A senior statesman of scientific research today, Stanford’s Hal Mooney has partnered with UC Santa Cruz’s Erika Zavaletta to conceive, edit, and produce a monumental achievement—a 1,008-page volume of cutting-edge research on all of California’s ecosystems. This panel discussion will address Mooney’s and Zavaletta’s concept of ecology, how the functions of ecosystems have changed over time, and how science continues to understand their fragility and interdependence.

Who speaks for the Tenderloin? For Chinatown? When it comes to the writing of San Francisco history, not all neighborhoods are created equal. Come to this session for an underground tour. These writers share insights into the the rich histories of two frequently overlooked neighborhoods—and also tell tales of the quirky San Francisco nightspots that have operated as unofficial cultural centers for decades.

This soup-to-nuts panel takes you through the lifecycle of publishing a book, starting with building your author platform, exploring paths to publication, and mastering the elements of marketing and publicity. If you want to get published and to publish well, this bird’s eye view of the whole process is an invaluable opportunity to gather information and learn.

What is art? Why is it so important? What does art tell us about ourselves? Art aims not for satisfaction or wonder, but for confrontation, intervention, and subversion—or least this is the dazzling argument that UC Berkeley philosophy professor Alva Noë makes in his recently published Strange Tools. He also proposes that art and philosophy are “practices bent on the invention of writing.”

The popular pastor and New York Times bestselling author of Love Wins and What We Talk About When We Talk About God offers concrete steps for how to live in the moment, do the things that make you feel alive, and pursue and realize your dreams. What obstacles get in the way? How can you transcend them? Elizabeth Gilbert writes that this book helps “infinite possibilities for your life start unfolding before your eyes.”

Some writers and illustrators know one another, or one another’s work. Others never meet. Yet picture book writers’ words need pictures, and picture book artists’ pictures need words (most of the time). This stellar line-up will talk about the pleasures and pitfalls of collaboration.

From the acclaimed, best-selling author Adam Hochschild comes a sweeping history of the Spanish Civil War, told through a dozen characters, including Ernest Hemingway and George Orwell. It is a tale of idealism, heartbreaking suffering, and a noble cause that failed. Hochschild will share some of the book’s stories, describe how and why he wrote such a character-driven narrative, and offer a visual presentation.

Farmers conjure food out of three ingredients—sun, soil, and water—all three of which are being altered profoundly by climate change. Scientists say conditions are shifting so dramatically that we can no longer look to the past as a reliable predictor of the future. Writing in a variety of genres, these authors address the ways in which our farms can evolve and survive in these new circumstances.

“You quiet, in draft form,” writes Rachel Richardson to her unborn child. While writers who also are parents may struggle to find time to keep writing, parenthood can be a crucible that transforms a writer’s perception, radically shaping how she understands her work and the world. Motherhood became a central topic in the work of these three authors of poetry, essays, and fiction. How have they written differently since becoming mothers? Why is motherhood such a vital topic in writing today?

“There is no Frigate like a Book / To take us Lands away,” wrote Emily Dickinson, who rarely left her own house. In this panel, Irene Hsiao carries you to Taiwan through poetry, essays, and photography. Salar Abdoh’s novel leads you into contemporary Iran. In a satiric novel, Kracht brings you to a mythical coconut colony in New Guinea. Kim Leine spirits you to Greenland in 1787. Through the art of guidebooks, Joshua Samuel Brown reveals Asia and more—making our Planet a little less Lonely.

“The sweetest honey is loathsome in its own deliciousness, and in the taste destroys the appetite. Therefore, love moderately,” says Friar Laurence to Romeo. True? Listen to four young adult authors talk about the trials and tribulations of teen romance in their books.

Historical novels take us inside the minds and hearts of characters from the past—some real, some made-up, but all coming to life in our imaginations. How do real events inspire fictional ones? These extraordinary writers bring us through tumultuous 20th-century Taiwan, the Łódź ghetto in Nazi-occupied Poland, an ill-fated French maritime expedition in the late 18th century, and a made-up coconut colony visited by a real German emigre in the early 20th century—with the discussion led by master historical novelist Janis Cooke Newman, who takes us to WWII-era New York and Germany.

