If you’ll be at the Texas Book Festival on Saturday, October 27, I hope you’ll start your day with the 10 a.m panel I’ll be moderating, “Together, They Could.”

The panelists will include authors Cynthia Levinson, author of We’ve Got a Job, and Winifred Conkling, author of Sylvia & Aki.

But it won’t be just us three authors. We’ll be joined by James Stewart, one of the teen participants in the 1963 Birmingham children’s march that reignited the civil rights movement — and one of the four marchers whose stories Cynthia focuses on in her book.

And we’ll also be joined by Medal of Freedom recipient Sylvia Mendez, whose family’s leasing of the farm of an interned Japanese-American family during World War II led to a groundbreaking precursor to the Brown vs. Board of Education desegregation case.

This will be a fantastic opportunity to find out what writing about history in general — and civil rights in particular — looks like from the perspectives of both author and participant. There’s lots that I want to ask. I’d love to hear what you’d want to know.