Salt Lake Book Festival debuts at The Gateway

Salt Lake City has a new literary tradition. The first-ever Salt Lake Book Festival took over The Gateway on Saturday, October 17, from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm, and it was built to be a big one: free and all-ages, with around 4,500 people expected, nearly 50 vendors, 25 attending authors, four programming tracks, live music, and a curated market. The whole thing kicked off the night before with The Prologue at the Salt Lake City Public Library Main Branch, where doors opened at 6:30 pm for an Adult Spelling Bee in the Auditorium at 7:00 and a rooftop party from 8:00 to 10:00, tickets $10.

The Saturday schedule was the real draw, spread across three stages. The main stage seats about 400, the Kiln co-working space stage holds around 200, and a family-focused stage kept storytime going for the kids. It opened with "The Language of Stone" with Brian Laidlaw and Nicholas Triolo on the Kiln stage and "Magic, Desire, and Destiny: Inside the World of Romantasy" with Jennifer K. Lambert, Bel Banta, and Nghi Vo on the main stage. Middle-grade horror got its own hour with "Don't Read This Alone," while "Perspectives Over Pints: Is It a Book?" with Lyuba Basin and Theadora Soter leaned into the more playful side of the day. The afternoon kept moving with "Cuentos en Español" for the little ones, a conversation on horror with Alexis Powell, Mathilda Zeller, Taylor Grothe, and Abe Moss, and "What the Land Knows: Ecology and the Living Planet" with Merritt R. Turetsky and Jason Dove Mark. It wound down with "Habibi Means Beloved" with Moudi Sbeity and "Been There, Done That: A History Lesson for Right Now" with Greg Jackson, plus a YA horror showdown for the kids.

The headliner was Jodi Picoult, whose conversation ran offsite at West High School later in the day, with tickets including a signed hardcover of her 30th novel, Hollow Bones, and a photo. Picoult is a #1 New York Times bestseller with an estimated 63.7 million books in print worldwide; Hollow Bones centers on Molly Fitzgerald and came out in late September. The rest of the lineup was just as deep, with Nghi Vo, Brian Laidlaw, Nicholas Triolo, Jennifer K. Lambert, Bel Banta, Rachel Michelle Wilson, Samantha Allen, Lovell Holder, Erica Hendry, Moudi Sbeity, Bree Despain, Lindsay Lovise, John Stephens, Mathilda Zeller, Parvati Shallow, Aly McKnight, A.M. Luzzader, Kaela Rivera, Alexis Powell, Taylor Grothe, Jason Dove Mark, Merritt R. Turetsky, Greg Jackson, and Abe Moss all making an appearance.

Behind the scenes, the festival is led by Director Amanda Warren, founder and Reader-in-Chief of Bookish, with Vice Chair Adam Ickowicz and board member Ashley Pinales. Fisher Brewing Company, one of Utah's oldest and largest breweries, founded in 1884 by Albert Fisher and now in the Granary District, brewed a custom beer for the occasion. The festival also includes a Read & Ride FrontRunner train takeover to Provo, and organizers have framed it as filling the Sundance-shaped void in Utah's cultural calendar. If you missed it, the festival is already looking ahead, accepting authors with books scheduled for 2027.