Welcome to a conversation about income inequality and the power of storytelling. In 2014, award-winning cultural critic Rebecca Solnit published an essay defining the moment when San Francisco (and the world) turned on Silicon Valley (as represented by Google buses). On the East Coast, acclaimed author and critic John Freeman edited Tale of Two Cities, a collection of essays contrasting the lives of New York City’s haves and have-nots (including Freeman’s own homeless brother).

T.J. Stiles has won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography and the National Book Award for Nonfiction—but those are just the facts. As Stiles shows in his books and will discuss in this session, biographies are so much more than mere facts. How does he bring characters to life? Why, in his most recent biography, Custer’s Trials: A Life on the Frontier of America, did he spend relatively little time on the “last stand”?

Fans of Route 66 will enjoy listening to historian and travel writer Candacy Taylor share stories and anecdotes about the historic byway. She will also dive into the relatively unknown story of “The Green Book,” which, during the Jim Crow era, listed Route 66 restaurants, hotels, salons, barbershops, nightclubs, tailors, garages, and real estate offices amenable to serving African American travelers.

Keeping boys interested in reading (of any kind!) is often considered a challenge. It’s being done quite well, however, by remarkably popular writers such as the participants in this discussion. If you don’t yet know their work, meet and hear them now.

Murder and mayhem in cold climes continue to fascinate readers like little else. Join this celebration of four exceptional writers from Norway, Denmark, and Finland, and their captivating stories that draw us deeply in.

Just when we think we’ve got a children’s writer pegged, they stretch their artistic range to reach a slightly older or younger audience. This panel includes authors who have taken up this challenge by shifting between middle-grade and teen fiction. For the author, what risks come about from writing to a younger or older audience?

Poetry’s protest tradition is long and storied, challenging power and injustice by staking a moral claim on society through satire, performance, or lyrical turn of phrase. These four contemporary poets will read from their socially-engaged work and discuss how poetry resists and confronts, refuting once and for all W. H. Auden’s old claim that “poetry makes nothing happen.”

Author of the best-selling Search Within Yourself, Meng, as he is known by friends, is a genuine Jolly Good Fellow (his actual job title at Google, where he was employee #107). He’s back with another book that makes ancient spiritual practice possible in today’s fast-paced societies. Don’t have years to meditate? How about 15 seconds to joy? Come find out how.

What’s real? What’s faux? How can you tell? And what makes it art? Two acclaimed novelists talk about Hollywood, Brooklyn, fame, and failure. Punk rock, sci-fi. Ma Bell and phone sex. Authenticity and faking it. Montage, collage, jump cuts, blog posts, texting, sampling, and other ways in which fiction writers envision and encrypt the world we live in.

For girls, women, and anyone who loves them comes this amazing volume written by aviator and former firefighter Caroline Paul and illustrated by Wendy MacNaughton. “Inspiring…the book of the year for daredevils, doers, and dreamers of all ages” (Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild). “The Gutsy Girl teaches you how to do and make interesting things, and it encourages everyone to be brave and have fun” (Bobbi Lindstrom, age 10, and daughter to Cheryl Strayed). Enough said!

Three provocative writers of color explore how our country’s still unfolding history, and ideas of “race,” have marked us and the land. From twisted terrain within the San Andreas Fault zone to a South Carolina plantation, from national parks to burial grounds, from “Indian Territory” and the U.S.-Mexico Border to the U.S. capital, and beyond, they consider how to make sense of this land and its troubled past, and what it means to inhabit terrains of memory.

The maestro of all things outdoors in California, the San Francisco Chronicle‘s Tom Stienstra joins parks and outdoors expert Jenny Mulholland-Beahrs, outdoor food maven Robin Donovan and connoisseur of American camping (and grizzlies) Susan Snyder to consider the most effective, unusual, and satisfying ways to enjoy the Golden State’s parks and wilderness.

With the publishing industry in a constant state of flux, stakes have never been higher for publishers, and opportunities never greater for writers. This panel covers it all—the prospects of traditional and nontraditional publishing, the impact of technology, discoverability, the future of reading, and other trends relevant to authors, writers, and readers alike.

