What if. Maybe. It could be. Where does seeking the truth slide into imagination? These three writers conjure compelling stories of Jewish generations past and present. Michael Levitin writes of a perpetually cuckolded man who seeks wholeness by resolving the mystery of a postcard sent from the Siberian gulag. In a creative nonfiction narrative, German writer Katja Petrowskaja searches not only for her ancestors but their meaning to her and each other. Sarah Stone depicts a loving, dysfunctional half-Jewish family of performers, scientists, and activists who long to wake up the world but must first rescue each other, with a little help (and sometimes hindrance) from the occasional ghost or god.

Sex and the movies—what more could you want on Saturday morning? The author of nearly 30 books, David Thomson’s latest is “Sleeping with Strangers: How the Movies Shaped Desire.” Here’s praise from fellow film writer Patrick McGilligan: “Move over darling film books and make room for another irresistible beauty from David Thomson. No writer makes better love to his subject.”

Lately, it seems everything is calling itself “mindful.” This morning’s session will set us straight. Join two longtime Buddhist teachers who happen to be very funny: Gary Gach, author of “Pause. Breathe. Smile.” and Wes “Scoop” Nisker, author of “Crazy Wisdom” and ”You Are Not Your Fault.” Find out what mindfulness is, and what it is not. And see for yourself, as they lead us in guided mindfulness meditation. Experience greater ease, awareness, and joy in your Festival day.

“Our mothers are our first homes and that’s why we’re always trying to return to them,” wrote Michele Filgate in a 2017 “Longreads” essay titled “What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About.” The essay, which in poignant prose described the abuse Filgate endured at the hands of her stepfather and her mother’s quiet complacency, went viral, then sparked an anthology. Join Filgate, along with contributors Kiese Laymon, Carmen Maria Machado, and Nayomi Munaweera as they reveal the secrets, scandals, and silences that stand between themselves and their mothers.

In our Writer to Writer series, two authors who are fans of each other’s work come together for conversation. Winner of the prestigious Windham-Campbell prize for his body of work, Trinidad-born and Ottawa-raised André Alexis sits down with National Book Award and National Humanities Medal winner, and author of over 40 novels, Joyce Carol Oates. The pair will discuss genre-bending, world-building, and their shared obsession with storytelling.

Who is worthy of our compassion? Every day more Central American refugees arrive at the U.S.-Mexico border desperate for asylum. Our government greets them with armed guards and tear gas. Hearing human stories behind the headlines can change how we talk about immigration. Aaron Bobrow-Strain (“The Death and Life of Aida Hernández”), Steven Mayers and Jonathan Freedman (“Solito, Solita”), J.J. Mulligan Sepúlveda (“No Human Is Illegal”), and Eileen Truax (“We Built The Wall”) examine the history behind this human rights crisis and tell the urgent stories of those who have experienced it firsthand.

Meet four internationally acclaimed crime writers flexing serious literary muscle. Author and screenwriter Stefan Ahnhem plunges us to “Eighteen Below,” called “unputdownable… edge of the seat stuff” by the UK’s Sunday Post; it has sold a million copies in Scandinavia. Jonas Bonnier’s “The Helicopter Heist” (being adapted by Netflix) is based on the true story of four young Swedish men who pulled off “one of the most spectacular heists of all time,” said Time Magazine. In Catherine Ryan Howard’s “Liar’s Girl,” the Irish Times’ Best Book of the Year in 2018, murder tangles with romance. King of Icelandic Noir Ragnar Jonasson starts a new series with “The Darkness,” with prose as pure and crisp as Reykjavik snowcrust. Come find out what turned these writers on to terror and how they create bestselling thriller fiction.

“The connections between and among women are the most feared, the most problematic, and the most potentially transforming force on the planet,” wrote the legendary poet, essayist, and feminist Adrienne Rich. An early proponent of intersectionality (before the term was coined), Rich’s ideas have profoundly shaped feminism. In celebration of “Essential Essays,” a new collection of Rich’s work edited by poet-scholar Sandra Gilbert, join a panel of trailblazing writers and thinkers—Rich’s friends, colleagues, literary and scholarly descendents, and longtime editor—as they pay homage to Rich’s legacy and consider her ideas today.

Tapping a vein is tough work, especially when writing a book means confronting the demons of one’s past. These three recently published She Writes Press authors share the myriad challenges of writing memoirs about pain and share tips on how to practice self-care as they revisit the hardest moments. Covering topics from disability and abuse to religious fanaticism, they open up about transforming their trauma into expertly crafted and compelling stories.

This program will have ASL interpreters.

In your pocket, palm or purse, pinging with alerts, lurks a threat to the very integrity of your person and the functioning of democracy around the world. In “Zucked,” Roger McNamee, early investor and advisor for Facebook, a platform used by a third of people on the planet, tells a revelatory story of how Facebook and other platforms that were spawned in the libertarian-influenced Silicon Valley of the 1990s pose profound dangers. Privacy is only part of it. “This isn’t a tech story. It’s not a business story. This is an everybody story,” McNamee has said. Interviewed by Elizabeth Dwoskin of The Washington Post.

Meet the all-star chef whose kitchen wizardry and unique flair for fusion were praised by food critic Bill Addison as “ignited and firing at peak level.” In Onwuachi’s remarkable culinary coming-of-age story, “Notes From a Young Black Chef,” he navigates the unwelcoming world of fine dining as a person of color, competes on Top Chef, and quickly bounces back from the failure of his first restaurant to become the Executive Chef of the wildly popular, D.C.-based Kith and Kin at only 28 years old.

“Zombies are a writer’s best friend,” said Justina Ireland, young adult fantasy fiction writer and author of the New York Times bestselling novel “Dread Nation.” The novel explores an alternate Civil War where zombie-slaying biracial teenager Jane McKeene gets caught in a conspiracy and finds herself in a desperate fight for her life. In conversation with author and YA librarian Alexandria Brown, Ireland unpacks how she employs planet-hopping Star Wars characters, half-god assasins, and more to dig into complex questions about capitalism, science, racism, and inequality.

“Somehow the wires have crossed / Communication’s lost / … I’m losing you,” sang John Lennon. Tom Barbash channels Lennon in a story about a son trying to help a washed-up father revive his TV career while living at The Dakota. Erik Tarloff paints a vivid portrait of one of the greatest (fictional) postwar actors and the mystery of his demise—telling the story entirely through fictional oral histories. Adrian Todd Zuniga has written a heartbreaking, hilarious novel about a young wannabe screenwriter haunted by the ghost of the woman he loved.

These writers and translators engage with the world in ways that go well beyond the books they’ve published. Acclaimed translator Katherine Silver has aided families detained on the border in the convoluted process of applying for asylum. Aaron Coleman’s new book, “Threat Come Close,” takes on the policing of Blackness and masculinity. Innosanto Nagara’s “A is for Activist” books teach kids the art of resistance. In the words of poet D.A. Powell: “Remember the lesson of West Side Story: one can dance and do battle at the same time.”

Taking us nearly from pole to pole—from modern megacities to some of the most remote regions on earth—and across decades, “Horizon,” the latest by celebrated humanitarian and environmental writer Barry Lopez, glimmers with insights on our place in this world and on writing as a way of living and seeing. Lopez will be in conversation with John Freeman, writer, editor, and prominent literary critic, who said of the book: “Lopez has managed to fashion his own kind of travel literature, one which doesn’t merely report from distant places, but enlarges by refusing to place a center to the world.”

New biomedical technologies—from prenatal testing to gene-editing techniques—raise questions about who counts as human, what it means to belong, and how far we should go in retooling the human genome. In “Fables and Futures: Biotechnology, Disability, and the Stories We Tell Ourselves,” George Estreich, a poet with a daughter with Down Syndrome, explores new technologies that grant unprecedented power to predict and shape future people. In “Hacking Darwin: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity,” technology futurist Jamie Metzl “brings us to the frontiers of biology and technology, and reveals a world full of promise and peril,” writes Siddhartha Mukherjee, MD. When we can engineer our future children, massively extend our lifespans, and build life from scratch, should we? Which people, which variations, will we welcome?

Straddling tenderness and rage, and studying our rapidly changing world with a kaleidoscopic lens, Franny Choi (“Soft Science”), Tommy Pico (“Junk”), Brenda Shaughnessy (“The Octopus Museum”), and Sam Sax (“Bury It”) testify to the deep ache and delicious wonder of survival. With genre-bending work that is as playful as it is subversive, bursting with questions and contradictions that resist hegemony at every turn, these four poets are queering the canon one poem at a time.

In “The Browns of California: The Family Dynasty that Transformed a State and Shaped a Nation,” journalist Miriam Pawel tells the story of this extraordinary family, which saw both Pat Brown and Jerry Brown as influential governors. She is joined by two Brown relatives, powerful political players in their own right: Kathleen Kelly, Brown’s niece and a San Francisco Superior Court Judge who has focused much of her career on juvenile justice, and Joseph Kelly, former city commissioner in San Francisco and campaign strategist. They’ll discuss the legacy and ongoing contributions of a family that has helped shape California for four generations.

Separated from their birth families and raised by white parents, these writers were left to unravel their identities on their own, nursing the ache of loss as they put the pieces of their origin stories together. They have handled their experiences in different ways, some by telling their stories, others by forming community with other adoptees. Join writer, professor, and Native leader Greg Sarris, author and American Indian transracial adoption researcher Susan Devan Harness, and poet-playwright Lisa Marie Rollins for a discussion on how they found their histories, integrated a fractured sense of self, and came to understand home and family.

