The DSM Book Festival connects people who love books with people who create them. The festival features nationally acclaimed authors, book club-style discussions led by featured commentators, lively panel discussions, hands-on activities, children’s programming, and more.

Four Amazing Headline Authors!

10:00 AM – Claire Lombardo, moderated by Kali Van Baale

12:00 Noon – Alexis Coe, presented by Iowa Historical Society

2:00 PM – Hanif Abdurraqib, moderated by Caleb Rainey

4:30 PM – AViD Author – C.J. Box, moderated by Heather Gudenkauf

Don’t miss this free, fun-filled festival, dedicated to books and booklovers.  We are hard at work planning and want to ensure that we produce the exciting, high-quality event’s you have come to expect.

We are partnering with publishers to bring in an impressive slate of featured authors and we are proud to announce that we will be partnering with the Des Moines Public Library to host children’s activities throughout the day.  Big thanks to our cosponsors, Beaverdale Neighborhood Association, for acting as our fiscal agent.  Stay tuned for more information, including panel discussions, workshops, and additional participating authors.   It promises to be a spectacular event–filled with great books and authors, and so much more.

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

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.

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 released in winter 2017 by Two Dollar Radio and 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. He released Go Ahead In The Rain: Notes To A Tribe Called Quest with University of Texas press in February 2019. The book 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, was released in 2019 by Tin House, and 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 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: C. J. Box is the  #1 New York Times bestselling author of 30 novels including the Joe Pickett series. He won the Edgar Alan Poe Award for Best Novel (Blue Heaven, 2009) 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’ve been translated into 27 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.