Bloody murders, brutal suicides, bank robberies, and crime rings provide the thrill in the five masterful mysteries at the heart of this panel. From Stockholm to Paris to Taipei, things are not what they seem. Come hear how some of the world’s leading international mystery writers draw on contemporary realities—from geopolitical oligarchies to the economics of immigration to the force of culture and tribe, family and otherwise—to bring not just menace, but meaning, to their work.

Beginning readers may hone their basic skills on picture books, but it’s soon time for more substantial fare, such as chapter books or stories with more nuanced plotlines. The writers on this panel have enjoyed staggering success by creating series that engage this very age group. Meet and hear them talk about their magical (and massively popular) work!

Creating a whole imagined geography, mythology, or language isn’t easy; it demands a thoroughly engaged and daring sort of writer. We’ve managed to gather six of them here to discuss the challenges and thrills of creating entire new worlds in their novels.

With traditional outlets for serious investigative journalism continuing to shrink, books have emerged as an important platform for long-form investigative writing. These acclaimed journalists will discuss the vital stories they write about in books, covering such topics as political tensions, environmental disaster, and war. They also will talk about the necessity of reaching audiences with this work.

Want to get away from the festival’s crowds, learn a bit about literary Berkeley, and see the lower Cal campus—without needing a car? Join Janet Byron and Bob Johnson, authors of Berkeley Walks, for a walk toward Strawberry Creek. The tour will wend its way through Cal’s lower campus and pass iconic landmarks such as Normandy Village, the Graduate Theological Union, and homes of local luminaries Ernest Callenbach, Josephine Miles, and philanthropist Phoebe Apperson Hearst.

Join Lance Knobel, co-founder of Berkeleyside, for a taste of Uncharted: Berkeley’s Festival of Ideas, which takes place each October. We follow the format of this exciting festival by presenting two creative thinkers on stage: Kara Platoni, author of We Have the Technology: How Biohackers, Foodies, Physicians, and Scientists Are Transforming Human Perception, One Sense at a Time, and Abby Smith Rumsey, author of When We Are No More: How Digital Memory Is Shaping Our Future.

Several years ago, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, which awards the Nobel Prize, criticized American writers for being “too isolated, too insular.” The writers on this panel seem to refute that assertion, but are they exceptions? What is the responsibility of American writers to look beyond our borders?

If terroir is indeed a myth, wouldn’t it stand to reason that home winemakers have a distinct advantage over commercial vintners? Join the conversation between the Professor of Viticulture at the Robert Mondavi Institute for Food and Wine Science and an active, longtime Bay Area winemaker. Perhaps there will be controversy!

All kinds of love — romantic passion, parental affection, deep companionship with a friend — can transform life and make anything seem possible. But losing love is devastating. How does love grow, what happens when it is lost, and how do people survive the grief? These writers help us navigate love’s stormy seas through novels set in France, Ireland, Norway, and the United States.

War, famine, instability—and the hope, ultimately, for a better life. These are all reasons people have migrated since the beginning of time. But what do we really cross when we cross a border between countries? Isn’t every journey a journey also of the human heart? Join these four writers as they discuss stories of migration and its galvanizing role in contemporary life and fiction.

What is the germ that starts a story? Often, it is the lived experience of alienation. In this panel of stellar literary voices, all from abroad, you’ll get to explore that theme through diverse frames: Baume’s lyrical tale of a man and his dog in the Irish countryside, Lakhous’ farcical polyglot Italy, Young-Moon’s surreal San Francisco capers, and Sinisalo’s dystopian Finland, where the state is phasing out real women and our protagonist must conceal her intellect.

Our Bay Area youth are a diverse and savvy generation learning to navigate cultural and political borders in their communities. This year we asked these local youth to submit work sharing their experiences in crossing those borders. For some the experience is freeing. For others it’s transgressive or oppressive. Please join our second annual Young Authors Writing Competition Winners as they share their work addressing the many borders in their lives and what it means when those borders are crossed.

In any novel the setting helps initiate the main backdrop and mood for a story. What are the writerly advantages of situating a story in a familiar place close to home versus selecting a dreamed-up or partially dreamed-up location elsewhere? Each of these powerful writers for teens will explore this topic through the lens of her own work.

Moderated by grassroots organization We Need Diverse Books, a publisher, author, public librarian/blogger, and two literacy nonprofit employees talk about the work they’re doing to increase diversity in children’s literature.

