Savannah Book Festival organizers are gearing up for 2022 event, considering authors

The Savannah Book Festival will be back in 2022, and officials are busy planning for an in-person event scheduled to take place next February 17-20 with three main ticketed event headliners and a free Festival Saturday.

In it’s fifteenth year, the Savannah Book Festival now brings around 45-50 nationally and regionally published authors, including bestselling and debut authors, to Savannah during their free Saturday event.

Book lovers travel from near and far to see their favorite authors. In recent years — before going virtual last year — they boasted an estimated 8,000-10,000 people who attended Festival Saturday.

“During the 2021 season we were happy to be able to stay connected to our Savannah Book Festival community with our virtual events,” said Erika Dongre, executive director. “We had a lot of big authors like Brad Thor, Michael Connelly, Dave Barry, Brit Bennett and Ruth Ware; and they were pretty successful. We were very happy to have that option during this crazy past year we had, to still provide access to authors for them.”

Year after year, the festival brings a diverse mix of books and authors to eager fans in the Hostess City.

In 2022, author sessions will be in seven different venues in downtown Savannah around Telfair, Chippewa and Wright squares. Each author will give insight on their process, such as what got them into writing and what inspired them to write their books, and answer questions from the audience. After each presentation, attendees can purchase a book and have it autographed in the author signing tent.

The Author Selection Committee is a group of board members who volunteer their time by reviewing publishers’ catalogs of upcoming new book titles.

They discuss their choices and what they think will appeal to attendees and aim to invite authors with new books published within the year.

“We are just starting the author selection process [for next year],” Dongre added.

Members of the committee provide their recommendations of author and book titles for consideration and discuss any suggestions from the community to form a wishlist. Then, this summer, the Savannah Book Festival will begin its author invitation process. The author lineup will be officially announced later in the fall.

“Savannah Book Festival is very excited to be back in person because we know that’s the best way to enjoy our festival,” Dongre said. “It’s great for our attendees to actually meet with the authors and get their book signed in person. And while our virtual events are great, everyone else is excited to be back in person eventually.”

The dates for the next year’s in-person Savannah Book Festival are February 17 - 20, 2022.

SBF’s Virtual Season begins October 14. Visit savannahbookfestival.org or on Instagram @savbookfestival to learn more about the festival.