The Declaration of Independence, with Ben Zeigler
9 AM • SOLD OUT. Virtual Streaming Link available $10

In a stunningly original look at the US Declaration of Independence, David Armitage reveals the document in a new light: through its global context. Armitage’s ground-breaking research shows how the Declaration announced the entry of the United States onto the world stage and became the model for other countries to follow.

A professor of history at Harvard University, Armitage examines the Declaration as a political, legal, and intellectual document. He is the first to treat it entirely within a broad international framework. This unique global perspective demonstrates the singular role of the United States document as a founding statement of our modern world. David Armitage will be in conversation with lawyer and historian, Ben Zeigler. 

Flashlight, with Deborah Treisman
11 AM • $30

WINNER OF THE 2026 CHAUTAUQUA PRIZE

National Book Award winner Susan Choi’s Flashlight, a heart-gripping investigation of loss and memory, is the astonishing story of one family, ranging from Japan to the U.S.A. to the North Korea regime. “An ambitious generational saga meets mystery thriller that spans several decades and continents …a compulsive read” (BBC Summer Reads 2025). 

Flashlight began as a short story published in The New Yorker in 2020. In this conversation, author Susan Choi joins The New Yorker fiction editor Deborah Treisman to discuss the story’s remarkable evolution into a bestselling novel that was shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2025.

Author to Author
1 PM • $30

Two of contemporary fiction’s most distinguished writers, Tessa Hadley and Richard Ford, discuss their writing.

Pulitzer prize-winning novelist Richard Ford, renowned for his Frank Bascombe series of novels, leads us in conversation with one of his favorite writers, acclaimed British author Tessa Hadley.

One of today’s most accomplished novelists and short fiction writers, Hadley’s work has appeared widely in The New Yorker and she is a regular contributor to the London Review of Books. Her most recent publications are The Party and After The Funeral. Hadley was awarded the Windham-Campbell Prize and the Hawthornden Prize in 2016.

Together, Ford and Hadley will explore the pleasures and challenges of their lives as writers.

Kin, with Kevin Sack
3 PM • SOLD OUT
Overflow Ticket + Book Signing available $20.

At-Home Virtual Streaming Link available $10

OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK | KIRKUS PRIZE 2026 FINALIST  

Explore the depths of this magnificent new novel from the bestselling, award-winning author of An American Marriage, Tayari Jones.

Set in the 1950s and 1960s American South, Kin is about mothers and daughters, friendship and sisterhood, and the complexities of being a woman in this landscape. Vernice and Annie, two motherless daughters, have been best friends and neighbors since early childhood, but they are fated to live starkly different lives.

Tayari Jones will be in conversation with Kevin Sack, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Mother Emanuel, which was a finalist for the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.

FILM SCREENING.
Followed by an onstage talkback with Salman Rushdie and Rachel Eliza Griffiths moderated by Bilal Qureshi.
5 PM • SOLD OUT

Inspired by Salman Rushdie’s memoir, this 2026 documentary film details Rushdie’s recovery after his attempted assassination in 2022. Directed by Alex Gibney, Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie uses never-before-seen footage shot by Rushdie’s wife, poet and visual artist Rachel Eliza Griffiths. It offers a candid, intimate account of the attack. Knife blends reportage with fictionalized dialogues to explore the mindset of the attacker, probing the “why” behind the violence, while still arguing that art, in its very essence, is a form of resistance. 

At 7pm, following the film screening, journalist and cultural critic Bilal Qureshi will moderate a live onstage conversation with Salman Rushdie and Rachel Eliza Griffiths. The event will last a total of three hours. 

The Flower Bearers, with Dr. Jeannelle Perkins
11 AM • $30

Poet, visual artist, and novelist Rachel Eliza Griffiths discusses The Flower Bearers, a moving memoir of two unspeakable tragedies that weaves into a remarkable story of sisterhood, love, and growth. In conversation with Dr. Jeannelle Perkins, licensed marriage and family therapist.

Triage, with Bilal Qureshi
1 pm • $30

A finalist for the National Book Award for Citizen: An American Lyric, Claudia Rankine introduces Triage, a genre-bending narrative, rooted in Sophocles’ Antigone, that is her most personal writing yet.