How can journalists and writers engage with important issues that might seem abstract, distant, or simply too big to take on? The editors of Voice of Witness, one of the Bay Area’s vital non-profits, discuss their experiences using oral history to illuminate stories from inside women’s prisons, the West Bank and Gaza, and more.

Come out to hear Andy Steves (son of travel guru, Rick Steves) share all the latest insights and practical travel tips picked up from a life on the road in Europe. Learn how to utilize your smartphone and travel apps to maximize your time, money and fun to achieve your European travel dreams and create your own unforgettable memories. Budget travelers of all ages will learn how to travel lower to the ground, how to dive into foreign cultures and how to customize their adventures to their own interests. Pick up a copy of Andy’s new guidebook Andy Steves’ Europe: City-Hopping on a Budget, and get it signed after the workshop! Learn more about what Andy and his traveling team are up to at www.WSAEurope.com.

How do you draw an electron? This visual presentation, based on Prelinger’s most recent book, Inside the Machine: Art and Invention in the Electronic Age, takes you into the little-seen work of 20th century graphic artists who produced spectacular art on technology. Inspired by minimalism, surrealism, and philosophies of the Bauhaus school, these artists captured the journeys of atoms and electrons from their organic origins to their late-century industrial applications, all in artworks buried within industry trade magazines but revealed here.

Since the Progressive Era, journalists have maintained a wide variety of relationships with the public officials they cover. How have those relationships shaped the news—and American public life—at critical moments in our history?

Good theatre for bad literature? Marital aid for book nerds? Competitive erotic fan-fiction? Shipwreck is all of these things. Born at the Booksmith in San Francisco, this rowdy show pits six Great Writers against one Great Work of fiction. Fics are blind-read by Thespian-in-Residence Baruch Porras-Hernandez, and the audience chooses the best ship before the writers are unmasked. Cocktails available, of course. The contenders are Vanessa Hua, Deborah Kenmore, Lily Miller, Anna Pulley, Mike Ottum, and Erin Spannan.

Rosa and Juliette introduce their collaboration, Possum’s Forest. How did Rosa think about writing about a possum as if she herself were that possum? How did illustrator Juliette come to give Possum so much personality? Was Rosa’s and Juliette’s collaboration always fun—and would they do it again? Come for some advice from young first-time book makers!

Literature does not build walls between countries, it opens doors between. Listen to three American authors discuss the inspiration for stories they have written—stories of richness, complexity, and beauty that refuse to abide geographical borders.

Writer Ben Ehrenreich, author of the forthcoming The Way to the Spring, speaks with Ed Wasserman, dean of UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, about reporting from the West Bank and working to break through a media conversation about Israel and Palestine that is as intractable and divisive as the conflict itself.

The explosive labor disputes in the agricultural fields of Depression-era California left an enduring legacy. This discussion, featuring three experts on the topic, considers how farm issues have shaped not only labor organizing, but also the remarkable rise and character of modern American conservatism.

Labor economist and the founder of the Clayman Institute on Gender Research at Stanford University, Myra Strober became a feminist on the Bay Bridge heading toward San Francisco. It was 1970. She had just been told by the chairman of UC Berkeley’s economics department that she would never get tenure. Driving home, wondering if she had taken something out of the freezer for her family’s dinner, she realized the truth: She was being denied a regular faculty position because she was a mother. Flooded with anger, she found her life’s work: to study and fight sexism in the workplace, in academia, and at home. Strober discusses her remarkable life and work with Deirdre English, former editor of Mother Jones and a faculty member at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.

Sherman Alexie—the beloved poet, storyteller, novelist, and film-maker who consistently lands on most-banned-books lists—meets here with Lemony Snicket… er, at least Snicket’s creator, literary virtuouso Daniel Handler. This feature event showcases two of the country’s most productive and imaginative minds talking about what inspires their creativity. Handler also will welcome Alexie, who just published his first picture book (Thunder Boy, Jr.), into the ranks of children’s authors.

Memoirists face both internal and external pressures when they write and publish their stories. Memoir is both more popular than it’s ever been—and more reviled. In this conversation, four published memoirists unpack the complexities of a genre we’re intrinsically drawn to, and uncover why it’s also so loaded and complex.

