“I just love the actual physical book. I am not a books on tape kind of person,” Catenya McHenry said. “I love the experience of pulling the book from the shelf, opening the pages, and smelling the page.”

That smell is everywhere. On a breezy weekend in November, The Texas Book Festival takes place in downtown Austin. The festival, an annual tradition, was founded in 1995 by former First Lady Laura Bush,  social advocate Mary Margaret Farabee, and a group of volunteers as a way to support public libraries and promote literacy. Today, 28 years after the first Texas Book Festival in 1996, it is now one of the biggest literary events not only in Texas but in the entire country.

As a moderator for the Texas Book Festival, McHenry highly anticipates this weekend.

“It’s one of my favorite weekends of the year in Austin,” McHenry, said. “It brings together some of the coolest people, the most amazing storytellers, award winning writers, authors, New York Times best selling authors, and it’s just a wonderful collection of people who not only love to read, but love to douse themselves in beautiful stories.”

The Texas Book Festival features over 250 authors, from well known and acclaimed writers like Nicola Yoon, to first time authors, like Alejandro Puyana. The festival even featured Texas native ’90s heartthrob, Matthew McConaughey, and his debut memoir, Greenlights. The festival offers a wide variety of genres as poetry, fantasy, fiction and nonfiction, cookbooks, memoirs, and childrens books in all age groupings. During the two-day-long event, Congress Avenue is blocked off, covered in large white tents for events and activities. In collaboration with BookPeople, there are tents for purchasing the books of attending authors, with a tent dedicated to adult, young adult, children, and Spanish language books. 

In addition to the various events and activities offered, the festival also featured food trucks and exhibitors. The exhibitors were local bookstores, publishers, business, and programs, with the most popular including the woman-owned bookstore BookWoman, and Divine Canines, a local organization that trains therapy dogs and handlers.

“My favorite part was seeing all the small bookstores,” Hallie Lott ‘25 said. “I feel like all I go to is Barnes and Noble and Half Price Books, so the festival helped introduce me to small bookstores that I definitely will be going to now.”

However, the most popular aspect of the Texas Book Festival is no doubt the author talk sessions where attendees can sit in and listen to authors discuss their book. Sessions are held in various locations on Congress Avenue, with some in historic Austin buildings such as the State Theatre and First United Methodist Church of Austin. At the end of a session, moderators opened up to attendees for them to ask authors their own questions. Afterward authors spend time meeting attendees and signing their books.

McHenry was a moderator for an author session both this year’s festival and last year’s. An author and journalist herself, she loved reading and storytelling from a very young age. At this year’s festival, she was paired with Paula Yoo, a fellow author from Los Angeles, who recently published the nonfiction book, Rising From The Ashes: Edward Jae Song Lee, Latasha Harlins, and a City on Fire. The book tells the story of the 1992 Los Angeles riots after teenage Latasha Harlins, was shot and killed by a Korean store owner and Rodney King was brutally beaten by four Los Angeles Police (LAPD) officers. Both victims were Black and the perpetrators in both cases received no jail time. Yoo’s book illustrates the conflict through real stories of those affected, breaks down the racism and corruption present in the LAPD, and details the perspective of Korean Americans in Los Angeles.

“I have always loved telling stories because it means I get to go on lots of cool adventures and meet awesome people and learn new things in life,” Yoo said.  “In fact, I was ‘destined’ to become a storyteller. As a Korean American, when I was one-year-old, we celebrated my traditional Korean first birthday ceremony called the dol, a fortune-telling ceremony where the baby has to pick up one of many objects that will determine their future. From money [meaning rich] to a book [meaning scholar] and so on. I picked up a pen which meant I was destined to become a writer. That prediction came true.”

While the Texas Book Festival debuted 28 years ago, it still encapsulates and represents the beauty of Texas, more importantly its capital city. 

“Reading helps expand your mind, helps expand your imagination,” McHenry said. “Reading gives you knowledge. Books just really help you to elevate your thinking. It helps to elevate your mind, and it really helps diversify you as a person. It gives you conversation. It gives you a way to connect with people and connect with their stories, and to learn more about different not just different stories, but different people, different cultures, different ways of living. I hope bookstores never go away. I hope libraries never go away. People really need to utilize these resources.”