DSM Book Festival 2025

Announcing the DSM Book Festival Headlining Authors
A stellar lineup of outstanding writers!

Readers and book lovers in central Iowa will be thrilled to find an outstanding array of authors that will be appearing at the DSM Book Festival on Saturday, March 22. Festival hours will be from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. The free, fun-filled event, presented by Beaverdale Books and Beaverdale Neighborhood Association, will be held at the Franklin Event Center, located at 4801 Franklin Avenue in Des Moines. In addition to author programs, panels, workshops, and children’s activities, the event will offer attendees the opportunity to have their books signed, visit with publishers, and enjoy mingling with fellow booklovers. Planning is still underway, and the complete schedule will soon be posted.

Four headlining presentations will be offered in the venue’s large theater, including fiction writer Claire Lombardo, historian Alexis Coe, award-winning Hanif Abdurraqib, and AViD author C.J. Box.

10:00 AM: Claire Lombardo’s debut novel, The Most Fun We Ever Had, was an instant New York Times bestseller and has been translated or is forthcoming in over a dozen languages. Her second novel, Same as It Ever Was, was published in June 2024. Lombardo is a graduate of the University of Illinois-Chicago and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her short fiction has appeared in, among others, Playboy, Barrelhouse Magazine, Little Fiction, and Longform. Prior to publishing The Most Fun We Ever Had, Claire spent several years working with homeless children and families in Chicago. She has taught fiction writing at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and Grinnell College. A native of Oak Park, Illinois, she now lives in Minnesota, with her dog, Renee. Moderated by Kali White VanBaale. Presented by Prairie Meadows.

12:00 Noon: Alexis Coe is an award-winning, New York Times bestselling presidential historian and senior fellow at New America, a bi-partisan think tank. Coe is the leading presidential biographer of her generation, known for her unique insights, engaging style, and ability to reach larger, more diverse audiences in different mediums. Her books have achieved critical and commercial success. She is the author of, most recently, You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George of Washington. Her next book, Young Jack: A Biography of John F. Kennedy, 1917-1957, will be published in 2025, and her first book, Alice+Freda Forever: A Murder in Memphis, debuted in 2014. In 2024, Coe went on a 13-stop cross-country discussion tour for New America. Her project, “How Should a President Be,” is in anticipation of America’s 250th anniversary in 2026. Coe frequently appears on CNN, MSNBC, CBS, History, PBS, and is a frequent guest on NPR. She has been featured in and written for most major publications, including the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Best American Essays. Moderated by Rachel Hansen, State Historical Society of Iowa.

2:00 PM: Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. His poetry has been published in Muzzle, Vinyl, PEN American, and various other journals. His essays and music criticism have been published in the FADER, Pitchfork, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. His first full length poetry collection, The Crown Ain’t Worth Much, was released in June 2016 from Button Poetry. It was named a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Prize and was nominated for a Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. With Big Lucks, he released a limited-edition chapbook, Vintage Sadness, in summer 2017 (you cannot get it anymore and he is very sorry.) His first collection of essays, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, was named a book of the year by Buzzfeed, Esquire, NPR, Oprah Magazine, Paste, CBC, The Los Angeles Review, Pitchfork, and The Chicago Tribune, among others. His book Go Ahead in The Rain: Notes To a Tribe Called Quest became a New York Times Bestseller, was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize, and was longlisted for the National Book Award. His second collection of poems, A Fortune for Your Disaster, won the 2020 Lenore Marshall Prize. In 2021, he released the book A Little Devil in America with Random House, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. The book won the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction and the Gordon Burn Prize. Hanif is a graduate of Beechcroft High School. Moderated by Caleb Rainey.

4:30 PM: AViD Author C. J. Box is the New York Times bestselling author of thirty novels including the Joe Pickett series. He won the Edgar Alan Poe Award for Best Novel, for Blue Heaven, as well as the Anthony Award, Prix Calibre 38 (France), the Maltese Falcon Award (Japan), the Macavity Award, the Gumshoe Award, two Barry Awards, and the 2010 Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association Award for fiction.  He was recently awarded the 2016 Western Heritage Award for Literature by the National Cowboy Museum as well as the Spur Award for Best Contemporary Novel by the Western Writers of America in 2017. Over ten million copies of his books have been sold in the U.S. and abroad and they have been translated into twenty-seven languages. Two television series based on his novels are in production (BIG SKY on ABC and JOE PICKETT on Spectrum Originals and Paramount+). He is an Executive Producer for both series. Moderated by Heather Gudenkauf.  Cosponsored by Des Moines Public Library AViD Author Series.