Triage begins with two friends who treat the other as a sister. During college, they invent a game of collapse: Every time they see each other, they have to stop and fall to the ground. As their kinship continues off and on for decades, “collapse” takes on new meanings, giving a fresh interpretation to how one should respond to the world’s atrocities. In conversation with literary critic Bilal Qureshi.

The Telephone: A New History, with Damon Wilson
3 PM • $30

Hear award-winning science writer James Gleick, author of Chaos and The Information, describe his new book, The Telephone. The invention of the telephone in 1876 was a triumphant story of individual ingenuity and vision—a miraculous and easily accessible instrument that created the ability to communicate across vast distances in real time, which revolutionized human interaction. The dramatic history of its invention involved ruthless competition, bribery, fraud, and speculation.

“Science and technology never seem more exciting than when James Gleick is writing about them” (Elizabeth Kolbert). In conversation with Damon Wilson, President and CEO of the National Endowment for Democracy. 

The Neverending Journey: The Enduring Appeal of Homer’s The Odyssey
5 PM • $30

Author and translator Daniel Mendelsohn returns to the Festival to discuss the art of adapting Homer’s The Odyssey. Drawing on many examples—including Christopher Nolan’s 2026 film—Daniel Mendelsohn explains how and why this epic poem resonates with audiences across millennia.

Mendelsohn is an award-winning classicist, memoirist, critic, essayist, and translator. Professor of Humanities at Bard College and Editor at Large for The New York Review of Books, he is also a long-time contributor to The New Yorker and has been a columnist for various cultural journals. His publications include a celebrated translation of The Odyssey and An Odyssey: A Father, a Son and an Epic.

CONVERSATION FOLLOWED BY AN ONSTAGE DANCE PERFORMANCE BY MIAMI CITY BALLET

Steve Caras, with Martha Teichner
7 PM • $30

At a young age, Steven Caras formed a surprising passion for dance and ballet went on to shape the course of his life. Under the tutelage of legends such as George Balanchine, Caras learned the art of ballet from the very best practitioners and eventually became one of dance’s most distinguished photographers.

In conversation with broadcast journalist Martha Teichner, the session will focus on his book Through the Lens of a Dancer which tells the captivating story of his life, including his rise as a dancer and life as a photographer, his turmoil as he wrestled with his sexuality, the relationships that shaped him, and the many moments in between.

Immediately following the conversation, Miami City Ballet principal dancers Cameron Catazaro and Hannah Fischer will perform onstage the Diamonds duet from Balanchine’s ballet Jewels.

with Rebecca Romney & Sunday Steinkirchner
11 AM • $30

World-renowned novelist Virginia Woolf and her husband Leonard Woolf founded the Hogarth Press as a hobby in 1917. The hand-press installed in their dining room provided a mechanical activity, an antidote to the stress Virginia experienced as an introspective, experimental writer.

The artistic appearance of the early publications was paramount, with cover designs by Virginia’s sister, the painter Vanessa Bell. The Hogarth Press introduced some of the most innovative and dazzling writers—T.S. Eliot, Sigmund Freud, and all Virginia’s subsequent books—and was one of the most influential, independent publishers between the wars.

Rare books dealer Sunday Steinkirchner and Pawn Stars book specialist Rebecca Romney will share their fascination with the Hogarth Press and its legacy.

DON’T MISS OUT! A unique and special collection of Hogarth Press selected rare books and ephemera will be on display in the Dock Street Theatre lobby. With special thanks to the Krupa Family Collection.

When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows…, with Geoffrey Harpham
1 PM • SOLD OUT | At-Home Virtual Streaming Link available $10

Steven Pinker, Harvard Professor of Psychology and one of Times’s “100 most influential people in the world today” unpacks his latest book, When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power and Everyday Life. Steven Pinker’s insightful work explains how we think about each other’s thoughts—a phenomenon known as common knowledge—and its momentous impact on our social, political, and economic lives. 

“Fascinating… Provides a logical explanation for all sorts of seemingly irrational human behaviour” (Financial Times). Bestselling author and twice Pulitzer finalist, Steven Pinker explains his thinking and engages in conversation with Geoffrey Harpham, former director of the National Humanities Center and author of The Ends of Race: The Rise and Fall of a Scientific Myth.

