Key School to Host Annual Annapolis Book Festival
Key School announces the 22nd annual Annapolis Book Festival line-up. The many distinguished speakers slated to join the premiere community event on Saturday, May 3 include:
- Former chair of the Homeland Security Committee in the US House of Representatives and senior associate counsel to the president Christopher Cox
- Prize-winning author and historian Juan Williams
- Washington Bureau chief of USA TODAY and award-winning reporter Susan Page
- Pulitzer Prize and Emmy award-winning creator of the 1619 Project Nikole Hannah-Jones
- Pulitzer Prize-winning David K. Shipler
- New York Times bestselling “romantasy” novelist Brigid Kemmerer
- TV and film producer, national political commentator, and author Keith Boykin
- Inaugural literary director of the Library of Congress and author Marie Arana
Now in its 22nd year, the Annapolis Book Festival is one of the premier community events in the region. The Festival brings together nationally renowned authors and thousands of book fans for author talks, panel discussions, book signings, and other activities. Interactive, multi-generational, and free of charge, the Festival has something for book lovers of all ages. Combining entertainment, children’s activities, ComicKey! (a family-friendly comic con) and food trucks with compelling author panels, the Festival attracts more than 3,000 attendees each year.
The Annapolis Book Festival will be held on the campus of Key School at 534 Hillsmere Drive, Annapolis, MD, 21403 on Saturday, May 3, 2025 from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
2025 Annapolis Book Festival Authors
We are pleased to announce the following authors are presenting at the 2025 Festival:
Atossa Araxia Abrahamian – The Hidden Globe: How Wealth Hacks the World
Jenny Adams – A Poisonous Silence (A Deadly Twenties Mystery (Book2)
Marie Arana – LatinoLand: A Portrait of America’s Largest and Least Understood Minority
Keith Boykin – Why Does Everything Have to Be About Race?: 25 Arguments That Won’t Go Away
Anna Bright – The Hedgewitch of Foxhall
Nicole Chung – A Living Remedy
Christopher Cox – Woodrow Wilson: The Light Withdrawn
Kenny Curtis & Jillian Hughes – Greeking Out: Heroes and Olympians
Melissa Deckman – The Politics of Gen Z: How the Youngest Voters Will Shape Our Democracy
Craig Kofi Farmer – Kwame Crashes the Underworld
Evan Friss – The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore
Charlotte Taylor Fryar – Potomac Fever: Reflections on the Nation’s River
David Gendell – The Last Days of the Schooner America: A Lost Icon at the Annapolis Warship Factory
Philip Greene – Sours: A History of the World’s Most Storied Cocktail
Katherine Haas – Little Jade: Memoir of a Young Eurasian Immigrant
Ryan Hampton – Fentanyl Nation: Toxic Politics and America’s Failed War on Drugs
Jimin Han – The Apology
Nikole Hannah-Jones – The 1619 Project
Zeke Hernandez – The Truth About Immigration: Why Successful Societies Welcome Newcomers
Eoin Higgins – Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left
Jefferson Holland – A Walk Around Arundel: 52 Places to Hike with Your Dog (and Other Best Friends)
Erika Howsare – The Age of Deer: Trouble and Kinship with our Wild Neighbors
Alison Humphreys – Private Gardens of the Potomac & Chesapeake: Washington, DC, Maryland, Northern Virginia
Brigid Kemmerer – Carving Shadows into Gold
Diane Kiesel – When Charlie Met Joan: The Tragedy of the Chaplin Trials and the Failings of American Law
Anne Kim – Poverty for Profit: How Corporations Get Rich off America’s Poor
Jennifer Klepper – The Last Road Trip
Vanda Krefft – Expect Great Things!: How the Katharine Gibbs School Revolutionized the American Workplace for Women
Heath Hardage Lee – The Mysterious Mrs. Nixon: The Life and Times of Washington’s Most Private First Lady
Joanne Leedom-Ackerman – The Far Side of the Desert
John W. Miller – The Last Manager: How Earl Weaver Tricked, Tormented, and Reinvented Baseball
Susan Page – The Rulebreaker: The Life and Times of Barbara Walters
Cynthia Pelayo – Vanishing Daughters
Patricia A. Roos – Surviving Alex: A Mother’s Story of Love, Loss, and Addiction
Maurice Carlos Ruffin -The Border Between Us
Rudy Ruiz – Our Hidden Conversations: What Americans Really Think About Race and Identity
Ena Selimović – Underground Barbie by Maša Kolanović’ (translator)
Jessie Sheehan – Necessary Goodness: Delicious Cuisine for Gathering and Entertaining
Simon Shuster – The Showman: Inside the Invasion That Shook the World and Made a Leader of Volodymyr Zelensky
David K. Shipler – The Interpreter
Maxwell L. Stearns – Parliamentary America: The Least Radical Means of Radically Repairing Our Broken Democracy
Susan Stockdale – Don’t Eat the Cleaners!: Tiny Fish with a Big Job
Leslie Gray Streeter – Family & Other Calamities
Larry Tye – The Jazzmen: How Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie Transformed America
Vicki Valosik – Swimming Pretty: The Untold Story of Women in Water
Bailey Van Tassel – Kitchen Garden Living: Seasonal Growing and Eating from a Beautiful, Bountiful Food Garden
Michele Weldon – The Time We Have: Essays on Pandemic Living
Debra Whitman – The Second Fifty: Answers to the 7 Big Questions of Midlife and Beyond
Grace L. Williams – Give Her Credit: The Untold Account of a Women’s Bank That Empowered a Generation
Juan Williams – New Prize for These Eyes: The Rise of America’s Second Civil Rights Movement
Katherine E. Young – People & Trees by Akram Aylisli (translator)
Jim Zervanos – Your Story Starts Here: A Year on the Brink with Generation Z
Connect with the Annapolis Book Festival:
On Instagram at @annapolisbookfestival
On our website at www.keyschool.org/annapolisbookfestival
On Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/AnnapolisBookFestival