The book world can feel quite snobby at times, but comics don’t care where you come from. Unintimidating and inviting, comics can open the door to tough conversations about gentrification, genocide, natural disasters, and other uncomfortable truths. Armed with humor, wit, and vulnerability, writer-graphic novelists Nora Krug (“Belonging”), Edgardo Miranda-Rodriguez (“Ricanstruction”), and Juliana “Jewels” Smith (“(H)afrocentric Comics”) dive into the task of turning their most naked fears and haunting questions about survival and belonging into compelling visual storytelling.

Join a lively roundtable of four writers with very different novels that address the question of “what women want” in provocative ways. In Aya de Leon’s series of feminist heist novels (latest is “Side Chick Nation”), feisty, sexy women rob the rich and protect the exploited. Finnish author Laura Lindstedt (“Oneiron”) depicts seven radically different women from around the world in a bardo after death, interacting by telling their stories. In “Open Me,” debut author Lisa Locascio has penned a beautifully written coming-of-age novel about a young woman discovering her sexual power. Tamsen Wolff’s “Juno’s Swans” tells a shattering story of friendship, love, and heartbreak between two women; it has been compared with the work of Elena Ferrante.

Get ready for some serious literary talent, all based in the Bay Area. Writer and books columnist Jane Ciabattari, former president of the National Book Critics Circle, has highlighted three authors for your attention. Jamel Brinkley was a finalist for the National Book Award with “A Lucky Man,” a collection of stories about men and boys that explores race and class. Like Brinkley, our next author, R.O. Kwon, was a finalist for the NBCC’s John Leonard Award for a first book; “The Incendiaries” burns with keen, spare prose that tells the story of a college student caught up in a religious cult. Namwali Serpell, a winner of the Caine Prize for African writing, has penned an electrifying debut, “The Old Drift”—an epic story of a small African nation and a panorama of history, fairytale, romance and science fiction. All three writers will sign your books after the talk!

“Solitary in Iran nearly broke me. Then I went Inside America’s prisons.” That was the title of the award-winning 2012 Mother Jones story by reporter Shane Bauer, who, after being detained for two years in a notorious prison in Iran, returned to journalism and took on an astonishing assignment: to go undercover as a guard in a private prison in Louisiana. His book “American Prison: A Reporter’s Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment” is a riveting, blistering indictment of the private prison system—a relic of Southern slavery—and the powerful forces that drive it. One of President Obama’s favorite books of 2018, it was named a New York Times Top 10 Best Book of the year.

When you open a book, do you see yourself in its pages? Do the characters look or think like you? Cindy Pon fought hard to publish one of the first Young Adult fantasy novels with an Asian protagonist on the U.S. market. Lee Wind’s queer history book was canceled by the publisher for being too controversial, but he found a way to publish it anyway. The two dig into why kids (and adults) need diverse characters and how they fight against the bias and blindspots of the publishing world.

Need a break from the traffic and stress of city life? Ready for a technology detox? Let Becky Lomax, author of “Moon USA National Parks,” be your “outdoor therapist” with wise advice on choosing the park that’s just right for unwinding. From the misty mountains of the east and the redwoods of the west, to the glaciers of Alaska and volcanoes of Hawaii, Lomax reveals the top experiences in each of the 59 parks throughout the U.S. With deep knowledge of each park, she explains where to go for maximum solitude or a family’s first camping trip. Lomax will even demonstrate the expert way to pack all of your essentials for a good, long hike. Interviewed by Kaylé Barnes of The Great Outchea.

Without seeds, there is no food; without sand, there are no cities. Both are resources central to life on our planet. One element is animate, one inanimate. But both are at the center of global battles to control them, and both are threatened by corporate consolidation and climate change. Two leading journalists, Mark Schapiro (“Seeds of Resistance”) and Vince Beiser (“World in a Grain”), take us deep into the stories and futures of these vital elements—stories that are quirky, dramatic, and urgent.

Three celebrated Irish writers join the Festival this year. Mike McCormack has won wide acclaim for his moving and innovative third novel, “Solar Bones,” which Booklist called “a work of bold risks and luminous creativity.” Catherine Ryan Howard burst onto the Irish literary scene with her propulsive thriller “Distress Signals” and has quickly gained an international reputation for her “slick and stylish” and “psychologically acute” writing. The Irish Times proclaimed Emilie Pine’s searching “Notes to Self” “the kind of book you want to give to everyone,” though Anne Enright cautioned against reading it in public because “it will make you cry.”

Frederick Douglass was arguably the most important African American of the nineteenth century, an escaped slave who became the greatest orator of his day and one of the leading abolitionists and writers of the era. Come hear from David Blight, American history scholar and author of the new, definitive biography “Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom,” which just won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for history. The book also was selected as a Top Ten Book of 2018 by the New York Times and numerous other outlets. San Francisco Chronicle columnist Otis R. Taylor, Jr. interviews Blight and helps uncover this towering figure that Blight calls “thoroughly and beautifully human.”

This program will have ASL interpreters.

The Paris Review is one of the most esteemed and beloved literary magazines in the world. Established in 1953 in Paris, moving to New York in 1973, it became famed for its “Writer at Work” interviews, which have been anthologized, most recently into two “Women at Work” volumes. Known for promoting new talent alongside established voices, The Paris Review publishes fiction, nonfiction, poetry, graphic literature, interviews, and more in its bound quarterly issues and online Paris Review Daily. We’re joined by its new editor, Emily Nemens, in a roundtable led by Christian Kiefer (the magazine’s West Coast editor) along with contributors Franny Choi, R.O. Kwon, and Kiese Laymon.

Bestselling author Adam Hochschild’s new collection of essays explores, as he writes, “people who took a stand against despotism, who spoke out against unjust wars, or who saw the evils of institutions like slavery or colonialism when, all around them, others took such things for granted.” “Lessons from a Dark Time” profiles the survivor-director of a Congolese center for rape victims, the humane penal system in Finland, Mandela on the campaign trail—and much more. A Festival favorite, Hochschild has the skills of a journalist, the knowledge of a historian, and the heart of an activist.

Mystery lovers, buckle up for one of the Festival’s most popular sessions. Hailed for combining the darkness of Nordic Noir with classic mystery writing, Ragnar Jonasson’s books are haunting, atmospheric, and complex. Kjell Ola Dahl’s latest, “The Ice Swimmer,” was called “a masterclass in plotting, atmosphere and character” by the Times Crime Club. Crowned “the new queen of Nordic Noir,” Jenny Rogneby’s Leona Lindberg series are hard-boiled crime novels, filled with unexpected twists and turns and featuring an unusual heroine. In Publishers Weekly, Stefan Ahnhem’s “Eighteen Below” was extolled for how it “unflinchingly unveils the monstrous crimes lurking beneath Scandinavia’s seemingly placid surface.” This session is moderated by Randal Brandt, curator of the Bancroft Library’s California Detective Fiction Collection.

Storytelling can bring depth, humanity, and understanding to the headlines. “A Land of Permanent Goodbyes” depicts a young boy who must escape from war-torn Syria, masterfully told by journalist Atia Abawi, who witnessed the crisis firsthand. In “The Death and Life of Aída Hernandez,” Aaron Bobrow-Strain follows an undocumented teen mom and reveals the human consequences of militarizing what was once a more forgiving border. With “Bones of the Earth,” Eliot Pattison concludes his mystery series set in Tibet, which he writes about so readers can “understand what it feels like to witness an armed policeman assault a praying monk.”

In this intimate conversation moderated by Lucille Lang Day (editor of the new anthology “Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California”), memoirist Pam Houston (“Deep Creek”) and poet Katie Peterson (“A Piece of Good News”) discuss the case for optimism and joy in our troubled American landscape. Across ranchland, mountains, borderlands, and deserts, these women will explore how our political discussion is shaped by our land, and how care for our wild spaces can change the way we think about our future.

Delve into the songs of the musical icon who sparked a folk movement in the early 1960s and went on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016. In “Bob Dylan’s Poetics: How the Songs Work,” UC Berkeley professor Timothy Hampton illuminates both the poetics and politics of Dylan’s compositions. Hampton is in conversation with the renowned cultural critic Greil Marcus, whose own, seminal 2005 book on Dylan—”Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads”—explored the poetry, musicality, and social moment of that iconic song.

“I stood at the border, stood at the edge and claimed it as central,” Toni Morrison said, “Claimed it as central, and let the rest of the world move over to where I was.” First and second-generation immigrant writers Lesley Nneka Arimah, Alice Sola Kim, Carmen Maria Machado, and Namwali Serpell tackle the mysterious, the wild, the terrifying, and the magical in their speculative fiction. With rich and enthralling work that defies convention, they are creating a cultural shift in the literary landscape.

Jose Antonio Vargas was sixteen when, signing up to take a driver’s test at his local DMV, he discovered his green card was fake. Now he’s a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Emmy-nominated filmmaker, and the founder of Define American, an organization that fights anti-immigrant hate through the power of storytelling. But his future still hangs in the balance. In “Dear America,” Vargas divulges how he came out first as gay and then as undocumented, reflecting on the high cost of hiding from the government and himself (currently subject to deportation at any time, he has no permanent residence). Illuminating the purgatory of fear people without papers are forced to live in and posing questions about passing and the true meaning of citizenship, Vargas urges us to reconsider the assumptions we make.

Sponsored by North Berkeley Investment Partners

What could the world look like without prisons? What kinds of healing—what new definitions of justice—could take their place? Join University of San Francisco law professor Lara Bazelon (“Rectify”), activist Tony Platt (“Beyond These Walls”), and Albert Woodfox (“Solitary”), one of the Angola 3 who spent decades in solitary confinement for a crime he did not commit. They look at the violent history behind mass incarceration and imagine alternatives.