The call is out for a more diverse children’s literature, and the participants on this panel are answering that call even as discrimination against Muslims, here and abroad, has increased. Moderated by the editor of Salaam Reads (an imprint which aims to introduce young readers to a variety of Muslim characters and stories), this panel will feature Muslim writers representing their cultural identities through children’s literature, comedy, podcasts, hip-hop, and other media platforms.

“What makes the engine go? Desire, desire, desire,” said the late, great poet Stanley Kunitz. Desire may be poets’ most enduring subject: whether erotic, filial, maternal, environmental, nostalgic, or spiritual, we are always reaching toward the beloved. Hear four poets read from their recent collections on this wishful, sweaty, covetous, intimate, unifying element of human experience.

“It would seem difficult,” says the New York Times Book Review, “after so much retelling, to write a freshly felt, fully absorbing novel about the Holocaust—and yet that is precisely what Steve Sem-Sandberg has done.” Coming to us from Sweden, Sem-Sandberg is a journalist, novelist, non-fiction writer, and translator, and all of these skills are deployed in this monumental work. The Emperor of Lies is based on a historical figure, Chaim Rumkowski, leader of the Łódź ghetto, and the book is “both super-realist and surrealist,” with an archival quality and intense intimacy. Don’t miss it.

Steve Sem-Sandberg, interviewed by Daniel Schifrin

Want to know how to commit murder on the page? From five best-selling mystery writers, get all the low-down on the tricks-of-the-trade, including how to develop believable characters, a rich plot, and the sort of dramatic tension that keeps a reader turning the page.

On June 7, Californians will vote in the state’s Presidential primary. How did this system get its start? What does that mean for political machinations today? Author and scholar Geoffrey Cowan, the former dean of the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, tells the wild story of how Teddy Roosevelt created the primaries system in 1912 to manipulate his own re-election over the election of his hand-picked successor. TR argued that with primaries, the people rule. Do they really?

The world is growing smaller and more connected by the day. Novelists are responding to these greater intricacies. Come hear how three well-traveled authors engage with the cultural and political tensions of our times by sharing stories that span across several continents.

Cara Black, the creator of the Aimee Leduc mystery series, talks shop and more with a fan-favorite, Jacqueline Winspear, creator of the Maisie Dobbs mysteries.

Former Granta editor John Freeman is a writer’s champion. Here he talks with the National Book Critics Circle’s Jane Ciabattari, who selected the first Freeman’s issue as a “2015 Best Book” for NPR, about nurturing first-time authors and publishing literary heavyweights such as Lydia Davis, Dave Eggers, Louise Erdrich, Aminatta Forna, Marlon James, Barry Lopez, Claire Messud, and Haruki Murakami.

Former U. S. Poet Laureate Robert Hass introduces four young poets who explore, in their innovative verse, the issues of our day. This new generation builds on a rich Californian tradition that runs from Ina Coolbrith to Thom Gunn, from Ambrose Bierce to Juan Felipe Herrera—a tradition that, like the state itself, sets the terms for the country at large.

Where is the earth’s ecological “tipping point”? Every day we diminish or corrupt habitats that other species depend upon to survive. Few would dispute that a mass extinction is currently underway. As dire as these results already are, we may be on our way to an “alternative stable state” in which ecosystems shift according to dynamics beyond our human control.

Ninth and tenth grade authors from 826 Valencia, a nonprofit writing and tutoring center for Bay Area youth, discuss their new book, Walk the Earth in Our Shoes & Plant Some Seeds Behind You. The essays in this collection reflect on how social communities function like ecosystems and how we impact the world around us. From watching the Mission District change to living with the threats of global warming, these young authors are uniquely poised to investigate the way ecosystems work. Their answers contain insights everyone should hear.

826 Valencia students, with Molly Parent

The proliferation of chain bookstores in the ’90s, the more recent dominance of Amazon, and the advent of easy access to self-publishing tools has not only rocked the book world but redefined the expectations of readers. Amazon says books should cost less. Publishers say they should cost more. Writers and readers are stuck in the middle. An agent, a publisher, and a bookseller explain the economics that determine the price you pay for a book.

Families and friends who read to very young children frequently face the “not one more time” moment. Three masterful children’s authors share strategies for keeping young readers engaged and their adult readers awake!

