Tulane University unveiled the lineup for the fifth annual New Orleans Book Festival, which will welcome over 100 nationally acclaimed and best-selling authors to Tulane’s Uptown campus. Book Fest will take place from March 12-15 next year and is free and open to the public.

Here’s a look at some of the authors coming to Book Fest in 2026:

Stacey Abrams: A voting rights activist and former gubernatorial candidate from Georgia, Abrams was the first Black woman to be nominated on a major party ticket for governor. She is a five-time New York Times best-selling author of non-fiction reads, political thrillers and even a few romance novels.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Adichie was born in Nigeria before moving to the U.S. at the age of 19. She is the author of “Americanah,” “Purple Hibiscus” and “Half of a Yellow Sun,” as well as several feminist essays.

John Bel Edwards: Edwards served as the governor of Louisiana for two terms, from 2016 to 2024. A Democrat, Edwards first represented Louisiana’s 72nd State House of Representatives district before taking office. Among his most consequential decisions was expanding Medicaid to 430,000 Louisiana residents. He recently spoke at a Tulane event about the insurance crisis in Louisiana. 

Sir Tim Berners-Lee: Sir Tim Berners-Lee is an English computer scientist and the inventor of the World Wide Web. He also wrote guidelines for HTML and URLs and created the first web client and server. He founded the World Wide Web Foundation along with his wife, and fellow Book Fest speaker, Lady Rosemary Leith Berners-Lee.

Ken Burns: Burns is a renowned documentary filmmaker, known for his American history films on PBS. He is the recipient of 14 Emmy Awards and three Peabody Awards, among numerous other prizes. 

Walter Isaacson: A Book Fest mainstay, Isaacson is a professor of history at Tulane. He has served as chief executive officer of CNN, editor of Time magazine and chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors. He is the author of numerous books and biographies, the most recent of which focused on Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Isaacson’s newest 80-page book on the first line of the Declaration of Independence was released yesterday, Nov. 18. 

Michael Lewis: Lewis is an award-winning author of several non-fiction books, including “The Big Short.” His latest work, “Going Infinite,” explores the collapse of crypto-currency exchange FTX.

Salman Rushdie: Rushdie is an author of 22 books, including “Midnight’s Children” and “The Moor’s Last Sigh” and “Quichotte.” He is best known for “The Satanic Verses,” a book that caused the former Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini to issue a fatwa calling for Rushdie’s murder. In 2022, while speaking at an event, Rushdie was stabbed multiple times, leaving him partially blind, though he has continued writing and advocating for free expression.

Emeril Lagasse and E.G. Lagasse: E.G. Lagasse is the youngest chef, at just 22, to lead a restaurant with two Michelin stars. He runs Emeril’s, the restaurant named after and founded by his father.

Tim Miller: A New Orleans local and former Republican politico, Miller left the party after President Donald Trump’s election in 2016. He founded the “Never Trump” media company The Bulwark in 2018.

Gordon H. “Nick” Mueller: Mueller is a New Orleans-based historian and the president of the National World War II Museum. Mueller established the WWII Museum in 2000, along with historian Stephen Ambrose, and served as its first CEO.

Erica L. Green: Green is a White House correspondent for the New York Times. She covers the Trump administration with a particular interest in social policy and civil rights. 

Nicholas Lemann: Lemann is the former dean of the Columbia Journalism School. After retiring, he has continued to write as a staff writer for The New Yorker.

Viet Than Nguyen: Nguyen is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “The Sympathizers.” He was born in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War and moved to the U.S. in 1975 with his family as a refugee, an experience that has influenced his literary career.

The festival will open with a keynote on Thursday, with full days of panels on Friday and Saturday and close out with a child-friendly family day on Sunday. 

Last year’s Book Fest also featured many high-profile speakers, including the nation’s former chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci, Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jefferery Goldberg and best-selling author John Grisham.