In our Writer to Writer series, two authors who are fans of each other’s work come together for conversation. Join this cross-generational conversation between two dynamic Black American writers and cultural critics exploring the history and future of the American literary landscape. The legendary Ishmael Reed, Macarthur Genius Fellow, founder of the Before Columbus Foundation, and author of over 30 books including his newest “Conjugating Hindi,” sits down with rising literary star Morgan Parker, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, Pushcart Prize winner, and author of the new poetry collection “Magical Negro.”

Come hear three writers who, like children themselves, will break your heart then put it back together again. Rene Denfeld is a former chief investigator at a public defender’s office and foster adoptive parent; her novel “The Child Finder” depicts an investigator using child-savvy skills to find a missing girl. Duanwad Pimwana, the first female Thai novelist translated into English, has written a poignant novel in stories, “Bright,” about a boy abandoned in a village. Hanne Ørstavik won international acclaim for “Love,” which tells of a mother and young son who each are locked in their loneliness; the tragedy is all the more keen when rendered in such gorgeous prose.

Take a respite from the crowds of the festival! The Berkeley Symphony and Bay Area Book Festival present the world premiere of four original musical compositions, by Ursula Kwong-Brown, Aiyana Braun, Peter Shin, and Tristan Koster, interpreting musically the work of four poets, most local to the Bay Area. Genny Lim, Innosanto Nagara, and Rachel Richardson (on behalf of Brenda Hillman) will read their poems, with each reading followed by the musical composition. Enjoy.

Who gets to be called an artist? In this frank, funny, and often surprising tale of her move from academia to art, historian Nell Painter chronicles her retirement from Princeton University and enrollment in art school at the age of 64. Surrounded by classmates a third of her age, Painter confesses how art school changed her view of what she thought she already knew and examines how women and artists are seen and judged by their age, looks, and race. Meet the multi-talented woman behind “Old in Art School” and learn more about the story that Tayari Jones calls “a cup of courage for everyone who wants to change their lives.”

No matter the borders crossed or the time gone by, these novels’ protagonists are driven by demons they can’t seem to outrun. Kirstin Chen, Ingrid Rojas Contreras, and Nayomi Munaweera—all novelist-teachers from the University of San Francisco MFA. in Writing program—dig into the challenges of writing characters who are haunted by their pasts. Here they share the narrative tools they use to push their characters to the very edge and keep the reader turning the page.

Fiction can illuminate the lived experience of intense inner conflict. Torn between community and country, struggling with duty and desire, and stuck in the gray area between right and wrong, the characters in these novels are pulled in competing directions. Christian Kiefer (“Phantoms”), Lauren Wilkinson (“American Spy”), and Takis Würger (“The Club”) create dynamic worlds in dazzling prose where dangerous secrets bubble just under the surface and protagonists must ask themselves who to believe and who to blame.

With the support of the initiative “Wunderbar Together,“ initiated by the German Federal Foreign Office and the Goethe Institut, and supported by the Federation of German Industries (BDI); the Goethe-Institut San Francisco; and Goethe-Institut’s translation support program “Books First”

This Writer to Writer conversation is a literary treasure trove: Two bestselling authors who are also top editors and critics come together to discuss their writing, the editing process, the state of the publishing industry in the U.S. and Europe, and translation. Geir Gulliksen is among Norway’s leading novelists; his latest is “The Story of a Marriage,” a searing novel about a man who attempts to empathetically understand his wife’s infidelity. Gulliksen also is a top editor at Norway’s major publishing house, Forlaget Oktober, where he has edited Karl One Knausgaard, Linn Ullmann, and others. John Freeman is one of today’s preeminent literary critics who also publishes literary nonfiction, much of it focused passionately on social justice issues (such as “Tales of Two Americas: Stories of Inequality in a Divided Nation”), as well as poetry (“Maps”). Editor of the international literary journal Granta for many years, and former president of the National Book Critics Circle, he founded the biannual journal Freeman’s in 2017 to publish short fiction, non-fiction and poetry from literary luminaries as well as emerging voices worldwide.

The 20th century brought us “1984” and “Brave New World” as harbingers of terrifying social and technological change. In the 21st century, we have climate literature. Brenda Shaughnessy gives us “The Octopus Museum,” bold poems that imagine what comes after our current age of environmental destruction. Charlie Jane Anders (called “this generation’s Le Guin”) presents “The City in the Middle of the Night,” where humanity lives in a barely habitable dusk on the planet January. In Cai Emmons’ “Weather Woman,” a young TV meteorologist discovers that she can tap the energies of the earth to alter the weather. Moderated by David Wallace-Wells, author of “The Uninhabitable Earth” and former deputy editor of The Paris Review.

What happens when you have everything you’ve ever wanted but still feel completely empty? In the summer of 1999, Moby released PLAY, an album that helped define the millennium and catapulted him to superstardom. Suddenly he was hanging out with David Bowie and Lou Reed, Christina Ricci and Madonna, taking ecstasy for breakfast (most days), and drinking bottles of vodka (every day)… a diet that couldn’t last. In his shocking, riotously entertaining second memoir, “Then It Fell Apart,” Moby takes us through the dark heart of fame to rock bottom and into recovery. Bonus: though this session isn’t a concert, we may persuade Moby to perform a couple of acoustic songs. Interviewed by Peter Hartlaub, the San Francisco Chronicle’s pop culture critic.

We are witnessing a revolution in storytelling. Publications all over the world are increasingly using immersive storytelling tools—virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality—to tell urgent and impactful stories. Examining ground-breaking work across industries, journalist and educator Lakshmi Sarah (“Crafting Stories For Virtual Reality”) illuminates how storytellers can create their own powerful immersive experiences that build worlds and shift consciousness. Join this group of VR creatives, writers, and changemakers for a conversation on the future of storytelling.

Get witchy and deepen your creative practice with the holistic and customizable tools for astrological self-discovery inside “The Astrological Grimoire” by author, designer, and co-host of BFF.fm’s Astral Projection Radio Hour, Helen Shewolfe Tseng. Divided into 12 chapters, one for each sign, the book offers horoscopes based on moon phase and “mood phase”—emotions and life events—so you can always find a horoscope that speaks to your current life moment.

A Festival favorite is back! Grab a drink and settle in for an hour of gasp-inducing, nail-biting, scintillating stories from these virtuosos of crime fiction hailing from across Scandinavia, Ireland, and the United States.

If your dream is to see yourself in print, there is more than one way to get there. Learn why many authors are choosing the indie route. Experts from all arenas of the industry—agenting, book design, editing, and authorship—speak to the entire process of independent publishing from cover to cover.

To write race and ethnicity well, we need the right tools and the right reading list. Building multidimensional worlds that don’t rely on assumptions or defaults takes practice (and guts). Fortunately, master memoirist and creative writing instructor David Mura is here to help. In “A Stranger’s Journey: Race, Identity, and Narrative Craft in Writing,” Mura delves into how race structures our reality, shaping the way we write and how we expect to be read. He offers techniques and introduces new ways of seeing. Join three writer-teachers of color—Dickson Lam, Ismail Muhammad, and David Mura—as they unpack the questions of identity that drive their writing, mark the pitfalls of self-exotification, and weigh the rewards of penning richer, riskier work.

This program will have ASL interpreters.

“Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words,” said Ursula K. Le Guin in her courageous speech upon receiving the 2014 American National Book Foundation Medal. (She called for literary freedom and condemned unbridled capitalism.) Le Guin’s impact on literature can hardly be overstated. Our tribute to Le Guin, who died last year at 88, will start by screening the recent documentary about her life, “Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin.” A conversation will follow with Arwen Curry, the filmmaker; Annalee Newitz, journalist and author most recently of the novel “Autonomous”; Kim Stanley Robinson, Le Guin’s friend and sci-fi legend; and David Streitfeld, reporter and author of the new compilation “Ursula K. Le Guin: The Last Interview and Other Conversations.”

Each year, the Festival Keynote presents a fearless writer you simply must hear, someone who brings insight on a topic that concerns us all. This year, that topic is economic injustice, and the writer is Anand Giridharadas, author of “Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World.” We present him in conversation with two change makers: former Secretary of Labor and author Robert Reich (“The Common Good”), and impact investor and financial justice advocate Kat Taylor, who will lead the evening’s discussion. In “Winners Take All,” Giridharadas explores how elites rig the game and try to pull gilded wool over our eyes, and how these practices impoverish you, yours, and democratic government itself. The conversation will reveal the hypocrisies of the 1% and explain how the wealth gap grew. You’ll also hear about efforts underway to create the kind of deep systems change necessary to bring true prosperity to all.

Admission as with other Festival indoor events: $10 Priority Ticket to guarantee your seat, or General Admission Wristband access on first-come, first-served basis.

Presented by Beneficial State Bank, which provides economically and environmentally sustainable banking and promotes change in the financial industry

This program will have ASL interpreters.

What does it mean to be a modern indigenous person, particularly when indigenous identity has been so riddled with stereotypes and when the category is so wide-reaching? Join Kali Fajardo-Anstine, Susan Devan Harness, Tommy Pico, and Rebecca Roanhorse as they plunge into the paradox of Native identity politics and discuss how it manifests in their writing.

“No one is born hating another person,” Nelson Mandela famously said. “People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate they can be taught to love.” With the threat of fascism looming around the world, human rights activist Arjun Singh Sethi (“American Hate”), historian Bradley Hart (“Hitler’s American Friends”), and immigration attorney Bill Ong Hing (“American Presidents, Deportations, and Human Rights Violations”) reveal the roots of hateful political ideologies in the United States and bear witness to survivors of hate crimes, police violence, mass detention, and deportation. They chart a course for unlearning hatred and bigotry. Moderated by Dennis J. Bernstein, host of KPFA’s program Flashpoint.

