Matthew Patin Named Texas Book Festival Literary Director

Just in time for its milestone 25th anniversary, the Texas Book Festival has named its new literary director. He's Matthew Patin, a writer and editor who's been smithing words around the publishing field for 15 years and serving the festival in various capacities for five, and now he gets to curate its massive author lineup – starting now.

Matthew Patin

The big fest for which the Texas Book Festival is named – taking place Nov. 7-8 in 2020 – traditionally brings some 300 authors to the Texas State Capitol and surrounding venues for two days of readings, talks, moderated panels, interviews, cooking demos, musical performances, book signings, and book sales, and it's the literary director who determines which writers to invite. The director also oversees the TBF literary programming for the other 51 weeks of the year.

Patin is nothing is not familiar with the festival's inner workings, having acted as an adviser to the Lit Crawl for five years, a panel moderator for four, and co-chair of the author hospitality committee for more than two.

And he has substantial experience in the publishing industry in a range of positions: author assistant; communications associate at Greenleaf Book Group in Austin; assistant editor at HarperCollins in New York; writer and editorial director for UT's Acton School of Business; consulting editors in different editorial shops; ghostwriter (certified by California State University); contributor to Kirkus Reviews; and board member for Austin Bat Cave. He even interned at The Austin Chronicle, but let's not hold that against him. It was years ago. More recently, he's edited, collaborated with, or advised nearly 200 authors – fiction and nonfiction, some of them award winners and bestsellers – over the past decade.

So Patin's equipped for the job. Is he taking suggestions for authors at the 2020 Festival? Don't know, but the release announcing his hiring includes his shiny new email address – [email protected] – so maybe you can ask him. Starting in February, that is. He still has a few more days before the task of lining up 300 authors in six months consumes him. But Matt, congratulations from that place where you interned way back in the day. We're sure you'll do a helluva job.

For more information about the Texas Book Festival, visit www.texasbookfestival.org.