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One Book, One Festival

Home Events One Book, One Festival

Inaugurated in 2008, the Louisiana Book Festival's One Book, One Festival discussion group continues at the Louisiana Book Festival. Participants are invited to read the same book in advance and then join the scholar-led discussion with others at the festival.

In recognition of the fact that the 2026 Louisiana Book Festival takes place on Halloween, the subject of this year's One Book, One Festival book discussion will be the Anne Rice classic novel Interview with the Vampire. It is also the book's 50th anniversary! Each year, One Book, One Festival participants read the program’s featured material in advance and then join the scholar-led discussion with others at the festival. 

The program is open to all festival attendees and will be led by Dr. Gary Richards, professor of English and former chairman of the Department of English and Linguistics at the University of Mary Washington. Richards is an expert on southern literature and culture who previously taught at the University of New Orleans and has facilitated thirteen previous sessions since One Book, One Festival began in 2008.

Interview with the Vampire (1976) tells the story of Louis de Pointe du Lac, a vampire recounting his centuries-long existence to a young reporter in modern-day New Orleans, tracing a journey through guilt, longing, and the moral weight of immortality that begins in eighteenth-century Louisiana. A landmark of American gothic fiction, the novel launched Rice's bestselling Vampire Chronicles series and reshaped the genre by centering its protagonist's own consciousness and anguish. Its deep roots in Louisiana helped make Rice one of the state's most iconic literary voices and helped cement New Orleans as a capital of gothic imagination in popular culture.

Past Selections

2024
The Optimist's Daughter
Eudora Welty
Discussion leader: Gary Richards

2023
Other Voices, Other Rooms
Truman Capote
(75th Anniversary)
Discussion leader: Gary Richards

2022
A Streetcar Named Desire
Tennessee Williams
(75th Anniversary)
Discussion leader: Gary Richards

2021
A Gathering of Old Men
Ernest J. Gaines
Discussion leader: Gary Richards

2019
A Christmas Memory
Truman Capote
Discussion leader: Gary Richards

2018
The Great Big Doorstep
E.P. O'Donnell
Discussion leader: Katie Henninger

2017
A Streetcar Named Desire
Tennessee Williams
Discussion leader: Gary Richards

2016
Creole Belle
James Lee Burke
Discussion leader: Gary Richards

2015
Go Set a Watchman
Harper Lee
Discussion leader: Gary Richards

2014
Modern Baptists
James Wilcox
Discussion leader: James Wilcox

2013
The House on Coliseum Street
Shirley Ann Grau
Discussion leader: Gary Richards

2012
A Confederacy of Dunces
John Kennedy Toole
Discussion leader: Gary Richards

2011
Of Love and Dust
Ernest J. Gaines
Discussion leader: Reggie Scott Young

2009
Same Place, Same Things
Tim Gautreaux
Discussion leader: Gary Richards

2008
All the King's Men
Robert Penn Warren
Discussion leader: Gary Richards