Glorious Exploits, with Shane O’Reilly
3 PM • $30

In his debut novel, Ferdia Lennon brings readers into the wonderful world of Glorious Exploits. Set in 412 BC during the Peloponnesian War, the novel follows two unemployed potters with a soft spot for poetry and drink. Their deep admiration for the playwright Euripides has the mates hatching a plan to direct a full-blown production of Medea, which quickly shows them that staging a play can be as dangerous as fighting a war.

As funny as it is deeply moving, Glorious Exploits is an unforgettable ode to the power of art in a time of war, brotherhood in a time of enmity, and human will throughout the ages. In conversation with Shane O’Reilly, actor and playwright.

The Mattering Instinct, with Adam Gopnik
5 PM • $30

Philosopher Rebecca Newberger Goldstein explores humanity’s most fundamental desire in The Mattering Instinct. Drawing on biology, psychology, and philosophy, Goldstein argues that the need to matter—and the various “mattering projects” it inspires—is the source of our greatest progress and our deepest conflicts: the very crux of the human experience. She brings this profound idea to life through unforgettable stories of famous and not-so-famous people pursuing their unique mattering projects.

The Mattering Instinct holds the keys to how we may finally understand each other. In dialogue with Adam Gopnik, essayist for The New Yorker and author of many books including The Real Work.

The Correspondent and Heart the Lover, with Lydia Fitzpatrick
7PM • SOLD OUT
Overflow Ticket + Book Signing available $20.

At-Home Virtual Streaming Link available $10

Virginia Evans, winner of the 2026 Women’s Prize for Fiction, and Lily King, Kirkus Prize winner, discuss their deeply affecting novels, The Correspondent and Heart The Lover—two of the most talked about books of the last year. 

In conversation with novelist Lydia Fitzpatrick, whose new novel In The Blind is forthcoming in April 2027 from Knopf.

Sarah Lewis and Virginia McGee Richards
10 AM • $30

Photographer Virginia McGee Richards and historian Sarah Lewis discuss their respective books, The Inner Passage and If Emmett Till Lived: A Creative Monument, tracing untold histories and Black legacies embedded in the Southern landscape. 

Buckeye, with Martha McLendon
12 PM • SOLD OUT | At-Home Virtual Streaming Link available $10

“A once-in-a-decade novel.”—Jenna Bush Hager, Read With Jenna

Join Patrick Ryan as he discusses his newest novel, Buckeye, longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. In the jubilant aftermath of the Allied victory in Europe, Cal Jenkins shares a single, life-altering moment with Margaret Salt. What begins as a fleeting transgression becomes a complex secret that binds Cal, Margaret, and their spouses together.

As their small Ohio town remakes itself in the postwar boom, the Salt and Jenkins families remain in each other’s orbit, reshaping their lives in ways that will forever impact the next generation. Sweeping yet intimate, Buckeye is a transportive story of love, loyalty, sacrifice, and forgiveness. In conversation with lawyer and Charleston Literary Festival board member, Martha McLendon.

How Flowers Made Our World, with Peter Crane
2 PM • $30

PRESENTED WITH THE SOUTHERN ENVIRONMENTAL LAW CENTER
“A seamless melding of poetry and science.”—Wall Street Journal

Biologist David George Haskell discusses How Flowers Made Our World, an exquisite exploration of the power of flowers. Flowers are beautiful revolutionaries. When they evolved, they remade the natural world, from plant sexuality to motherhood to radical genetic flexibility. Without flowers, human beings would not exist.

Looking to the future, flowers offer us lessons on resilience and creativity in the face of rapid environmental change. David George Haskell is joined in conversation by Peter Crane, President of The Oak Spring Garden Foundation and former Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, London.

with Lucas Wittmann  
4 PM • $30

The New Yorker writer John Seabrook and celebrated journalist Tom Junod discuss their respective memoirs, The Spinach King and In the Days of My Youth I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man. Seabrook’s The Spinach King unearths the riveting saga of his family’s agricultural empire through dark secrets, half-truths, hatred, and passion. Junod’s In the Days is a searching account about his father, a charismatic, philandering man who tried to mold his son in his image. 

Joined onstage by Lucas Wittmann, Executive Director of 92nd Street Y Unterberg Poetry Center in New York City. 

Strangers, with Jennifer Griffin
6PM • SOLD OUT
Overflow Ticket + Book Signing available $20.