Journalist David Wallace-Wells warns that climate change could make parts of the earth nearly uninhabitable unless we take action now. “‘The Uninhabitable Earth’ is the most terrifying book I have ever read,” wrote Farhad Manjoo in the New York Times, saying that “its method is scientific, but its mode is Old Testament. The book is a meticulously documented, white-knuckled tour through the cascading catastrophes that will soon engulf our warming planet.” This is a literary account—Andrew Solomon praised the book’s “overflow of insanely lyrical prose”—but an urgent one. There’s still time, but only a generation, to prevent these scenarios from coming true. Wallace-Wells is interviewed by Julian Brave NoiseCat, a young indigenous activist, writer, and policy analyst at 350.org.

Start your morning by celebrating the Divine Feminine, as millions of women do around the globe. In “The Heart of the Goddess: Art, Myth and Meditations of the World’s Sacred Feminine,” scholar-practitioner Hallie Iglehart Austen shares female imagery throughout time, challenging dominant narratives about human nature. In “Feeding A Thousand Souls: Women, Ritual, and Ecology in India,” Professor Vijaya Nagarajan explores the ritual of Tamil women who rise each dawn to create kolams, rice-flour designs that honor Hindu goddesses and incorporate concepts of beauty, mathematics, generosity, and even climate chaos. Moderator Arisika Razak, professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), is a healer, ritualist, spiritual dancer, and educator who practices an eclectic mix of Earth-based spiritual traditions.

Sponsored by the California Institute of Integral Studies

“If we forget ourselves, who will be left to remember us?” asks Cherríe Moraga in the prologue of “Native Country of the Heart.” Start your Sunday by journeying with three remarkable writers who delve into the politics of remembering. Learn about a visionary designer who disappeared from the Hollywood horror scene, thanks to a jealous male colleague; a Mexican-American mother whose eroding memory endangers a daughter’s connection to her roots; and—because “place” carries memory too—a region, the Napa Valley, whose reputation for lush vineyards and luxury homes eclipses its history of struggle.

This roundtable brings together some of the leading lights in publishing to discuss the industry and the state of literature. Kwame Anthony Appiah is the weekly Ethicist columnist for The New York Times and author of “The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity.” Jane Ciabattari is former president of the National Book Critics Circle and books columnist for BBC Culture and Literary Hub. John Freeman is a poet, author, former editor of Granta, and editor of Freeman’s literary journal. Carlos Lozada is the nonfiction book critic for The Washington Post and just won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for criticism. Michael Naumann has been the German secretary of culture, publisher of Die Zeit, and publisher at Rowohlt Verlag; at Henry Holt & Company in the 1990s he was involved in publishing Salman Rushdie’s “The Satanic Verses.” Emily Nemens is a writer and editor of The Paris Review. Moderator Cherilyn Parsons is the founder and director of the Bay Area Book Festival.

This program will have ASL interpreters.

California has birthed some of the most vibrant cultural movements in the world and continues to attract artists, asylum seekers, and all manner of folks from around the world. But it’s also a hub of rampant displacement and rapidly changing technology. How do we reclaim ourselves from the wreckage? Join this fiercely talented group of emerging California poets for an exploration of intimacy, memory, and loneliness in a digital age. Moderated by San Francisco’s third Poet Laureate, devorah major.

How can we set aside the tidy boxes of revenge and resolution in favor of a greater reckoning with what haunts us most? Kiese Laymon (“Heavy”), Lacy Johnson (“The Reckonings”), and Devi Laskar (“The Atlas of Reds and Blues”) write their way exquisitely through trauma, picking it apart to understand its source, pushing past reductive conclusions and condemnations in pursuit of a richer, fuller truth. Hearing their journeys will change your own. Moderator Sonya Shah is associate professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) and a facilitator of restorative justice processes in families, communities, schools and prisons.

Sponsored by the California Institute of Integral Studies

Just what do mega-bestselling crime writers Faye, Jonathan, and Jesse Kellerman talk about around the family dinner table? Perhaps they plot their next juicy thrillers, brainstorming the murders of their latest Jane or John Doe. After all, they do some great work together: Jonathan and Jesse have a new book that Stephen King calls “brilliant, page-turning fiction,” and Faye and Jonathan co-wrote the New York Times besteller “Double Homicide.” Meet an extraordinarily talented family of mystery masters.

In our Writer to Writer series, two authors who are fans of each other’s work come together for conversation about writing and society today. Novelists Esi Edugyan and Tayari Jones both probe racial injustice in their work, and both women have received considerable praise. Edugyan’s sweeping, imaginative novel “Washington Black” was named a Top Ten Book of 2018 by the New York Times, and Tayari Jones’ “An American Marriage” was an Oprah’s Book Club pick for that same year. Edugyan uses magic realism to explore slavery and freedom in a stupendous tale that moves from Barbados to Nova Scotia to England. Jones weaves a devastating tapestry of a modern marriage wrenched apart by a discriminatory American justice system.

No damsels in distress here! These powerful young women protagonists are almost as incredible as the writers who crafted them. Join Zoraida Córdova (“Bruja Born”), Anna-Marie McLemore (“Blanca Y Roja”), and Cindy Pon (“Ruse”) for a discussion on how their characters use their brains and brujería to devise a way out of serious danger.

Lushly written, utterly engrossing, and often funny, these historical novels transport us to worlds full of surprising connections that cross divisions of class, race, and more. Yangsze Choo (“The Night Tiger”), Terry Gamble (“The Eulogist”), and Christopher Tilghman (“Thomas and Beal in the Midi”) explore power dynamics and tricky relationships from 1930’s colonial Malaysia, to pre-Civil War Ohio, to the streets of Paris and the vineyards of Midi at the close of the Victorian era. Moderated by Janis Cooke Newman, author of the historical novels “A Master Plan for Rescue” and “Mary: Mrs. A. Lincoln” (USA Today’s Historical Novel of the Year).

Ancient and mysterious as they are beautiful, the redwoods are an essential part of the California landscape. What are the inner workings of these giants, and what does the future hold? Save the Redwoods League and Heyday Books have produced a majestic, oversized, boxed book, “The Once and Future Forest,” that showcases the grandeur of the redwood ecosystems, explores their history and significance, and looks toward a more ecologically informed future. Sam Hodder, President & CEO of the Save the Redwoods League, will moderate a conversation featuring contributors David Harris, writer; Greg Sarris, activist, author, and chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria; and David Rains Wallace, natural history writer and conservationist.

Kwame Anthony Appiah, who writes the weekly Ethicist column for the New York Times, “could variously be described as biracial, Ghanaian British, an Asante, a Londoner, and a gay cis man,” said Booklist. But rather than citing these facts as qualification to write on identity, Appiah opens his fascinating analysis, “The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity,” with an anecdote about ambiguity: taxi drivers struggling to figure him out. Taking us on a tour through history and philosophy, Appiah explores the compulsion to define and gather around identity (religious, cultural, racial, national), and the pitfalls that lurk therein. How do groups struggling for justice use, or misuse, identity toward their ends? How can a more nuanced understanding bring us together, not further apart? Appiah is interviewed by The Washington Post’s Carlos Lozada, who just won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for criticism.

Where is my place in the world? Where do I belong? Four distinct voices from Germany and Switzerland explore these questions in their work, all bestsellers in Europe. In “Maybe Esther,” Katja Petrowskaja creates a kind of literary family tree, in luminous prose delving into legends and history. Takis Würger’s “The Club” is a smoldering story of class, privilege, love, and moral ambiguity, centered around an elite club at Cambridge University. In Dorothee Elmiger’s “Shift Sleepers,” refugees, workers, inspectors, artists, and ghosts meet in a forest and converse about the meaning of homeland, safety, happiness, and more. In “Belonging,” Nora Krug confronts the hidden truths of her family’s wartime past in Nazi Germany to comprehend the forces that have shaped her life, her generation, and history. Come discover these new voices in translation, one of the most exciting areas in literature today.

With the support of the initiative “Wunderbar Together,“ initiated by the German Federal Foreign Office and the Goethe Institut, and supported by the Federation of German Industries (BDI); the Goethe-Institut San Francisco; Goethe-Institut’s translation support program “Books First”; also supported by the Consulate General of Switzerland in San Francisco and Pro Helvetia

Whether it’s by choice or chance, not mothering is still considered taboo. Talked about in hushed tones and regarded with pity or disdain, women who don’t mother are made to feel like failures. But what are the windows of possibility opened up by a child-free life? What other kinds of nurturing can happen in its place? Brazen in their vulnerability, Sheila Heti (“Motherhood”), Grace Talusan (“The Body Papers”), and Emilie Pine (“Notes to Self”) break the silence on not mothering, addressing the assumptions, stigmas, and surprising rewards head-on.

The longing for family—for a core sense of love and belonging—drives the novels written by these highly empathetic writers. Lydia Fitzpatrick tells a spellbinding story of the fierce bond between two young brothers determined to find a way back to each other across continents. Rachel Howard tackles not only kinship but what can destroy it; a forty-something couple become foster parents to a girl so difficult that they have to decide whether to give her up. In beautiful prose that conveys unfulfilled longing, Hanne Ørstavik portrays a mother and son unable to connect on a snowy night in Norway. Come hear how these writers create such deep emotional experiences on the page.

She was the blonde in the diaphanous gown who was set by King Kong atop the Empire State Building. He was the longtime collaborator with Frank Capra and the Academy Award-winning screenwriter who wrote ornery, resilient women. It happened one night, we could say: They fell in love and embarked upon a marriage that was truly fairytale until it ended tragically. In “Fay Wray and Robert Riskin: A Hollywood Memoir,” their daughter, an acclaimed writer and producer, tells the story from Hollywood’s golden age.

