Southern Festival of Books Reveals 2025 Poster, Event Details
Credit: Southern Festival of Books
The 37th annual Southern Festival of Books is officially on the calendar, and the 2025 poster — beautifully designed by Sarah Goldstein — has just been revealed.
This year’s festival promises another grand, free weekend full of stories, conversations, and community — all set in the heart of Downtown Nashville.
Date:
October 18–19, 2025
Locations:
Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park
Tennessee State Museum
Tennessee State Library and Archives
Author panels featuring nearly 200 writers from across genres. Local food trucks and artisan vendors will keep visitors fueled and browsing. Live music and performing arts will showcase Tennessee talent. This year, a reimagined Creativityland will be filled with hands-on activities for kids, teens, and curious adults
For this year’s poster, Nashvillel artist Sarah Goldstein combined her own photography with archival images in a digital collage.
“I was thinking about how books can be a way to take yourself out of your reality and explore different places, different times, different people,” she told festival organizers in an Instagram post. “The book mountain takes you through different landscapes [to] encompass how books can really cover everything and take you to a new place.”
A large part of Goldstein’s process was searching through archival materials to find images that viewers feel represents themselves or people close to them.
Follow the hashtag #SoFest2025 and visit HumanitiesTennessee.org for updates, author announcements, and more.
Here’s the running list of authors shelled to appear at the festival so far.