At-Home Virtual Streaming Link available $10

“Riveting…examines the very nature of intimacy.” – Joyce Carol Oates 

Belle Burden’s Strangers tells the searing story of a twenty-year-long marriage coming to an end during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this gripping memoir, Burden searches for clues that her husband was not who she always thought he was. As she examines her relationship through a new lens, she reckons with her own family history and the lessons she intuited about how a woman is expected to behave in the face of betrayal.

With unflinching honesty, Burden charts a path through heartbreak to show the power of a woman who refuses to give up on love. In conversation with journalist Jennifer Griffin.

King of Kings with Nazila Fathi
11 AM • $30

FINALIST FOR THE 2026 PULITZER PRIZE FOR HISTORY

Scott Anderson, winner of the 2025 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction, discusses King of Kings, the story of the 1978–1979 Iranian Revolution. On New Year’s Eve, 1977, on a state visit to Iran, President Jimmy Carter toasted Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, King of Kings, praising Iran as “an island of stability.” Fourteen months later, the Shah fled Iran into exile, catching the country—and the world—by surprise.

Scott Anderson weaves a spellbinding story of a dictator blind to the disdain of his subjects, a superpower blundering into disaster, and the United States’ ignorance of the Shah’s fateful undoing. 

1 PM • FREE

The Charleston Literary Festival 2026 Cato Fellow, a talented emerging writer from the Carolinas, will read and discuss their work.

For the first time, we are featuring an international fellow thanks to the new Charleston Literary Festival Fiederowicz International Fellowship. Selecting a different country each year, the first Fiederowicz International Fellow will join us from Ukraine to discuss the enduring importance of literature in wartime.

Luna, Phoenix, Queen, with Bill Goldstein
3 PM • $30

Julie Orringer introduces her new novel, Luna, Phoenix, Queen, a riveting tour de force. A novel that “breaks all the rules and makes its own” (Andrew Sean Greer), Luna, Phoenix, Queen follows married English professors through secret affairs, envy, betrayal, and an early-onset Alzheimer’s diagnosis. The narrative spans four decades and four thousand miles, illuminating the power of storytelling and the terror of losing the ability to make sense of our world.

In conversation with Bill Goldstein, biographer of Larry Kramer.

with Peter Godwin
5 PM • $30

Booker Prize-finalist Ben Markovits and two-time Booker Prize-longlisted Joseph O’Neill come together to discuss their latest novels, each of which details a modern odyssey. In The Rest ofOur Lives, Ben Markovits examines marriage, middle age, basketball mania, and regret through his fifty-something narrator who drives west after his wife’s affair. In Joseph O’Neill’s Godwin, two brothers cross the world in search of an African soccer prodigy who might change their fortunes—“Enthralling” (The Times).

Ben Markovits and Joseph O’Neill will be in conversation with Peter Godwin, former president of PEN America.

Jacaranda
7 PM • $30

WINNER OF THE PRIX RENAUDOT 
PRESENTED WITH VILLA ALBERTINE

Join internationally renowned hip-hop artist and Rwandan-French novelist Gaël Faye as he discusses Jacaranda. To Milan, the twelve-year-old son of a French father and Rwandan mother, the violence and genocide in Rwanda is an abstraction. Until Milan is introduced to Claude, a cousin who journeys to France for a medical treatment and disappears back to Rwanda as quickly as he came. The boys reunite as teenagers when Milan visits Rwanda for the first time in a spellbinding novel inspired by the author’s family history. 

10 AM

SOLD OUT TO THE PUBLIC! All remaining tickets are reserved for CCSD students and chaperones.

IN HONOR OF MARTHA RIVERS INGRAM

World-renowned prima ballerina Misty Copeland discusses her writing at large and the latest installment in her literary wonderland, Firebird Waltz. A passionate writer, Copeland’s storytelling is designed to empower young readers and embolden them to chase their dreams.

Family program, suitable for children 8-12.

This event has sold out of all general on-sale seats. All remaining tickets are allocated for students and their chaperones.

with Anne Blessing
12pm • SOLD OUT | At-Home Virtual Streaming Link available $10

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jayne Anne Phillips and bestselling author and journalist Susan Orlean take to the stage to discuss their memoirs.

