Great Authors at the Library

headshots of three authors, Maggie Su, Sonali Dev, and James McBride

This fall, we are excited to welcome three noteable authors as part of our Great Author Series: Maggie Su, Sonali Dev, and James McBride.

An Evening with Maggie Su
Thu, Aug 13, 7–8 pm

Maggie Su is the author of the novel Blob: A Love Story (Harper, 2025), which was named one of the best books of 2025 by Debutiful, Electric Literature, and The New Yorker, and was a finalist the PEN/Hemingway award. Maggie serves as a fiction editor at New England Review and holds a PhD in fiction from University of Cincinnati. She currently lives in South Bend, Indiana, with her partner, daughter, cat, and turtle.

An Evening with Sonali Dev
Thu, Sep 10, 7–8 pm

USA Today bestselling author Sonali Dev's novels have been named Best Books of the Year by Library Journal, NPR, The Washington Post, and Kirkus. She has won the American Library Association’s award for best in genre, the RT Reviewer Choice Award, multiple RT Seals of Excellence, has been a RITA® finalist, and has been listed for the Dublin Literary Award. She lives in Chicagoland with her husband, two visiting adult children, and the world’s most perfect dog.

An Evening with James McBride
Thu, Oct 8, 7–8 pm

James McBride is a New York Times bestselling author, musician and screenwriter. His landmark memoir, The Color of Water, rested on the NYT bestseller list for two years and explored McBride’s search for identity as the son of a white, Jewish woman and a black man. It is considered an American classic and is read in schools and universities across the United States. McBride’s latest novel, The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, tells the story of small-town secrets and the people who keep them. McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community—heaven and earth—that sustain us. The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store was a runaway NYT bestseller and was named Best Book of the Year by NPR, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, TIME Magazine, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble.

Since 2016, the Great Authors at the Library series has brought 24 award-winning, New York Times bestselling authors to Champaign, where they have been welcomed by more than 5,000 community members.

Acclaimed speakers in the Great Authors at the Library series have included New York Times bestselling authors Doris Kearns Goodwin, Terry McMillan, Ken Liu, Lisa See, Colson Whitehead, Lisa Scottoline, Scott Turow, Jamie Ford, Luis Alberto Urrea, Nikki Grimes, David Sheff, Shelby Van Pelt, and Ben Clanton, and many more.

Great Authors at the Library visits are made possible with support from the Library Foundation and Library Friends. Great Authors books in our collection »