The imagination is our escape hatch, our resistance weapon, and a window to warn us where our choices can lead. In this spectacular collection of speculative fiction, writers set their sights on the road ahead, with stories that challenge American mythology, release us from chokeholds of history, and give us new futures to believe in. Blending the dystopian and the utopian, the commonplace and the strange, these tales are badass: pulsing with energy and imagination, vivid with struggle and resilience.

“I am awaiting / perpetually and forever / a renaissance of wonder.” The legendary poet, playwright, publisher, and activist Lawrence Ferlinghetti just turned 100! Author of over thirty books, co-founder of City Lights Books and City Lights Publishers, he shaped 20th century literature and continues to influence countless poets and writers. Join a celebration of Ferlinghetti’s centennial with Garrett Caples, poet and former arts journalist who interviewed Ferlinghetti for the current issue of The Paris Review; three City Lights-published poets, Julien Poirier, Barbara Jane Reyes and Maw Shein Win, who will read Ferlinghetti’s work; and moderator Emily Nemens, editor of The Paris Review.

Nik Sharma is the beloved curator of the award-winning food blog “A Brown Table.” In “Season,” his stunning new book, he shares a treasury of ingredients, techniques, and flavors that combine in a way that’s both familiar and completely unexpected. These are recipes that take a journey from India by way of the American South to California. Though the dishes will take home cooks and their guests by surprise, there’s nothing intimidating here. “Season,” like Nik, welcomes everyone to the table.

Get fired up and inspired at this special performance featuring current and former students of June Jordan’s Poetry For The People program at UC Berkeley. Founded by the late June Jordan in 1991, Poetry For The People (P4P) is an arts and activism program that bridges the gap between the university and the larger community. Featuring P4P director, spoken word poet and professor of African American studies, Aya de Leon and poet-in-residence Yvonne Fly Onakeme Etaghene.

Beyond clicks and checklists is an entire universe of deep listening and thoughtful observation. If we let them, natural spaces and creatures can show us how to slow down, to notice, and to reflect on modern life. Tim Dee (“Landfill: Notes on Gull Watching and Trash Picking in the Anthropocene”) comes to us from England; Jenny Odell (“How to Do Nothing”), from Oakland; and Jérémie Royer (“Audubon, On the Wings of the World,” a graphic novel), from France. These writer-artists and bird lovers explore the wonders that acts of attention can bring.

In her third book, journalist Julia Flynn Siler shows that women have always fought for each other, even a century before #MeToo. In “The White Devil’s Daughters: The Women Who Fought Slavery in San Francisco’s Chinatown” Siler profiles the women who surmounted racial and class barriers to free sex-trafficked Chinese immigrants at the end of the nineteenth century. Grounded in historical research, the book is an exhilarating tale of raids, bomb threats, and the 1906 San Francisco fire. Siler will be interviewed by Lauren Schiller, host of Inflection Point, the weekly radio program and podcast from KALW and PRX about women rising up.

Few writers have captured the spirit of the American South—its heart, its small-town intimacy, its scars from centuries of institutional racism—like Tayari Jones. Jones has the power to “touch us soul to soul with her words,” said Oprah, who dubbed Jones’ newest book, “An American Marriage,” a Book Club pick for 2018. In her novels, Jones takes these scars, including traumas around wrongful incarceration, and rubs them raw, creating masterful works of fiction with the power to transform a reader. She is interviewed by Brooke Warner of She Writes Press.

This program will have ASL interpreters.

Sponsored by She Writes Press; also with the support of Women Lit members

THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED due to an airline strike. Ticket purchasers will be refunded.

Hailed by Kirkus Reviews as “a brilliant meditation on time, mortality, and the limits of memory,” the latest novel by internationally acclaimed writer Linn Ullmann is assembled from conversations that an unnamed woman has with her father, a famous filmmaker, at the end of his life. In poignant and searing prose, “The Unquiet” explores grief, creativity, and love in a mesmerizing, elliptical journey through time and space. Ullmann is interviewed by writer and editor Vendela Vida.

Look around. How much of our infrastructure—from roads and bridges to factories and food supplies—was built on the backs of American slaves? Three writer-researchers examine how the brutal history of slavery laid the foundation of American capitalism and shaped today’s racial and economic inequality. In “They Were Her Property,” Stephanie Jones-Rogers reveals the active role that white women played in the American slave economy. In “Accounting for Slavery,” Caitlin Rosenthal examines how elite planters turned their power over enslaved people into a productivity advantage. In “Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom,” which just won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for history, David Blight investigates the legacy of the escaped slave and abolitionist, who wrote, “The white man’s happiness cannot be purchased by the black man’s misery.”

Sponsored by the Stephen M. Silberstein Foundation

Three writers celebrate the life-saving power of words. In her memoir “Poetry Will Save Your Life,” Jill Bialosky presents 51 favorite poems paired with personal accounts of the roles they’ve played in her life and society. Bialosky also is an Executive Editor at W.W. Norton and has edited some of the leading writers of our time. Niloufar Talebi’s memoir, “Self-Portrait in Bloom,” has been called a “brutally honest memoir of a life built by words, destroyed by words, rebuilt by words”; both this book and her forthcoming opera, “Abraham in Flames,” explore the power of the iconic Iranian poet Ahmed Shamlou. Moderator Rebecca Foust, Marin County Poet Laureate 2017-2019, has published six books of poetry and works as Poetry Editor for “Women’s Voices for Change.”

FREE — Experience indigenous legends the way they were passed down—through oral tradition. Word for Word Performing Arts Company is an ensemble whose mission is to tell great stories with elegant theatricality, staging performances of classic and contemporary fiction. Today’s performance features Native youth from Sonoma County presenting an adaptation of the story “Rattlesnake Wins Hummingbird’s Heart” from Greg Sarris’s collection “How a Mountain Was Made,” indigenous stories from Sonoma Mountain. How does a creature as lowly as Rattlesnake win the beautiful Hummingbird? What key does Rattlesnake possess? Come find out. Performance is 45 minutes, followed by discussion.

Sponsored by the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria

Few successful mystery authors are also prominent human rights advocates, notes a recent profile of Eliot Pattison in Publishers Weekly. Honored with Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award for “The Skull Mantra,” the first novel in his bestselling series set in Tibet, Pattison received Tibet House’s U.S. Art of Freedom Award a few years (and books) later. Pattison joins us upon the publication of “Bones of the Earth,” the 10th and final book in the bestselling Inspector Shan Tao Yun series, which uses the lens of mystery fiction to tell the world about the harsh treatment of Tibetans under Chinese rule. Come meet this highly unusual mystery master.

She’s baaa-ACK! More than forty years after the debut of her widely syndicated and nationally adored daily comic strip “Cathy,” Cathy Guisewite returns with her signature wit and warmth in the new book “Fifty Things That Aren’t My Fault,” a funny, wise, poignant, and incredibly honest collection of essays about being a woman in what she lovingly calls “the panini generation.” Join Guisewite in conversation with Leah Garchik, beloved Features columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle, for a discussion on navigating times of transition with humor and heart.

What do you do when your world is suddenly turned upside down? Growing up is hard enough, but these teen protagonists must cope with loss and navigate violence completely out of their control. Atia Abawi’s “A Land of Permanent Goodbyes” follows Tareq, a kid forced to flee his home in war torn Syria. e.E. Charlton-Trujillo’s “Fat Angie: Rebel Girl Revolution” features Angie, a high school sophomore mourning the death of her sister in Iraq. The three writers will discuss how they write about teenage trauma and resilience, and why these tough-to-write stories are so valuable to readers who need to find hope within their pages.

For the sake of love, people stretch far beyond their usual boundaries—and sometimes snap. In Geir Gulliksen’s “A Story of a Marriage,” a man exerts extreme empathy to understand his wife’s infidelity. In “Thomas and Beal in the Midi,” third in the acclaimed Mason saga, Christopher Tilghman depicts an interracial marriage in the mid-1850s where each partner gives up nearly everything (one, an estate; the other, family) to be together.

Seven women meet in a white void immediately after death…. A man, not realizing he’s dead, narrates his entire life in a single, riveting sentence…. Voices mingle in a shadowy forest, talking of borders, illegal crossings, and the market value of human beings. Take a liminal literary journey with three writers, who will describe how they created such brave, rule-breaking works of the imagination. Winners of the Finlandia Prize, the Goldsmiths Prize, and the Swiss Literature Award respectively, these international voices are taking the literary world by storm.

With the support of FILI – Finnish Literature Exchange; the Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation; Culture Ireland; the initiative “Wunderbar Together,“ initiated by the German Federal Foreign Office, the Goethe Institut, and supported by the Federation of German Industries (BDI); Goethe-Institut’s translation support program “Books First”; the Consulate General of Switzerland in San Francisco; and Pro Helvetia

Let’s talk about power: who has it, how it flows, and how it shapes the stories we write in overt and hidden ways. What kind of universes do we build for our characters to live in? What decides the agency, authority, and control they claim or lack? Novelists Nona Caspers, May-Lee Chai, and Michael David Lukas of the San Francisco State University MFA program investigate how power shows up in their work and in their own writing practices.

This program will have ASL interpreters.

How far will a mother go for her child? In Vanessa Hua’s “River of Stars,” a mother’s love carries her across the ocean and then some, all in the name of protecting her baby. In Lydia Kiesling’s “The Golden State,” a mother takes her young child on a road trip that defies the conventions of the genre. In “We Live for the We,” Dani McClain explores the power and responsibility of her own love as a new mother to a Black child in America. These three authors explore the voracious worry, stubborn hope, and deep love of 21st century motherhood.