Small Town Girls by Jayne Anne Phillips is a memoir of the South and Phillips’s love letter to Buckhannon, West Virginia, in her most personal book yet. Susan Orlean’s Joyride is a magic carpet ride throughout her life, infused with Orlean’s signature warmth and wit while inspiring readers to seek out daily inspiration and rediscover the marvels that surround us.

In conversation with Charleston Literary Festival board member, Anne Blessing. 

with Malika Pryor
2 PM • $30

The prolific author of Hunger and Bad Feminist, Roxane Gay shares her guidebook for writers and creatives. “All writing advice is terrible,” Gay says, before she provides realistic, frank, and humorous advice for authors and those who aspire to the literary life. Roxane Gay gives would-be writers the tools, guidance, and inspiration that may ultimately add their work to the rich tapestry of American and world culture—widening readers’ perspectives and deepening their understanding of how to be heard.

In conversation with Malika Pryor, Chief Learning and Engagement Officer at the International African American Museum. 

Lázár, with Gilbert Cruz
4 PM • $30

Swiss author Nelio Biedermann discusses his exceptional debut novel, Lázár, a gothic, intergenerational family saga inspired by the author’s lineage. At the turn of the 20th century, the Lázárs welcome their newest member—Lajos von Lázár, a baby boy with translucent skin and light-blue eyes who looks nothing like his family. His birth is emblematic of the family’s many secrets.

As the decades go by, the Lázárs fall prey to their desires, leading grand lives and experiencing even greater tragedies in the face of war and revolution in their country. But, even in the darker years, extraordinary love and hope finds its way through.

Nelio Biedermann will be in conversation with Gilbert Cruz, editor of the New York Times Book Review from 2022-2026; currently he serves as its newly created ‘canon editor’.

6 PM • $30

For the very first event in our inaugural Charleston Literary Festival Revenance Series, Charleston icon Dawn Langley Simmons will be brought to life to discuss her literary career as a biographer and memoirist, alongside her astonishingly varied experiences from childhood in Vita Sackville West’s Sissinghurst domain in the U.K, to inheriting Isabel Lydia Whitney’s fortune in New York, to being half of the first inter-racial marriage in Charleston. Prepare for category-busting stories from a true Charleston Legend. 

Starring John “Lypsinka” Epperson and Shane O’Reilly. Stories compiled by Síofra Dromgoole. Directed by Dominic Dromgoole.

Keeper of My Kin, with Natalie C. Hauff
10 AM • $30

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ada Ferrer’s Keeper of My Kin is “a brilliant testament to the power of storytelling” (Javier Zamora). In 1963, four years after Fidel Castro came to power, Ferrer’s mother made the agonizing decision to flee Cuba with her infant daughter, Ada, and to leave behind her nine-year-old son. This moment was but a ripple in a much larger story of a world historical revolution. In this memoir, Ferrer shifts between her roles as historian and family member, weaving a multigenerational tale that reaches into the past to understand the circumstances and choices that led to the present.

In conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winning, Cuban-American journalist Natalie C. Hauff.

Jim Shepard and Kurt Andersen, with Anthony Varallo
12 PM • $30

Jim Shepard and Kurt Andersen join the Festival to discuss Catastrophe Fiction. Jim Shepard introduces his new collection, The Queen of Bad Influences, with a “talent so various and canny he can write about seemingly anything” (Richard Ford). The Queen of Bad Influences includes twelve succinct stories that feature collapsing dams, hideously mismanaged wars, gargantuan wildfires, and apocalyptic storms. Kurt Andersen, author of The Breakup, details how a marriage falls apart in a near-future United States as the country redraws its borders and the couple mirrors the nation’s unraveling.

In conversation with Anthony Varallo, author and Professor of English at the College of Charleston.

Angel Down, with Elliot Ackerman
2 PM • SOLD OUT | At-Home Virtual Streaming Link available $10

WINNER OF THE 2026 PULITZER PRIZE (FICTION)

Critically-acclaimed author of Whaledown and 2026 Pulitzer Prize-winning author Daniel Kraus discusses Angel Down,  his “crazily enjoyable” (The New York Times) novel set during World War I, that is written as a single, unbroken sentence. Private Cyril Bagger has managed to survive the unspeakable horrors of the Great War through his wits and deception. But his survival instincts are put to the ultimate test when he and four others are given a deadly mission: venture into the perilous No Man’s Land to euthanize a wounded comrade. But what they find there is not a man in need, but a fallen angel, who may hold the key to ending the conflict.

