsors, and volunteers. For more information, please visit the Texas Teen Book Festival website and keep up with announcements on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Last year's Texas Teen Book Festival lured more than 4,000 attendees, officials said. Photo courtesy of Texas Teen Book Festival.

ABOUT THE TEXAS TEEN BOOK FESTIVAL

The Texas Teen Book Festival is a one-day event that celebrates the teen reading experience by inviting fans to visit with some of the most popular and critically acclaimed young adult authors in the country. The Texas Teen Book Festival began as the Austin Teen Book Festival in 2009, when librarian Heather Schubert partnered with BookPeople to organize a gathering at Westlake High School. Five hundred guests and sixteen authors attended the first year and the event grew every year thereafter. From 2011-2013, the Festival was sponsored by the Austin Public Library Friends Foundation, and in 2014, the Festival became a program of Texas Book Festival and was renamed the Texas Teen Book Festival. One of the largest gatherings of its kind anywhere, the annual TTBF takes place October 12, 2019 on the campus of Southwestern University in Georgetown.

For more information, visit www.texasteenbookfestival.org.