Programs featuring distinguished writers have included Pulitzer Prize– and National Book Award–winning novelists Carol Shields, Michael Cunningham, John Updike, Michael Chabon, Art Spiegelman, Jeffrey Eugenides, and Richard Ford, to name a few.
Other major authors participating in the series have included Ernest Gaines, Grace Paley, Anne Lamott, Margaret Atwood, Sherman Alexie, Edwidge Danticat, Sandra Cisneros, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Ann Patchett, A. S. Byatt, Ha Jin, Salman Rushdie, Augusten Burroughs, Sue Monk Kidd, Anchee Min, Frances Mayes, Alexander McCall Smith, Jonathan Safran Foer, Arthur Golden, Myla Goldberg, Azar Nafisi, Barbara Kingsolver, David Sedaris, Ian McEwan, Wally Lamb, Tony Horwitz, and David Grann. In addition, the series has celebrated poets, including Billy Collins, Robert Pinsky, Robert Hass, Rita Dove, W. S. Merwin, and Seamus Heaney.
Arts & Letters Live is recognized for its creative programming, including a program featuring the writings of Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald read by Natasha Richardson and John Benjamin Hickey; an unconventional night of humor with Dave Eggers (author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius) and Neal Pollack; tributes to Texas literary giants Katherine Anne Porter, Cormac McCarthy, and Larry McMurtry; as well as other interdisciplinary programs combining music, film, and literature.
BooksmART (formerly arts & letters live, jr.), an offshoot of the adult series, is targeted at ages 9 and up and offers youth and families the unique opportunity to hear authors discuss their works and interact with them. The series has featured award-winning authors and illustrators, including E. L. Konigsburg, Christopher Paul Curtis, John R. Erickson, Avi, Chris Van Allsburg, Blue Balliett and Brett Helquist, T. A. Barron, Will Hobbs, Katherine Paterson, Kate DiCamillo, Rick Riordan, Richard Peck, Lois Lowry, Markus Zusak, Laurence Yep, Diane Stanley, and Wendy Mass.
E. L. Konigsburg’s presentation was held in conjunction with a Late Night event at the Museum inspired by her writings. Families took behind-the-scenes tours, flashlight tours, and “Choose Your Own Adventure” tours; high school theater students presented readings from The View from Saturday in front of thematically appropriate works of art.
In 2008 the series hosted Eoin Colfer (Artemis Fowl), Patricia MacLachlan (Sarah, Plain and Tall), Mo Willems (Knuffle Bunny and Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus), Gary D. Schmidt (Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy), and Brian Selznick (The Invention of Hugo Cabret).