In conversation with former Marine Officer and bestselling novelist, Elliot Ackerman.

The Renoir Girls, with Alex Rich
4 PM • SOLD OUT | At-Home Virtual Streaming Link available $10

Catherine Ostler, historian, journalist and former editor of Tatler UK,  presents New York Times best-selling The Renoir Girls: A Hidden History of Art, War and Betrayal. Immortalized as children in impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s famous double portrait “The Pink and the Blue”, the young sisters, children of a  wealthy Jewish family, went on to live anything but charmed lives. By examining the destiny of the innocent girls in the portrait, Catherine  Ostler presents a disturbing picture of life for French Jews from the precarious splendours of the Belle Époque to the devastation of the Holocaust.

In conversation with Alex Rich, CEO of the Gibbes Museum.

Ply with Shane O’Reilly
6 PM • SOLD OUT

Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Trust, Hernan Diaz presents Ply, a novel that turns to the future and examines the role of technology in the American imagination.

Centuries from now, at the dawn of a historical epoch, an orphan grows up in a city on the brink of transformation to become a “pincher”—someone who steals electricity from the grid to sell it on the black market. It’s a high-risk life, but it leads her to a colossal scientific invention that could change the very fabric of reality.

In conversation with actor and playwright, Shane O’Reilly.

Common Sense with Elizabeth Chew
11 AM • From $30

English writer Thomas Paine was an inspiration to the Americans in their struggle for independence.

Encouraged to leave England for America by Benjamin Franklin, his groundbreaking pamphlet Common Sense, published anonymously in 1776, won thousands to the side of the rebels.

To coincide with the America 250 jubilee, Sarah Churchwell, Professor of American Literature and Public Understanding of the Humanities at London University, considers the pamphlet’s dramatic effect on political events and Thomas Paine’s influence on the American Revolution together with Elizabeth Chew, Chief Executive of the South Carolina Historical Society.

The Healing Powers of Gardening, with Regina Marler
1 PM • From $30

British psychiatrist and psychotherapist Sue Sturt Smith, author of the Well Gardened Mind, provides a new perspective on the power of gardening to change lives for the better. She describes gardening’s healing effects on prisoners, soldiers with PTSD, and patients suffering from depression. Sue is also the co-founder of the Serge Hill Project for Gardening, Creativity and Health, which offers opportunities to community groups to engage in gardening. She investigates the many ways in which mind and garden can interact and explores how the process of tending a plot can be a way of sustaining an innermost self.

In conversation with keen gardener and New York Review of Books essayist, Regina Marler.  

1873: The Rothschilds, the First Great Depression, and the Making of the Modern World
3pm • $30

Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Lords of Finance Liaquat Ahamed introduces 1873, a magnificent and timely reckoning with the first truly global financial calamity and the famous banking family at the center of the whirlwind. During the first era of globalization, the Rothschilds rose to power, marking them arguably the wealthiest banking family in history. But then came 1873, a year that marked the first Great Depression, and the Rothschilds were scapegoated as part of a wider strain of antisemitism.

Ahamed’s 1873 is a bird’s-eye reckoning with the full dimension of the crisis, from its buildup to its long aftermath. 

Show Don’t Tell with Georgina Godwin
5 PM • SOLD OUT | At-Home Virtual Streaming Link available $10

In her second story collection, Curtis Sittenfeld shows why she’s as beloved for her short fiction as she is for her novels. Show Don’t Tell conjures up characters so real that they seem like old friends. Hilarious, thought-provoking, and full of tenderness, Sittenfeld’s stories peel back layer after layer of our inner lives, keeping us riveted to the page with her utterly distinctive voice.

In conversation with Georgina Godwin, Books Editor, Monocle Radio.

Partita
7 PM • SOLD OUT | At-Home Virtual Streaming Link available $10

Barbara Kingsolver, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist of Demon Copperhead, introduces her new novel Partita, the story of a brief, passionate, life-changing love affair. Livia Cable has made her peace with her marriage and modest life until a shocking phone call from a former lover shakes her to the core. Decades earlier, this man knew her as a music conservatory student estranged from her home and family, uncertain of anything except her passion for music and promise as an extraordinary pianist.

