2018 Home | Bay Area Book Festival

Bay Area Book Festival

We’ll see you next year on May 4 + 5, 2019!

Tens of thousands of book lovers meet hundreds of acclaimed authors over an exciting weekend in downtown Berkeley, California. One of the premier literary events in the nation!

Speaker Nominations for 2019 — Now Open!

Join Women Lit, our literary society for women

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Featured Authors & Speakers at 2018 Festival

View the full 2018 list.

San Francisco Chronicle 2018 Program Guide

Film Series with BAMPFA

The Festival has partnered with the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive for the past three years. Check out the 2018 film program.

See recent coverage of the Festival!

Newsletter & Announcements

Subscribe below to get updates about the festival and future literary events. We’ll also send you our monthly newsletter, beloved by thousands of readers for its curated and unexpected content (plus festival sneak peeks, early tickets, other perks, and poetry). You can also opt in to receive updates about volunteering, buying tickets, or exhibiting.

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Be a Festival Volunteer!

Volunteers are a crucial part of the Festival’s success each year. No experience is necessary and you’ll enjoy learning what is required to produce a major literary event! If you are interested in receiving information about the 2019 Festival, please subscribe to our mailing list and be sure to check off the box that says “Volunteering at the Festival”.

Join Our Volunteer Team

Why Attend BABF

I couldn’t believe the long lines of cheerful readers, the hugely appreciative crowds, the authors on offer (many of them heroes of mine since boyhood), and the ease and compactness of setting up a teeming book festival in the middle of a crowded city! The Bay Area Book Festival shows how a spirited, thoughtful, and fun idea can come together with an engaged, deeply literate, and alive community and make magic.

Pico Iyer, author