Known for casting a gimlet eye on her generation’s ambivalence and ambition, celebrated American novelist and short story writer Ann Beattie returns with her twenty-first book. “A Wonderful Stroke of Luck” explores the complicated relationship between a charismatic teacher and his students, and the secrets people keep from those they love. Join Beattie in conversation with her friend Carol Edgarian, author, publisher, and co-founder of Narrative, which publishes more than three hundred writers and artists annually and advances literature in the digital age.

In our Writer to Writer series, two writers who are fans of each other’s work come together for a conversation. Carmen Maria Machado, National Book Award finalist and author of “Her Body and Other Parties” and the forthcoming memoir “In the Dream House,” sits down with Lacy Johnson, author of “The Other Side” and “The Reckonings,” which was hailed by The Millions as “a collection that converses with itself and the reader, asking us to question our beliefs and our roles in a system that perpetuates violence.” The two discuss how they navigate their way through the thorny narrative terrain of abuse, discovering agency and power in the process.

Three award-winning Canadian writers converge on one stage to recount their adventures in literary risk-taking and rule-breaking. Esi Edugyan’s richly spun historical epic “Washington Black” celebrates the genius of an escaped slave (not the white man who freed him). Sheila Heti’s “Motherhood” is a searingly honest rumination on whether or not to have children. André Alexis’s surreal and hallucinatory “Days By Moonlight” defies all conventions. Join these authors for a look at the leaps they took and the rewards they reaped.

Hurricane Maria has permanently altered the Caribbean. While journalists did initial reporting on the disaster, the first books to be published about the hurricane are popular fiction. NYC’s Edgardo Miranda-Rodriguez, the creator of the superhero La Borinqueña, assembled “Ricanstruction: Reminiscing and Rebuilding Puerto Rico,” a comic anthology fundraiser to benefit survivors on the island. Berkeley author Aya de Leon’s next feminist heist book “Side Chick Nation” will be the first print novel about the hurricane. Join these two Puerto Rican writers to discuss the challenges of writing about disaster and why popular fiction has the power to bring the pueblo together around urgent issues.

Come hear three rising literary stars! From a house party in Brooklyn, to the mountains of southern Colorado, to the rapidly changing streets of the nation’s capital, these story collections travel the full trajectory and vibrate with vivid prose. Jamel Brinkley (“A Lucky Man,” finalist for the National Book Award), Camille Acker (“Training School for Negro Girls”), and Kali Fajardo-Anstine (“Sabrina and Corina”) have written coming-of-age stories anchored by young characters who are discovering power and loss, learning the rules and how to break them.

Come meet four writers who’ve placed dynamic women crime solvers at the center of their stories. Everyone’s favorite Paris détective très chic, Aimée Leduc from Cara Black’s “Murder on the Left Bank” confronts a cabal of corrupt Parisian cops, including one who masterminded her father’s murder. Detective Lena Stigersand from Kjell Ola Dahl’s “The Ice Swimmer” must solve the case of a dead man lifted from the Oslo Harbour while juggling a cancer scare, stalker, and untrustworthy boyfriend. With one foot on each side of the law, Detective Leona Lindberg in Jenny Rogneby’s “Any Means Necessary” investigates a terrorist attack in the heart of Stockholm. Bookstore owner and PI Nikki Griffin from S. A. Lelchuk’s “Save Me From Dangerous Men” tracks down men who hurt women to teach them a lesson, but when something goes wrong, she is no longer just solving a case—she’s trying to stay alive.

Global politics affect young people as much as anyone else, but they have little to no voice as major decisions are made. Join us for a discussion featuring noted journalist, filmmaker, author, and immigration rights activist Jose Antonio Vargas with youth delegates from the International Congress of Youth Voices. They’ll discuss mass incarceration, immigration, and the importance of youth voices in activism. Youth in the audience are encouraged to jump in!

One of the “Angola 3,” Albert Woodfox endured four decades of solitary confinement for a crime he did not commit. While his story has been profiled by many publications, today we have an opportunity to hear from him directly. From the epilogue of his just-published memoir, “Solitary,” come these powerful words: “To those of you who are just entering the world of social struggle, welcome. To those of you who have spent years struggling for human rights and social justice, don’t give up. Look at me and see how the strength and determination of the human spirit defies all evil.” In our closing keynote session, Woodfox will be interviewed by Mother Jones reporter Shane Bauer, author of “American Prison” and himself a survivor of solitary confinement when he was arrested in Iran and held for two years in the notorious Evin Prison.

Introduced by Kate Harrison, Berkeley City Council Member (Downtown).

“Robert Scheer: Above the Fold” profiles the renowned journalist whose six-decade career spans Ramparts magazine, the legendary San Francisco muckraker; the Los Angeles Times, where he wrote a nationally syndicated column; and Truthdig, the award-winning news site. The film also recounts Scheer’s involvement in Berkeley politics, including a campaign for Congress in the 1960s. His extraordinary body of work reminds us that journalism, at its best, is about pursuing the truth at all costs. Filmmakers Brogan de Paor and Julie Thompson will introduce the film. A conversation after the screening will feature Robert Scheer; Susan Griffin, author; Steve Wasserman, publisher of Heyday Books; and Peter Richardson (“A Bomb in Every Issue: How the Short, Unruly Life of Ramparts Magazine Changed America”).

As highlighted by urgent op-eds and leading journalists, the November 2020 election will be disrupted, perhaps severely, by the COVID-19 pandemic. There’s a secure and well-studied solution available: voting by mail, which promises to protect public health and the integrity of our democracy. What are the pathways to making vote-by-mail widely available? What are the challenges? Who implements this kind of policy change, and where? And, with the most consequential election of our lifetimes less than six months away, how can citizens organize to push for this bipartisan mandate and actually get results within an urgent timeframe?

Jesse Wegman has written about the Supreme Court and legal affairs for the New York Times editorial board since 2013, and his book Let the People Pick the President: The Case for Abolishing the Electoral College was praised by National Book Award winner and MacArthur fellow Annette Gordon-Reed as a “timely and erudite work that should interest all who are interested in the future of the United States.” He’s joined by Amber McReynolds, CEO for the National Vote At Home Institute and Coalition and co-author of When Women Vote. These nationally recognized experts on voting rights, the Constitution, and electoral law engage in a spirited and forward-looking conversation moderated by Ian Haney Lopez, author of Merge Left, which astutely examines the role of coded racism in contemporary political campaigns.

Want to take action in response to what you hear? Check out our Resources page!

Our series on Voting Rights has been generously supported by the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, Stephen M. Silberstein Foundation, Guy and Jeanine Saperstein, and Mal Warwick Donordigital.

And a special thank you to our distribution partners, including AJC Decatur Book Festival (Decatur, GA), JLF Colorado (Boulder, CO), Literary Arts (Portland, OR), and the Wisconsin Book Festival (Madison, WI).

Recommended Reading

Amber McReynolds, When Women Vote
Jesse Wegman, et the People Pick the President: The Case for Abolishing the Electoral College.
Ian Haney Lopez, Merge Left: Fusing Race and Class, Winning Elections, and Saving America

Order your copies from one of our independent bookstore partners

Renee Diop of Cinnamongirl, Inc, an Oakland-based nonprofit that empowers girls of color with mentorship and educational opportunities, will moderate a discussion between two top middle grade authors whose work explores young people’s inner and outer courage. Kate O’Shaughnessy’s The Lonely Heart of Maybelle Lane, praised by Publishers Weekly as “a lyrical and full of heart road trip story” that “gets to the core of what it means to create family, to be brave, and to accept the flaws of being human,” chronicles the journey of a teen girl, passionate about sounds and music, who takes a huge risk to search for her father, but ends up finding herself. And Ernesto Cisneros’ Efren Divided, which Sandra Cisneros praised as “a book doing work of the spirit in a time of darkness,” tells the story of a teen boy, the son of undocumented parents, who must channel his own strength and bravery when his mother is deported.

Recommended Reading

Ernesto Cisneros – Efrén Divided
Kate O’Shaughnessy – The Lonely Heart of Maybelle Lane

Order your copies from one of our independent bookstore partners

In a time where COVID-19 looms over us all, difficult conversations about death have become a very real part of life. But from living rooms to hospital rooms, there’s widespread resistance to delving into this important topic that touches us all. We tend to perceive death as too scary, too ugly, too overwhelming to acknowledge—let alone something to approach in a peaceful, prepared way. In this informative, enlightening, and truly comforting discussion, four remarkable experts show families and individuals how to take a clear-eyed, compassionate approach to mortality, one’s own and that of loved ones. These authors shed light on how medical providers and patients alike can reshape the mentality of fear around the process of dying and create a much better experience for all, one that can be transformative and extremely meaningful. By exercising agency in planning for the “best possible death,” we can create our best possible life.

This revelatory conversation features journalist Shoshana Berger and palliative care physician BJ Miller, co-authors of A Beginner’s Guide to the End: Practical Advice for Living Life and Facing Death, praised by The Washington Post as “a gentle, knowledgeable guide to a fate we all share.” They are joined by award-winning journalist and bestselling writer Katy Butler, author of two groundbreaking books about the end of life: Knocking on Heaven’s Door, the Path to a Better Way of Death, and her latest, The Art of Dying Well: A Practical Guide to a Good End of Life, hailed as “a roadmap to the end” that “combines medical, practical, and spiritual guidance” (The Boston Globe). Moderated by Dr. Sunita Puri, whose memoir That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour is a “profound exploration for what it means for all of us to live—and to die—with dignity and purpose” (People Magazine). Dr. Puri is currently on the frontlines working with COVID-19 patients as the Medical Director of the Palliative Medicine and Supportive Care Service at the Keck Hospital and Norris Cancer Center of the University of Southern California.

