Missouri Humanities and the Missouri Center for the Book Planning Team have selected Missouri’s 2025 Great Reads from Great Places selections: Bijan Always Wins by Adib Khorram for young readers and Mark Twain by Ron Chernow for adult readers.
Great Reads from Great Places, a national reading initiative organized by the Library of Congress Center for the Book, invites all 50 states and U.S. territories to select books that reflect their literary heritage each year. These selections are featured in the popular “Roadmap to Reading” activity at the National Book Festival, where festivalgoers can explore affiliate booths, discover stories tied to each state or territory, and collect stamps in their literary passports.
Now in its 25th year, the National Book Festival, co-founded by First Lady Laura Bush and organized by the Library of Congress, will offer a full day of free programming in Washington, D.C., including author talks, book signings, readings, and interactive activities for readers of all ages.
Missouri’s 2025 picks will be featured at this year’s festival on September 6 and reflect the richness of the state’s literary landscape. One celebrates a contemporary Kansas City-based author (Khorram), while the other pays tribute to one of Missouri’s most iconic literary figures (Twain). Both books will be among the many stories celebrated on a national stage, connecting readers across the country through books that reflect the unique voices and experiences rooted in each state.
For Young Readers: Bijan Always Wins by Adib Khorram
Adib Khorram is a Kansas City native, theater enthusiast, and award-winning author of books for all ages. After studying design and technical theater at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, he worked in event production before turning to writing.
Khorram’s debut novel, Darius the Great Is Not Okay (2018), earned several awards, including YALSA’s William C. Morris Award for Best Debut Author, the Asian/Pacific American Literature Association’s Young Adult Award, and a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor. His follow-up, Darius the Great Deserves Better (2020), was an Indie Bestseller and a Stonewall Honor recipient.
In his 2024 release, Bijan Always Wins, Khorram presents a thoughtful and beautifully illustrated picture book that explores what can be lost when the pursuit of winning becomes everything. Bijan loves to win, and he always does. But after declaring himself the winner of drawing, dinosaurs, and even lunch, Bijan notices that his friends aren’t as eager to play. This warm, insightful story reminds readers, young and old, that life’s true rewards often lie beyond victory.
When he’s not writing, Khorram enjoys yoga, figure skating, electric guitar, food, wine, tea, board games, and explaining to people why Kansas City has the best barbecue (as a true Kansas Citian would).
For Adult Readers: Mark Twain by Ron Chernow
Ron Chernow is the prizewinning author of seven previous books and the recipient of the 2015 National Humanities Medal. His works include The House of Morgan (National Book Award winner), Washington: A Life (Pulitzer Prize winner), and Alexander Hamilton (inspiration for the Broadway musical), which won the George Washington Book Prize. He is one of only three living biographers to receive the Gold Medal for Biography from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. A past president of PEN America, Chernow has been the recipient of nine honorary doctorates.
Though not a native Missourian, Chernow’s biography of Mark Twain is deeply anchored in the state’s cultural and historical landscape. Born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in Florida, Missouri, Twain spent his formative years along the Mississippi River in the town of Hannibal—experiences that would later shape the backdrop of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Clemens realized his dream of piloting steamboats on the Mississippi River as a young man until the Civil War brought that career to a halt and set him on a new course that would shape American literature under his pen name: Mark Twain.
Drawing on thousands of letters and manuscripts, Chernow paints a rich, nuanced portrait of Twain—from his Missouri boyhood to international fame—chronicling his rise as a journalist, satirist, and lecturer who shamelessly sought fame and fortune, wrestled with personal loss, and became the complex figure long celebrated as the father of American literature.
