The new season of the Pen Pals lecture series was announced tonight at the last event of the current Pen Pals season.

The 19th season begins in September and will conclude in May 2016, and it includes two Pulitzer Prize winners and a National Book Critics Circle award finalist.

The season will begin Sept. 24 and Sept. 25 with Judy Blume in conversation with librarian Nancy Pearl. Blume has sold more than 85 million books, including the young-adult best seller, "Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret." Her new novel, "In the Unlikely Event," will be published in June.

October's guest will be Minnesota novelist Marlon James, the author of the Minnesota Book Award-winning "A Brief History of Seven Killings," which was also a finalist for the National Book Award. James teaches at Macalester College in St. Paul and has won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, an NAACP Image Award, and has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. James will be at Pen Pals on Oct. 29 and 30.

Biographer Jon Meacham will speak March 10 and 11, 2016. Meacham is the author of "Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power," and "American Lion," for which he won the Pulitzer Prize.

Terry Tempest Williams, writer, environmentalist and activist, will speak April 21 and 22, 2016. She is the author of the classic best-seller, "Refuge," and other books.

Anthony Doerr

And the season will end May 5 and 6, 2016, with Anthony Doerr, whose novel "All The Light We Cannot See" just won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

Pen Pals is a fund-raiser for Friends of the Hennepin County Library. Season tickets will go on sale May 11. Prices begin at $160 and tickets can be ordered at 612-543-8112 or at www.supporthclib.org.

Tickets for individual lectures will go on sale in August.