The 41st annual Printers Row Lit Fest announced today its lineup of more than 200 authors, journalists, poets and screenwriters who will appear during the free event, which will take place Sept. 12-13.
Some Jewish authors have pointed out that the event coincides with Rosh Hashanah, the High Holiday marking the Jewish New Year, but festival organizers said the scheduling was particularly challenging this year.
Headliners include Chicago author Scott Turow, a lawyer whose books “Presumed Innocent” and “The Burden of Proof” center around the legal world. Plus, broadcast journalist Geoff Bennett, the Peabody Award-winning co-host of PBS NewsHour, whose new book is “Black Out Loud. The Revolutionary History of Black Comedy from Vaudeville to ’90s Sitcoms.”
The lineup for the Midwest’s largest and longest-running free outdoor literary festival also includes NPR’s Scott Simon, New York Times bestselling author Eve Ewing and Chicago poet laureate Mayda Del Valle. The festival will also honor rocker Patti Smith, author of the award-winning memoir “Just Kids,” with the Harold Washington Literary Award at a pre-event gala.
In total, the festival’s programming director Amy Danzer called it “one of the most accomplished and wide-ranging lineups in the festival’s history.”
“We’ve got just a really wide range. We’ve got new books out on food and music and sports — lots of sports books this year, I don’t know if it’s influenced by ‘Heated Rivalry’ or what,” Danzer said.
Across the two days, panels will dive into timely topics, including the role journalism plays in American democracy, our changing relationship to technology and the continued rise in book banning nationwide.
While the festival announced its dates earlier in the year, some Jewish authors recently called attention to the overlap with Rosh Hashanah. Local author Lisa Barr told the Jewish publication Forward, “scheduling a major literary festival on such a sacred holiday sends a deeply painful message.”
Brian Berg, the festival’s spokesman, told WBEZ/Chicago Sun-Times, “as someone who is Jewish, I wish there had been a weekend that avoided a conflict with the High Holy Days.”
“Every weekend presented significant challenges, and after weighing them all very carefully, very heavily, we selected an option that best balanced operational, financial, and scheduling realities, while trying to keep the festival free and accessible to many people,” Berg said. “I respect that reasonable people may disagree with this decision. We do appreciate everybody’s perspectives, and I hope we’ll have the opportunity to welcome them back next year.”
The event annually draws upwards of 100,000 people.
Additional Printers Row Lit Fest 2026 highlights include:
- Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Heather Ann Thompson, whose latest book, “Fear and Fury: The Reagan Eighties, the Bernie Goetz Shootings, and the Rebirth of White Rage,” looks back at a defining era in American history.
- Chicago Tribune Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists Gregory Royal Pratt, Andrew Carter, Laura Rodriguez Presa and Erika Slife in conversation about the role of journalism in American democracy with Pulitzer Prize-winning podcast producer and investigative journalist Bill Healy.
- Professor and novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen, whose debut novel, “The Sympathizer,” won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and whose latest work is the essay collection “To Save and to Destroy: Writing as an Other.”
- Bindu Bansinath, a writer at The Cut and author of the novel “Men Like Ours,” whose article, “The Nanny Squatter,” is set to be adapted into an Apple TV series starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Cecily Strong.
- The Chicago author Layne Fargo, whose books “The Favorites” and “They Never Learn” tell dramatic feminist stories.
- Theodore C. Van Alst Jr., author of “Sacred Smokes” and “The El,” will discuss his contribution to the anthology of Indigenous horror stories, “Back for Blood: Never Whistle at Night Part II.”
- Michael Gebert, the James Beard Award-winning author of “The Chicago Way: An Oral History of Chicago Dining,” discusses the behind-the-scenes worlds of Chicago chefs and restaurants.
- Playwright and author Zayd Ayers Dohrn discusses his new autobiographical work, “Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young: A Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground,” which looks back on his childhood on the run with his parents Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers, founders of the radical Chicago-rooted Weather Underground.
- Children’s improv troupe Broadway Dropouts will lead the festival’s popular storytime parade, which invites kids to participate in an interactive celebration of books.
- Homer Hans Bryant, the founder of the Chicago Multi-Cultural Dance Center, creator of the Hiplet dance style and author of “The Rap on Girls in Ballet,” will lead a dance performance meant to encourage confidence in young festgoers.
Courtney Kueppers is an arts and culture reporter at WBEZ.