To see Wes Nisker in person is a treat. A Bay Area radio personality for 35 years, he also is a revered Buddhist teacher perhaps best known for his book Crazy Wisdom. Did we say he’s also a stand-up performer? His new book, You Are Not Your Fault and Other Revelations, brims with his trademark insight and humor.

It’s human nature — the past is always waiting to ambush us even as time hurtles us toward future unknowns. The four international novelists participating in this discussion will describe how they exploit this universal truth while fleshing out their fictional characters, setting up scenes, and plotting their stories.

It won’t surprise anyone to hear that fiction, non-fiction, and poetry demand vastly different skill sets. Susan Griffin, who has written in these genres (and more), will moderate a discussion with two other multi-genre masters, Anita Barrows and Al Young. These writers will compare and contrast their strategies in each genre, including states of mind, craft, working habits, subjects, inspirations, and influences. Both writers also will describe and discuss recent work and work in progress.

“The daily grind got you down? Escape into this Swedish dark comedy about a scaldingly contemptuous office drone who discovers a secret room in his workplace,” says O, the Oprah Magazine, about Karlsson’s novel The Room. Publishers Weekly raved, “a reality-bending psychological profile with insights into the nature and importance of personal space.” Escape your day job to see this Kafkaesque Swedish novelist, playwright, and actor before his next book, The Invoice, releases in July.

Widely regarded as two of the most original voices of their generation, Kay Ryan (former U.S. Poet Laureate) and Dana Gioia (current California Poet Laureate) will share their views about American poetry from their perspective as outsiders, unconventional stylists, and native Californians. They will also celebrate the arrival of Gioia’s latest poetry collection, 99 Poems: New and Selected.

What is it like to be trapped in the war on terror? Nothing symbolizes the endless cycle and contradictions of the conflict as much as Guantánamo prison does. The remarkable memoir Guantánamo Diary is an acclaimed international bestseller and the first and only account written by a still-imprisoned Guantánamo detainee. The New Yorker urged, “Everyone should read [it]… a triumph of humanity over chaos.” Larry Siems, writer and former director of the Freedom to Write program at PEN American Center, edited the handwritten manuscript. Peter Jan Honigsberg is founder and director of the Witness to Guantánamo project.

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Richard Russo writes pitch-perfect descriptions of small-town America. His just-released Everybody’s Fool revisits, after ten years, the hapless cast of Nobody’s Fool with humor and heart. Joining him in conversation is Lori Ostlund, author of the story collection The Bigness of the World and the recent novel After the Parade, about which Russo advised readers, “Be alive to the possibility of wonder.”

Short Readings to Tempt You! Pure pleasure: come hear favorite teen authors read tantalizing bits from their newest work!

If you read mysteries, history, or current affairs, or care about justice, this panel is a must-see. The authors, most of them based at Berkeley Law’s renowned Human Rights Center, take readers on a riveting journey—and a true one—in pursuit of Nazi war criminals, the perpetrators in the Balkan and Rwandan genocides, and more, up to the establishment of the International Criminal Court and America’s pursuit of suspected terrorists in the aftermath of 9/11. It is a story fraught with broken promises, backroom politics, ethical dilemmas, and daring escapades—all in the name of international justice and human rights.

It started around the communal fire. It traveled with minstrels. It was penned by monks, printed by Gutenberg. Spoken on radio, made into film. Human beings have been called the storytelling animals. One of the most powerful and engaging forms of storytelling today is—yes, you heard it at a book festival—gaming. Come learn how game makers modify traditional story forms for a new platform and audience.

Romance is one of the most maligned genres of the literary world, despite being a billion-dollar business. Maybe it’s because the books are written by, about, and for women. Misogyny at work? Who’s to say? But unlike other literature, romance novels always portray women in lead roles, prize their rule-breaking, and ensure that their sexual satisfaction comes first. So why is the genre accused of conflicting with feminist ideals? Romance authors weigh in.

What determines our cooking and eating habits? And which is a greater factor—our family traditions, or the community we’ve made home? Consider why we cook what we cook with a group of extravagantly talented people who care deeply about food.

