The Wisconsin Book Festival’s 24th Annual Fall Celebration takes place October 23-26 across Madison’s Central Library and downtown venues, featuring over 55 free events with acclaimed authors from around the world.
This year’s lineup spans diverse genres and urgent contemporary themes. Attendees can hear Percival Everett discuss his reimagining of “Huckleberry Finn” in “James,” Mary Roach explore human anatomy replacement in “Replaceable You,” and Karida L. Brown investigate racial inequality in education with “The Battle for the Black Mind.”
The programming includes intimate poetry readings featuring local voices, panel discussions on environmental challenges, explorations of queer identity and desire, and conversations about social justice, technology, and belonging. The festival also celebrates Wisconsin’s rich cultural heritage with conversations about the state’s cheesemaking tradition and its 125th anniversary park system.
Among the festival’s standout programming are conversations with two prominent African and diaspora writers whose work demonstrates contemporary African literature’s global impact.
Julie Iromuanya will discuss her new novel A Season of Light, which draws inspiration from the 2014 Chibok schoolgirl kidnappings in Nigeria. The story follows Fidelis Ewerike, a Florida-based Nigerian Civil War survivor whose trauma resurfaces when the kidnapping triggers memories of his missing sister. Consumed by survivor’s guilt and fear for his sixteen-year-old daughter Amara, who resembles his lost sister, Fidelis locks her in her bedroom, causing his family to spiral into chaos as each member grapples with inherited trauma in their own way.
Laila Lalami, the Moroccan-American author whose work has consistently pushed literary boundaries, returns with The Dream Hotel, a dystopian thriller that feels eerily prescient in our current surveillance-conscious moment. The novel follows Sara, who is detained by the Risk Assessment Administration after algorithms analyzing her dreams determine she will commit a crime against her husband. Held in a retention center with other women trying to prove their innocence, Sara faces an increasingly oppressive system that extends her detention with every rule violation.
The festival, which presents free year-round programming to sustain and grow Madison’s reading community, takes place at Central Library and downtown partner venues. These conversations with Iromuanya and Lalami are among eleven highlight events featured in the comprehensive four-day celebration.
Full festival details and scheduling information are available on the website.
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