Simmons and the Boston Book Festival
Posted November 3, 2026 by Sofia Azuara
Hear ye, hear ye! City of Boston Book Lovers! The Boston Book Festival is nigh! Or it was nigh. In and around Copley Square, the 18th annual Boston Book Festival took place on Saturday October 17th, 2026. Simmons University joined the list of this year’s festival sponsors for the very first time.
The event kicked off the evening before on October 16th with a ticketed talk, a conversation between authors Michael Lewis and Geraldine Brooks, and continued on the following morning for a free all-day event. Booths from various sponsors and organizations lined the square on that brisk autumn morning. Simmons University’s stall stood proudly at the beginning of the row equipped with program information, themed crosswords, foam sharks, poll questions, and pens aplenty.
There were an abundance of brilliant minds strolling and speaking at the festival. I heard a buzz from many of my Simmons classmates about the Classics Keynote speaker, Emily Wilson, whose 2017 translation of The Odyssey was the basis for Christopher Nolan’s 2026 summer blockbuster. I was particularly interested in two of Saturday’s speakers, Yiyun Li and Edwidge Danticat. Yiyun Li is a professor at Princeton who has written several works of fiction, many of which she has received awards for, but I know her best from her work in non-fiction. This past summer I was introduced to Li through her memoir Things in Nature Merely Grow. The piece is a reflection of grief and how “[t]here is no good way to say this” but we must anyway. My first stop of the Boston Book Festival was Yiyun Li’s sole talk of the day. Li spoke at the festival alongside author Ed Park to discuss their novels, Music Against the Night and Three Tenses. The conversation focused on the process of writing and looked at their books as individual holistic pieces.
After the talk I made my way back to Copley Square to greet people and share information at the Simmons University booth. It was a lovely way to spend a windy afternoon. It is a testament to how wonderful a community Simmons builds that there were so many friendly faces flocking towards the booth that day. Alums stopped by to chat and say hello to their alma mater. Current Simmons students, undergraduate and graduate alike, swung by to greet their classmates. We also welcomed plenty of people who were already interested in our graduate programs and people who were considering pursuing another degree. It felt like such a privilege to be around so many bright, interesting, like-minded people!
I rounded my evening off by attending the final fiction keynote of the festival, “Intersections of the Unexpected” with authors Edwidge Danticat and Imbolo Mbue. Danticat was at the festival speaking about her novel Déy and Mbue Every Story is a Love Story, both books exploring the effects of trauma on an individual. I can confidently say that I left the festival with an even longer “To Be Read” list. Luckily, for people who wanted to seize the opportunity to start tackling their newly elongated TBR, local bookstores such as Trident Booksellers and the Harvard bookstore were waiting at the end of each event. I thought it was a wonderful way to remind ourselves of the combined storied legacy of the lively city of Boston and authors and bring it into the present. I can’t wait to attend next year!