An island nation, Taiwan has famous night markets, adventurous terrain, hot spring resorts, a bamboo skyscraper—and one of the world’s most beautiful bookstores. These four authors, of Taiwanese descent or writing about Taiwan, include two very different novelists, a photographer/poet, and one of Asia’s best guidebook writers. They talk about how “place” becomes character in their writing. (And yes, they will take questions about travel tips.)

What makes a book funny? How can different kinds of humor (e.g. satire, hyperbole, and irony) be used as a tool to combat troubles such as political fanaticism or racial intolerance? These writers all find in humor a way to highlight the absurdities and tragedies of contemporary life.

In Western societies today, in order to be “liked,” girls as young as middle school feel pressure to “sext” or become sexually active. In the Middle East, adolescent girls are veiled and their freedom restrained so their fathers and future husbands can ensure that they’re virgins. What do these mirrored opposites show? From headscarves to Tinder, hymens to “hot,” how can girls reclaim their own bodies and sexuality?

What do we mean when we demand that a story be “truthful”? Are we concerned more with factual accuracy, or do we crave a deeper, more figurative truth grounded in sensations perhaps exaggerated? Consider Exhibit A: Two titles, one about an iconic family’s rise and fall, and another a convoluted wine country saga, both of them nonfiction but drawing on fiction techniques. Then there’s Exhibit B: A book that the writer calls an “autobiographical novel” about refusing to follow his father and brothers into a life of crime. How do writers explore the terrain between fiction and fact?

Come listen to a poetry reading featuring one of the most unique and generous figures in contemporary American literature, current U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera. Our first Chicano poet to hold this prestigious post, Herrera is credited by the New York Times as inventing “a new hybrid art, part oral, part written, part English, part something else: an art grounded in ethnic identity, fueled by collective pride, yet irreducibly individual too.”

Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to usher in a new age of affluence and leisure—but for whom? From Stanford’s AI Lab, serial entrepreneur and bestselling author Jerry Kaplan introduces AI, proposes concrete measures for equitable distribution, and takes questions. Humans Need Not Apply was named a top ten business book of 2015 by the Economist, which called it “an intriguing, insightful and well-written look at how modern artificial intelligence, powering algorithms and robots, threatens jobs and may increase wealth inequalities.” Jaron Lanier wrote that it’s a “crucial book for understanding the great challenge of our times, which is how people can learn to live wisely with ever-greater technical ability.”

For a small country, Ireland has a major impact on world literature, and writing is a laudable endeavor among those green hills. In this session, a well-established author meets with two young but acclaimed novelists to discuss how they became writers and what their homeland had to do with it. This session is a tribute to the Irish students who died or were injured in the Berkeley balcony collapse one year ago. Introduced by Philip Grant, Consul General of Ireland in San Francisco, and Berkeley’s Mayor Tom Bates.

Can technical books about cooking and booze also have a soul? J. Kenji López-Alt and Adam Rogers are in conversation with John Birdsall about the expressive possibilities of food science.

Science fiction and fantasy have always upset the status quo by presenting alternative visions of the past, present, and future. Meet five fabulous (literally) and subversive writers who deploy stories of science, technology, and magic to turn the way you have been thinking upside-down.

“I was reluctant to come out as a surfer,” says William Finnegan, about his memoir Barbarian Days. The celebrated New Yorker staff writer, who has made his reputation reporting from some of the most war-torn places on earth, will compare journalism with writing this lyrical, existential book about his secret and abiding passion, surfing. The New York Review of Books delivered a glowing review of Barbarian Days, calling it “an utterly convincing study in the joy of treating seriously an unserious thing.” Barbarian Days was awarded the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for the Biography/Autobiography category.

Gene Luen Yang, recently named the fifth National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, has chosen “Reading without Walls” as the platform for his tenure as ambassador. “I want kids to explore the world through books, to read outside of their comfort zones. Specifically, I want them—and you—to…” Come find out what Gene, Tim, and Jason, all three spectacularly gifted book-makers, have to say.

Who says linguistics isn’t fun? Ever heard of “conlang”? Join this insiders’ tour through the construction of invented languages. David Peterson created languages for the HBO series Game of Thrones and the Syfy series Defiance. Nick Farmer created the Belter conlang for Syfy’s The Expanse. This conversation may leave you, well, speechless.