With razor-sharp intellect, Barbara Kingsolver’s unforgettable Partita reflects on class barriers, the risks of ambition, and how art can transform one’s life. This unique event will include readings by Barbara Kingsolver, interspersed with live piano music.

Pete The Cat and Friends!
9 AM

Free for children aged 12 and under
General admission: SOLD OUT

New York Times bestselling children’s author and performer Eric Litwin presents a morning of literacy, music, and positivity. The original author of the Pete the Cat series, Litwin joins us for an interactive performance to surprise and delight young readers.

Family program, suitable for children aged 5-12.  

All Hours, with Hunter Lewis
9.30 AM • $35

PRESENTED WITH FOOD & WINE CLASSIC IN CHARLESTON

What does one of America’s most exciting chefs cook when he’s off the clock? 2019 F&W Best New Chef Kwame Onwuachi joins Food & Wine editor in chief Hunter Lewis for a conversation about his cookbook, All Hours: Crazy Good Food for Whatever, Whenever, and how he cooks from morning to midnight. Onwuachi is the James Beard Award–winning chef behind Tatiana in New York City, Dōgon in Washington, D.C., and Maroon in Las Vegas. Onwuachi was named one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People of 2025 and is the author of Notes from a Young Black Chef and My America.

Hunter Lewis has served as editor in chief of Food & Wine since 2017, leading a team that has earned multiple James Beard, IACP, and National Magazine Awards from the American Society of Magazine Editors. He is the author of the forthcoming cookbook Just Play the Hits.

***Note: This event will take place at The Charleston Gaillard Center. 

Anita Brookner, with Regina Marler
11 AM • $30

Dame Hermione Lee, one of the most acclaimed biographers of our times, who has illuminated the lives of Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf, Philip Roth and Tom Stoppard, reveals her ground-breaking exploration of the life and art of the enigmatic and contradictory novelist and art historian, Anita Brookner (1928-2016), who won the Booker Prize for Fiction for Hotel du Lac in 1984.

“A novelist of peerless wit and insight” (Julian Barnes). Brookner attracted devoted admirers for her fiction as well as for her erudite art criticism and inspirational teaching at Cambridge and the Courtauld Institute in London. Hermione Lee’s penetrating biography is bound to attract new Anita Brookner enthusiasts. With Regina Marler, New York Review of Books essayist.

Unsayable, with Adam Parker
1 PM • SOLD OUT

“Go ahead. Try using language to slit the skin of mortality to see what’s on the other side.”

At the age of three, Michael Cunningham began obsessively collecting the names of things, kicking off a lifelong love affair with language—one that would, eventually, inevitably, lead him to become a writer.

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hours, Michael Cunningham’s memoir Unsayable is an ode to literature, a meditation on craft, and an intimate account of a life spent trying to put into words that which resists depiction. This is the lifeblood of the fiction writer: the impossibility of capturing the human experience, and the relentless desire to try.

with Luke Barr
3 PM • SOLD OUT | At-Home Virtual Streaming Link available $10

Three-Michelin-starred chef Eric Ripert and photographer Nigel Parry introduce Mindful Cooking, the duo’s third collaboration that demonstrates Ripert’s belief in how food can bring health and mindfulness into one’s life, in over 75 plant-based recipes. The book’s inception formed from Eric Ripert exploring Buddhist temple cuisine in monasteries across Japan and Korea, demonstrating how a relationship with food can be rooted in reverence, sustainability, and intention. Mindful Cooking urges us to deepen our connection to what we eat, embrace cooking as an act of love, and recognize that every meal is an opportunity to nourish more than just our bodies.

In conversation with Luke Barr, author of Provence, 1970 and The Secret History of French Cooking. 

The Imperfect City, with Vishaan Chakrabarti
5 PM • $30

Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic Paul Goldbeger’s The Imperfect City is a hymn to the creation of modern urban life: a mixture of serendipity and planning, contradiction and clarity, intention and surprise. Drawn from a lifetime of appreciation, this enlightening book shows that the joy of urban experience comes not from seeking the perfection of order, but from embracing the energy, beauty, and unpredictability of cities at their best.

Paul Goldberger is contributing editor at Vanity Fair and was architecture critic for The New York Times for fifteen years. In conversation with Vishaan Chakrabarti, whose firm is the lead design architect for the redevelopment of New York Penn Station.