Recommended Reading

“Suspense is like a woman,” said Hitchcock. “The more left to the imagination, the more the excitement.” Well, these two women are coming for Hitchcock’s crown with some of the most spine-tingling, sophisticated thrillers being written today. Meg Gardiner, bestselling novelist and president of Mystery Writers of America, was fittingly called “Hitchcockian” by USA Today. She specializes in heroines with big brains, from FBI agents to forensic psychiatrists to firecracker journalists (Stephen King called her Evan Delaney novels “the finest crime-suspense series I’ve come across in the last twenty years”). And Rachel Howzell Hall, author of the Detective Elouise Norton series, has created an unforgettable protagonist described by The New York Times as “someone you want on your side.” Hall’s newest, which ABC News calls her “breakout novel,” is They all Fall Down, a wickedly clever mystery set on a pristine—and deadly—island paradise in Mexico.

Listen to these two leading ladies of suspense as they crack the case of how to make readers stay up all night. Moderated by Laurie King, an Edgar Award-winning author of detective fiction and President of the Northern California chapter of Mystery Writers of America.

Recommended Reading

Meg Gardiner, The Dark Corners of the Night
Rachel Howzell Hall, They All Fall Down
Laurie King, Beginnings

Order your copies from one of our independent bookstore partners

Murder, werewolves and guns: oh my! The teen protagonists in these riveting novels by Randy Ribay and Romina Garber are driven to reconcile dangerous mysteries at home and abroad. When Jay, the American teenage protagonist of Patron Saints of Nothing, discovers that his Filiopino cousin has been murdered in the midst of President Duerte’s war on drugs, he travels to the Philippines to investigate, and uncovers dark secrets that he never bargained for. Manuela, the undocumented Argentine teen at the center of Garber’s Lobizona: A Novel (Wolves of No World Book 1), is thrown into chaos when her mother is arrested by ICE, and follows a trail of clues that lead her to a secret and mystical world straight out of Argentine folklore. In a conversation moderated by Madison Harvey, sophomore at Oakland’s Head Royce School and member of Cinnamongirl, Inc, these authors delve into immigration, belonging, and how, in order to emerge into the light, we sometimes have to take a deep dive into the dark.

Recommended Reading

Romina Garber – Lobizona: A Novel – Wolves of No World Book 1
Randy Ribay – Patron Saints of Nothing

Order your copies from one of our independent bookstore partners

Who holds America’s future in their hands? Who has the potential to dramatically reshape our political landscape, just by exercising the right to vote? The past few years have seen an exciting infusion of political engagement from a diverse electorate as young people, people of color, and single women are mobilizing and making their voices heard. For every victory and milestone, however, there is an equally coordinated—if insidious—attempt to disenfranchise these citizens from turning out to vote. From polling station closures to gerrymandering, from voter ID laws to the purging of voter rolls, suppressive tactics are deliberate, methodical, and ubiquitous.

We’ll learn how to unrig the rules to ensure these rising new voices—and their votes—are counted, with insights from bestselling authorities on voting rights: Steve Phillips, founder of Democracy in Color and author of Brown Is the New White: How the Demographic Revolution Has Created a New American Majority, and David Daley, author of Unrigged: How Americans Are Battling Back to Save Democracy and the 2016 bestseller Ratf***ed: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count, which has become an urgent reference point for the upcoming post-census round of redistricting. Moderated by indigenous activist and journalist Rebecca Nagle, whose groundbreaking podcast, This Land, won the prestigious American Mosaic Journalism Prize.

Want to take action in response to what you hear? Check out our Resources page!

Our series on Voting Rights has been generously supported by the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, Stephen M. Silberstein Foundation, Guy and Jeanine Saperstein, and Mal Warwick Donordigital.
And a special thank you to our distribution partners, including AJC Decatur Book Festival (Decatur, GA), JLF Colorado (Boulder, CO), Literary Arts (Portland, OR), and the Wisconsin Book Festival (Madison, WI).

Recommended Reading

We’re thrilled to welcome debut novelist Chelsea Bieker in conversation with Brooke Warner, publisher of She Writes Press and SparkPress. Bieker’s explosive literary debut Godshot (Catapult/March 2020), praised by bestseller Kristen Arnett as “a beautiful blow to the heart,” is a hymn to the salvation found in hard-won personal rebirth. Stricken with drought, the once-verdant community of Peaches, California clings to a cult leader for salvation, and 14-year-old Lacey, abandoned by her mother, is left to reap a revelatory, fraught harvest of her own. Godshot has won Bieker rapturous comparisons to Margaret Atwood, Emma Cline, and Janet Fitch; but the beauty of her “absolute masterpiece” (T. Kira Madden) lies in Lacey’s incomparable voice: the voice of a brokenhearted believer, by turns darkly funny and achingly tender, who you’ll miss after turning the last page. Go deep with Bieker and Brooke Warner, as they plumb the depths of one unforgettable girl’s miraculous journey to fertile ground.

Recommended Reading

Chelsea Bieker, Godshot
Brooke Warner, Write on Sisters!

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“As a woman I have no country. As a woman, my country is the whole world.” In 1929 England, Virginia Woolf, in “A Room of One’s Own,” expressed a sentiment of subversion, independence, and integrity that is all too pertinent for female writers in contemporary America. Our Stories, Our Voices, a “truthful and empowering” (Booklist) anthology of exciting YA voices, carries Woolf’s torch for a new and diverse generation across the pond, showcasing essays on experiences of injustice, empowerment, and growing up female in America. In this bracing and necessary conversation, Renee Diop, a budding young novelist from Cinnamongirl, Inc, will discuss coming-of-age, rising above bias and obstacles, and fearless creativity with anthology contributors Anna-Marie McLemore, a Latinx virtuoso of magical realism whose books have been lauded in “best of” lists from Kirkus and Booklist and chosen as New York Times Editors’ Choice selections; and #1 New York Times bestselling YA author Ellen Hopkins. Come for a cross-generational conversation filled with solidarity, hope, and inspiration for all young women called to express their best, brightest, and boldest selves.

Recommended Reading

Ellen Hopkins, Anna-Marie McLemore e.o. – Our Stories, Our Voices: 21 YA Authors Get Real About Injustice, Empowerment, and Growing Up Female in America

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We’ve all seen the images from the recent in-person election in Wisconsin: people lined up wearing masks, some holding signs saying “THIS IS RIDICULOUS,” as they risked deadly COVID-19 illness and violated a shelter-in-place order simply to exercise the right to vote. Perhaps the most disturbing part of this scenario was the fact that it wouldn’t have happened without a last-minute ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that rolled back an absentee ballot extension period that had been put in place expressly to mitigate contagion potential from in-person voting. With less than six months to go until the 2020 Presidential election, and with the COVID-19 pandemic expected to remain in full force, can we expect a repeat of the debacle in Wisconsin—this time, on a national scale? In the aftermath of 2013’s Shelby County v. Holder verdict that shattered the Voting Rights Act, how much can we rely on our courts as the last line of defense in our right to vote?

Three nationally recognized experts will lead us through the role of the courts in ensuring voters’ access to vital options like absentee ballots and early voting, and show us how everyday citizens can act now to shape the judiciary in the short and long term. Featuring legal scholar Richard Hasen, whose Election Meltdown was deemed “required reading for legislators and voters” by Kirkus in a starred review; Constitutional scholar Alan Hirsch, whose A Short History of Presidential Election Crises was praised as “lucid, balanced, and deeply informed” by Elizabeth Kolbert; and renowned civil rights leader Abdi Soltani, executive director of the ACLU of Northern California. Moderated by Lala Wu, whose Sister District Project enlists 40,000 women nationwide in the fight to win crucial state legislative elections.

Want to take action in response to what you hear? Check out our Resources page!

Our series on Voting Rights has been generously supported by the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, Stephen M. Silberstein Foundation, Guy and Jeanine Saperstein, and Mal Warwick Donordigital.
And a special thank you to our distribution partners, including AJC Decatur Book Festival (Decatur, GA), JLF Colorado (Boulder, CO), Literary Arts (Portland, OR), and the Wisconsin Book Festival (Madison, WI).

Recommended Reading

Richard Hasen, Election Meltdown: Dirty Tricks, Distrust, and the Threat to American Democracy
Alan Hirsch, A Short History of Presidential Election Crises: (And How to Prevent the Next One)

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In our Writer to Writer series, two writers who are fans of each other’s work come together for a conversation. Garth Greenwell’s most recent book, Cleanness, was described in Harpers as “an electrifying portrait of sex’s power to lacerate and liberate, to make and unmake our deepest selves…The book’s sex scenes unfold like revelations, effortlessly braiding inner drama with precisely choreographed intimacy.” And Greenwell, writing in The New Yorker, has called Lidia Yuknavitch’s sex scenes “remarkable among current American novelists, not just for their explicitness but for the way she uses them to pursue questions of agency, selfhood, and the ethical implications of making art.” Come listen in as two of contemporary literature’s most incendiary writers talk about the relationships between queer bodies and sex, language and literary citizenship, and the moral and artistic complexities of desire and power. Moderated by Keiko Lane, writer, poet, and former faculty member at the California Institute of Integral Studies.

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Recommended Reading

Garth Greenwell, Cleanness
Lidia Yuknavitch, Verge

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The fundamental right to vote is under attack in America: a truth that became glaringly obvious during the fraught midterm elections of 2018. Brave New Films’ “scary and galvanizing” (Variety) documentary Suppressed: The Fight to Vote shines a light on the hotly contested Georgia governor’s race between Stacey Abrams and Brian Kemp: a race that came to stand for the corrupt and systematic oppression of voters’ rights taking place across the nation. Get informed, fired up, and empowered by this searing and necessary short film, and stay for a rousing post-screening conversation between director Robert Greenwald,  Atlanta college student Phoebe Einzig-Roth—whose infuriating struggle to vote for the first time was documented in the film—and moderator John Diaz of the San Francisco Chronicle.

