Charleston Literary Festival spotlights leading literary voices
By Blair Knobel
Founded in 2017, the Charleston Literary Festival reflects the spirit of the radical Bloomsbury Group of Charleston House in the UK. Its literary icons, artists, and thinkers—such as Vanessa Bell and her sister, Virginia Woolf—continually pushed the boundaries of creative work.
In a similar fashion, the Charleston Literary Festival invites the world’s preeminent authors to engage with audiences at the acclaimed and historic Dock Street Theatre. For its tenth anniversary this year, the festival has a knock-out line-up of speakers. Here are a few on our list, but check out the website for the full roster.
Now in its tenth year, the Charleston Literary Festival offers rare opportunities for attendees to engage in conversations with a diverse group of world-renowned authors.
Keep these authors on your festival radar this fall in Charleston:
Tayari Jones
In her latest best-selling novel, Kin, Atlanta-born author Tayari Jones masterfully threads the needle through the ties that bind, exploring family dynamics in a racially charged South.
Barbara Kingsolver
Acclaimed author and Pulitzer Prize–winner Barbara Kingsolver’s human-centered stories weave together themes of place, family, politics, and the environment. The author’s forthcoming novel, Partita, explores artistic ambition and class barriers.
MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM
Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Hours inspired the Academy Award–winning feature film. His new memoir, Unsayable, is an up-close review of a writer’s life and craft—the challenge to capture life’s ineffable experience in words.
Hernan Diaz
Hernan Diaz is the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of the novel Trust, a layered story about wealth, power, and the people who rewrite history. His latest work, Ply, centers on an orphan’s travails in a city swept up in transformation by technology’s influence.
Roxane Gay
Author, memoirist, and cultural critic Roxane Gay comes to the festival with her latest book, How to Be Heard, a guide for anyone who yearns to share their work with the world.
claudia rankine
Claudia Rankine channels her craft into a hybrid of narrative prose and lyrical poetry in her latest work Triage, an emotional exploration of a turbulent friendship. Grab a copy of our Fall 2026 issue to read an excerpt from her book.
In her latest work, Triage, Claudia Rankine limns the turbulent friendship between two self-identified sisters and their struggle to understand the current state of the world; portrait by Dirk Skiba; book cover courtesy of graywolf press.
November 6–15, Dock Street Theatre, Charleston, SC; charlestonliteraryfestival.com
This story appears in our Fall 2026 issue.