Image by Barbara K.

It looks as though the National Book Festival’s days on the National Mall are gone. After transitioning to the Washington Convention Center last year, due to new rules for National Mall use announced by the National Park Service in 2013, the Festival moved to the Convention Center.

Events DC announced today this year’s festival—its 15th year—will take place on Saturday, September 5 (Labor Day weekend). As in years past, the festival will be free. And the writers who are confirmed to come this year? Historians Annette Gordon-Reed, David McCullough and Walter Isaacson, Guggenheim Fellow Daniel Alarcón, Newbery Medal-winner Kwame Alexander, PEN/Faulkner Award winner Ha Jin, Guggenheim Fellow Naomi Shihab Nye, and Pulitzer Prize for fiction winners Marilynne Robinson and Jane Smiley.

As the Post reported in 2013, the festival’s move from outdoors to indoors was due to new regulations the NPS implemented that affected the use of the National Mall for outdoor events. “The change — if there is one — apparently relates to the Mall’s new irrigation system, which could be damaged by the giant spikes used to hold up the tents during the book festival,” the Post’s Ron Charles wrote.

But the festival’s organizers are excited about the return to the Convention Center. “We are pleased to return to the Walter E. Washington Convention Center for this very important 15th anniversary of the National Book Festival,” Marie Arana, National Book Festival co-director, said. “This venue provides the ideal space for festival-goers to experience familiar favorite programs along with exciting new features planned to mark the anniversary of this popular celebration of authors and readers,” Guy Lamolinara, the Festival’s other co-director, reiterated in a statement.

The theme of this year’s festival will be “I Cannot Live Without Books”—a celebration of the 200th anniversary of the Library of Congress’s acquisition of Thomas Jefferson’s personal library, which includes 6,400 volumes.