Winston Groom presents "El Paso" and Colson Whitehead presents "The Underground Railroad" in a book launch event and panel discussion on historical fiction with Audie Cornish from NPR at the 2016 Library of Congress Book Festival in Washington, D.C.

Speaker Biography: Winston Groom is a best-selling author well-known for his book "Forrest Gump," which was adapted into an Academy Award-winning film. He also wrote the sequel "Gump and Co." As a non-fiction writer, he has published a range of titles including "Conversations with the Enemy: The Story of PFC Robert Garwood," "Ronald Reagan: Our 40th President," "Shiloh, 1862," "The Aviators: Eddie Rickenbacker, Jimmy Doolittle, Charles Lindbergh and the Epic Age of Flight" and "The Generals: Patton, MacArthur, Marshall and the Winning of World War II." With his latest book, Groom returns to writing fiction for the first time in over a decade. His new epic American adventure novel "El Paso" is set during the Mexican Revolution and border wars of the twentieth century and pits legendary outlaw and revolutionary Pancho Villa against a thrill-seeking railroad tycoon known as the Colonel. Before his career as a novelist and non-fiction writer, Groom served in the army during the Vietnam War and later worked as a journalist.

Speaker Biography: After graduating from Harvard, Colson Whitehead began his writing career at the Village Voice, where he wrote reviews of television, books and music. His first novel, "The Intuitionist," concerned intrigue in New York's Department of Elevator Inspectors and was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award. His 2006 novel, "Apex Hides the Hurt," is about a "nomenclature consultant," who gets an assignment to name a town; it won a PEN/Oakland Award. "Sag Harbor" was a Pen/Faulkner Award finalist. His new novel is "The Underground Railroad".

For transcript and more information, visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=7547