Translators alchemize foreign masterworks by harnessing the potential of language. This session explores the nuanced art of translation from the point of view of four of its most devoted practitioners: Katrina Dodson, Amara Lakhous, Jung Young-Moon, and Idra Novey. Moderated by Michael Holtmann, director of the Center for the Art of Translation.

Have you been obsessed with something or someone? If so, don’t leave the festival without attending this panel. These four writers from Scandinavia, where nights go on forever and summer light blinds the moon, take us into the heart of the beast with stories of obsession with a mysterious child, a perfect lullaby, religious conversion, and death itself.

Sometimes lauded, sometimes vilified, but always standing tough, U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer has fought for her convictions even when they have conflicted with her party or the majority rule. Here to launch her new memoir, The Art of Tough, with a live audience, Boxer will share provocative and touching recollections of her service and discuss her commitment to fighting for women, families, quality-of-life issues, environmental protection, and a peaceful world.

Assaulted after Tahrir Square, Egyptian feminist and journalist Mona Eltahawy comes to us from Cairo with a call for revolution. That call is not merely for liberation for women in the Middle East—though Eltahaway articulates that—but for all people who are silenced, imprisoned, or shamed. Chinaka Hodge—spoken word poet, screenwriter, and more—embodies speaking truth to power. Witness an amazing conversation between two women of color who are not afraid to say what they think.

Daniel Clowes is a celebrated graphic novelist (Ghost World, Wilson, David Boring), Academy Award-nominated screenwriter, and frequent cover artist for The New Yorker. He has won Eisner, Harvey, and Ignatz awards, the laurels of the graphic storytelling world. Here he talks about his new graphic novel in over a decade—an indescribable psychedelic science-fiction love story—along with his life and work spanning more than thirty years.

In business, disruption speaks to radical change. Similarly, literary disruptors are those writers whose words and ideas spark radical reactions and create game-changing conversations. In this panel, four change-makers come together in conversation about why and how they disrupt, exploring why this orientation to writing effects tangible change.

Epic or urban, contemporary or historical, fantasy fiction now attracts a diverse audience of enthusiastic readers around the world. How do writers mix myth, magic, and popular culture to address eternal truths and new possibilities?

In 2014, Colm Tóibín, author of Nora Webster, The Master, Brooklyn, and many other books, delivered the Arthur Miller “Freedom to Write” address that caps each year’s PEN World Voices Festival. Chancellor Dirks leads a university that launched the Free Speech movement and is ranked the top public university in the world. In this conversation, they explore why intellectual and creative liberty matters so much and where we need to agitate today.

Feature presenter Saul Williams has shared his music and spoken word performances in over 30 countries, with invitations from world-class venues such as the White House, the Sydney Opera House, Lincoln Center, The Louvre, The Getty Center, and Queen Elizabeth Hall. At Berkeley’s own San Francisco Chronicle Stage at the Freight & Salvage, hack into Williams’ mind as he navigates “poetry as design,” performing selections from two dynamic new works: “US(a.)” and “Martyr Loser King.” Also featured in performance are avant-garde explorative jazz musicians, Black Spirituals, and Oakland based poet, screenwriter, curator, and educator, Chinaka Hodge.

The legendary Robert Scheer has covered wars, politics, international affairs, and social issues for decades. His new podcast, “Scheer Intelligence,” features provocative conversations with leading thinkers of our times. This event’s podcast interview will be with Mark Danner— acclaimed journalist, UC Berkeley Chancellor’s Professor, and MacArthur Fellow. Danner will talk about what he calls “the Forever War,” triggered by 9/11, a spiral out of which we seem unable to escape.

There’s no better way to celebrate the Bay Area’s love of noir than to toast six international mystery writers who have mastered the form. Make Dashiell Hammett proud by ordering a dirty martini (or some other hard-boiled cocktail) and listening to riveting short readings by his literary descendants.

Nowadays there seems to be a book that addresses every issue facing our children. Our panelists discuss successful titles for younger children’s needs while also considering just how “bibliotherapy” can work.

None of us wants to know how sausage is made, but wouldn’t you like to learn how children’s books come into being, step-by-glorious-step? These authors and illustrators from Heyday will walk you through the process, chat about generating story ideas, and share their excitement for collaborating with other creative types.