The Unbound Book Festival crew is gearing up to make the 2027 festival the best one yet. The programming committee is meeting regularly to plan author panels. The Board of Directors is busy writing grants, collaborating with local venues, and dreaming up great sessions for the Write-On! workshop. Not to mention — dramatic drumroll, please! — we have selected our keynote speaker, and we’re too excited to keep this news a secret.
Marlon James will be coming to our festival in April!
Marlon James’ latest novel, “The Disappearers,” has been described as a “masterpiece” by The New York Times. The novel, about the murder of a gay man in 1980s Jamaica and its tragic consequences, was an instant bestseller, receiving star reviews from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, and Library Journal. It has been shortlisted for the 2026 Booker Prize and longlisted for the 2026 National Book Award (Fiction). And he will be speaking about it with us on April 16, 2027 at the Missouri Theater — save the date!
Marlon James was born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1970. He graduated from the University of the West Indies with a degree in Language and Literature in 1991 and from Wilkes University in Pennsylvania with a master’s degree in creative writing in 2006. In 2018, Marlon James received an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature. In April 2019, he was named one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2019 in the Pioneers category. In 2026, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in the Creative Arts.
James is the subject of A Brief History of Silence, an in-progress documentary by filmmaker Stephen Winter, and co-hosts a popular podcast about literature with Jake Morrissey called Marlon and Jake Read Dead People. He wrote and is executive producer for Get Millie Black, a five-part crime drama set in Jamaica for HBO.
So many more festival plans will be revealed in the coming months, but we couldn’t wait to give you a sneak peek now so you can start exploring all things Marlon.