The Power of Storytelling
7 PM • $30

Spend a magic lantern-lit evening enjoying a stellar performance by Jeanette Winterson, groundbreaking author of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit and Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal, as she enacts one of the spell-binding stories told by the clever and brave Shahrazad, narrator of One Thousand and One Nights, in order to stave off her execution by the bloodthirsty king. In a tribute to the age-old tradition of storytelling, Jeanette Winterson invites us to look more closely at our own stories, and to recreate our worlds anew.

Jeanette Winterson’s barnstorming performance at the first Charleston Literary Festival is legendary. Don’t miss this opportunity to see her in action.  

Tiger’s Mouth, with Summer Anderson
11 AM • SOLD OUT | At-Home Virtual Streaming Link available $10

“A stunning story… I absolutely adored it.” — Chris Whitaker.

Jenna Bush Hager and Lucy Tan discuss Tan’s latest novel, Tiger’s Mouth, published by Thousand Voices (Jenna Bush Hager’s imprint at Penguin Random House). When two young men meet during a tech internship, it sparks an intense friendship—and even more intense competition. Tiger’s Mouth is a sweeping novel of privilege, identity, and ambition. 

Join Lucy Tan and Jenna Bush Hager as they discuss this nuanced, complex portrait of friendship, family dynamics, and love in its most unexpected forms.

In conversation with owner of Ladybird Books, Summer Anderson.

Fly, Wild Swans, with Caroline Courtauld
1 PM • $30

Jung Chang returns to Charleston Literary Festival with her magnificent follow-up to Wild Swans— the bestselling sensation that traces the history of modern China through the true stories of three generations of courageous women in one family. Fly, Wild Swans is Chang’s epic memoir and chronicles her family’s journey in China as they rose from a decrepit and isolated state to a world power challenging American dominance. Her family story mirrors the ups and downs of China’s transformation, right up to today, as it enters another watershed. Fly, Wild Swans is Jung’s love letter and emotional tribute to her extraordinary mother and family.

In conversation with author and documentary film producer Caroline Courtauld, who has written extensively on China, Burma, and Hong Kong. 

This Is for Everyone: The Unfinished Story of the World Wide Web
3 PM • $30

In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, forever changing the scope of humanity and our world. This is for Everyone is Berners-Lee’s memoir that tells the unfinished story of his invention. He recounts the history of his iconic invention and offers a vital perspective on today’s most urgent technological questions.

As the rapid development of artificial intelligence brings new risks and possibilities, Berners-Lee also provides a crucial guide to the decisions ahead and proposes a new approach to the web. In doing so, he shows how our digital lives can be reengineered for the sake of human flourishing rather than for profit or power.

The Family Man: Blood and Betrayal in the House of Murdaugh , with Jean Hanff Korelitz
5 PM • $30

James Lasdun joins Charleston Literary Festival with The Family Man. In March 2023, Alex Murdaugh was found guilty of murdering his wife and younger son at Moselle, their home in South Carolina’s Lowcountry. By then, the story had become headline news across the country, with its revelations of corruption in high places, massive fraud, opioid abuse, fake suicides, suspicious accidents, and the generational recklessness of the wealthy legal dynasty at its center. James Lasdun constructs a masterful portrait of Murdaugh and the mind-boggling crimes that wreaked havoc on his community.

In conversation with Jean Hanff Korelitz, author of crime fiction.

STARRING BERNARD CORNWELL, DAME HERMIONE LEE, NAMELESS NUMBERHEAD, AND MORE!

Directed by Dominic Dromgoole 
7 PM • $30

Our grand Festival finale is an extravagant staged reading of Virginia Woolf’s only play, Freshwater: A Comedy. Celebrate the Festival’s roots in the Bloomsbury Group in the UK with a fresh, rousing take on Virginia Woolf’s hilarious farce. This dazzling, irreverent comedy is about artists, love, desire, and the wonderfully unruly business of being human.

Step into the world of the pioneering Victorian photographer, the eccentric Julia Margaret Cameron,  and her extraordinary circle of family, friends, lovers, and fellow creators in this sparkling play.

Freshwater is witty, playful, and unconventional with a dash of scandal. Come for Woolf. Stay for the surprises!

Image courtesy of Charleston Trust UK.