School of Liberal Arts powers the New Orleans Book Festival at Tulane University with leadership, faculty expertise, and alumni voices

The New Orleans Book Festival at Tulane University returns March 12–15 for its fifth chapter, bringing more than 200 acclaimed authors, artists, and thought leaders to Tulane’s uptown campus.

Authors and panelists representing the School of Liberal Arts (SLA) include Dean Brian Edwards, English and Communication Studies Professor Kate Baldwin, Creative Writing Director and English Professor Thomas Beller, Gender & Sexuality Studies Instructor Kyle DeCoste, Tulane Global Humanities Center Fellow Freddi Williams Evans, Economics Professor Douglas Harris, Murphy Institute Executive Director Gary “Hoov” Hoover, Leonard Lauder Professor of American History and Values Walter Isaacson (co-Chair, New Orleans Book Festival at Tulane University), Jewish Studies Associate Professor Golan Moskowitz, English Assistant Professor Karisma Price, Environmental Studies Professor of Practice Nathaniel Rich, and Sociology Professor Nick Spitzer. 

Beller and Isaacson both published works this past year, Degas at the Gas Station and The Greatest Sentence Ever Written, respectively. Rich’s book Losing Earth was selected as Oscar-winning filmmaker Tom McCarthy’s next project and will be adapted into a screenplay. Price won the 2025 Whiting Award in Poetry for early-career accomplishments.

SLA also features a strong lineup of talented alumni, including Dr. Jennifer Avegno, Bryan Batt, Quint Davis, Karen Essex, Kelly Jacques, Wendy Rodrigue Magnus, Mike Sacks, Ben Sandmel, Sue Strachan, Dr. David Weill, and Bronwen Wyatt.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen, the inaugural speaker for SLA’s Carole Barnette Boudreaux ’65 Great Writers Series, will also participate in the festival.

In partnership with The Atlantic, the festival will open on Thursday, March 12, with a special keynote evening honoring the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America. The evening will bring together The Atlantic’s Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg (moderator), bestselling biographer Walter Isaacson, acclaimed filmmaker and storyteller Ken Burns, Atlantic Staff Writer and bestselling author Clint Smith, and Annette Gordon-Reed, author and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian.

School of Liberal Arts faculty, alumni, and past Carole Barnette Boudreaux authors featured at the Book Fest

The complete 2026 Bookfest schedule can be fount on the Bookfest website.

The book festival is free and open to the public. Registration and a full schedule of events is available on the festival website.