Want to take action in response to what you hear? Check out our Resources page!

Our series on Voting Rights has been generously supported by the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, Stephen M. Silberstein Foundation, Guy and Jeanine Saperstein, and Mal Warwick Donordigital.
And a special thank you to our distribution partners, including AJC Decatur Book Festival (Decatur, GA), JLF Colorado (Boulder, CO), Literary Arts (Portland, OR), and the Wisconsin Book Festival (Madison, WI).

Bridging divides and unveiling secrets are the name of the game in two fascinating fantasy novels by YA virtuosos. In Maggie Tokuda-Hall’s fantasy debut, The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea, Florian and Evelyn cross lines of class and identity to fall in love, crossing paths with haunting mythical creatures and double agents along the way to their shared fate. And Rebecca Hanover’s The Pretenders, her thrilling conclusion to The Similars duology, follows troubled, secret-ravaged Emma in her struggle to stop a dangerous vengeful plan, figure out her true identity, and decide between two boys with eerily identical faces. A bracing and magical discussion moderated by brilliant young bookworm Jennifer Leon, junior at Berkeley Highschool and a member of Cinnamongirl, Inc.

Recommended Reading

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Laila Butcher, junior at San Leandro High School and member of Cinnamongirl Inc., will have an electrifying conversation with author Rahul Kanakia about self-acceptance, finding love in unconventional places, and deriving confidence from the traits that make you stand out from the crowd. In Rahul Kanakia’s We Are Totally Normal, Nandan, a junior in high school, becomes more than just friends with his longtime bestie, Dave: a journey that leads him to come to terms with his own sexuality and desires. A big-hearted, warmly inclusive session about love, honesty, and courage.

Recommended Reading

Rahul Kanakia – We Are Totally Normal

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Carol Anderson is one of our nation’s leading voices on racial justice. In her National Book Critics Circle Award-winning bestseller White Rage, she chronicled the history of systemic injustices that have impeded black progress in America, from Reconstruction to the present day. In One Person, No Vote, longlisted for the National Book Award, she zeros in on the fallout from the 2013 Supreme Court ruling that gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This “impeccably researched, deftly written” (Minneapolis Star Tribune) book offers a whip-smart, riveting analysis of the disenfranchisement of voters of color, with insights that have proven, in the aftermath of the 2018 midterm elections, to be resoundingly prescient — and, for the 2020 elections, more urgent than ever.

Anderson will be in conversation with Congresswoman Barbara Lee, one of the most well-regarded, outspoken, and trailblazing members of the U.S. House of Representatives, and currently the only African American woman in House Democratic leadership. This empowering and galvanizing conversation will enlighten us about how voter suppression has worked in the past and, most importantly, what we can do now to deny it a future.

Want to take action in response to what you hear? Check out our Resources page!

Our series on Voting Rights has been generously supported by the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, Stephen M. Silberstein Foundation, Guy and Jeanine Saperstein, and Mal Warwick Donordigital.
And a special thank you to our distribution partners, including AJC Decatur Book Festival (Decatur, GA), JLF Colorado (Boulder, CO), Literary Arts (Portland, OR), and the Wisconsin Book Festival (Madison, WI).

Recommended Reading

Carol Anderson, One Person, No Vote

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This event is for everyone who’s ever been moved by a writer’s uncanny gift for describing the indescribable: a gift that makes us feel seen and understood in all our complexity. It’s a gift we need now, more than ever. A novelist’s stock in trade is plumbing the emotional landscape of characters experiencing freefall, upheaval, uncertainty—just as all of us are experiencing, in some measure, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. When the overwhelming emotions of this current moment render us speechless, who better to break the silence and put words to complicated feelings than some of contemporary literature’s most groundbreaking, humane, and breathtaking voices?

Acclaimed novelist R.O. Kwon’s transcendent New York Times essay about grief in lockdown was the inspiration for this conversation. Joining her are Anthony Doerr, whose blockbuster World War II novel All the Light We Cannot See illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another; and Viet Thanh Nguyen, whose witty, exquisite The Sympathizer captures the ambivalence and humanity of “a man of two minds” in the midst of a traumatic war. Moderated by award-winning author Danielle Evans, who recently penned a beautiful essay about sheltering-in-place for The Sewanee Review’s “Corona Correspondences” series.

This ticketed live event, a fundraiser for the Bay Area Book Festival, will take us beyond the headlines and tweets into a raw, cathartic conversation about navigating lockdown, loss, and massive change. In the midst of this strange time, an hour of deep connection can bring hope and courage to us all.

Recommended Reading

Trust bestselling author and historian Adam Hochschild to unearth one of history’s forgotten heroines and give her story the page-turning treatment it deserves. Russian immigrant Rose Pastor Stokes spent her first twelve years in America in a sweatshop, only to skyrocket to the upper class when she married an heir to a massive mining and real estate fortune. It’s a classic Cinderella story: that is, if Cinderella converted her prince to socialism, became an antiwar and labor activist, caused a scandal by promoting birth control access, and was dubbed “one of the most dangerous influences of the country” by a sitting President.

This tale of a volatile, bright-burning Gilded Age marriage could only exist in the America of Jay Gatsby, bootleggers, and the Lost Generation: an era of glamour and privation, of big dreams and bigger inequities. An era, as Hochschild reveals, with far more parallels to our own than anything in the Brothers Grimm. Only Hochshild could do justice, in words and images, to a crusader who was far ahead of her own time, but strikingly relevant to ours. Hochschild will be joined by Monika Bauerlein, CEO and award-winning editor of Mother Jones.

Recommended Reading

Adam Hochschild, Rebel Cinderella

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This empowering, exhilarating session is for every young woman who wants to live a life of epic adventure and build the world she wants to see. With Girls Garage, Emily Pilloton, founder and director of the groundbreaking and beloved Berkeley organization of the same name, makes everything from carpentry and welding to fixing things around your house accessible, exciting, and fun for girls 14 and up who want to take power—and power tools—into their own hands. The Girls Garage book invites all girls to speak up, stand out, and join a movement of fearless builder girls everywhere. She’s joined by Caroline Paul, one of the first female firefighters in San Francisco, whose ode to fearless adventure and bravery, The Gutsy Girl, was praised by bestselling memoirist Cheryl Strayed (Wild) as “the book of the year for daredevils, doers, and dreamers of all ages.” Once a young scaredy-cat, Caroline overcame her fears and embraced her passions, and The Gutsy Girl shows a new generation how they can do the same. At a time when feelings of fear and powerlessness may be creeping in, every young woman will be inspired by this conversation celebrating confidence, self-reliance, hope, and audacity.

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Recommended Reading

Caroline Paul – The Gutsy Girl: Escapades for Your Life of Epic Adventure
Emily Pilloton – Girls Garage: How to Use Any Tool, Tackle Any Project, and Build the World You Want to See

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In our Writer to Writer series, two writers who are fans of each other’s work come together for a conversation. This one couldn’t be more urgent. In “The Witness We Bear,” two extraordinary poets, Pulitzer Prize winner Jericho Brown (The Tradition) and National Book Award winner Nikky Finney (Love Child’s Hotbed of Occasional Poetry), continue a dialogue that began 20 years ago, when Jericho was Nikky’s student. Much has changed since those days, but what hasn’t is their mutual dedication to bearing witness to hard truths through art.

In this transcendent, thought-provoking, and deeply personal conversation, two of the most prominent poets in America today share their own responses to the murders of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd, address the protests against police brutality and white supremacy, and describe the revolutionary power of poetry to capture human experience. They discuss what it means to be a teacher and learner, and how “place” and history shape us as people and artists. They offer us their own experiences of finding power and hope, even in the midst of heartbreak. As Jericho says, “One of the ways we know we’re magical people is by how much we manage to do with broken hearts.” Join this magical conversation, moderated by Ismail Muhammad, reviews editor for The Believer, board member at the National Book Critics Circle, and Program Committee member at the Bay Area Book Festival.

Recommended Reading

Jericho Brown, The Tradition
Nikky Finney, Love Child’s Hotbed of Occasional Poetry

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The blockbuster Swedish suspense phenomenon Lars Kepler, famed for the #1 internationally bestselling Joona Linna series, is actually two people: husband-and-wife duo Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril and Alexander Ahndoril. Their first book, 2009’s mega-bestselling The Hypnotist, stirred up intrigue beyond its own riveting pages, as the media frantically sleuthed to uncover Lars Kepler’s real identity: a secret finally revealed at a press conference that became Sweden’s biggest story of that summer. Both halves of this dynamic duo were already acclaimed authors before they joined forces, but as a crime-fiction team, they’ve sold millions of copies in 40 languages. Come for a rare, fascinating look behind the curtain of this powerhouse literary couple’s creative process, as they share the ins and outs of creating ghoulishly razor-sharp fiction as a team, the origins of their most iconic characters and storylines, and the artistic freedom that comes from collaboration. Moderated by Jesse Kellerman, no stranger to collaboration himself, having co-written New York Times bestselling crime novels—praised as “brilliant, page-turning fiction” by Stephen King—with his father, Jonathan Kellerman.

Sponsored By

Recommended Reading

Lars Kepler, The Rabbit Hunter
Jesse Kellerman, Half Moon Bay – forthcoming in July 2020, available now for pre-order

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Love of all kinds–self-love, romantic love, love of family and heritage–takes center stage in this conversation between two renowned YA authors, moderated by Jasmine Edwards, senior of Bentley School in Lafayette and a member of Cinnamongirl, Inc. Misa Sugiura’s This Time Will be Different introduces us to CJ, who discovers a hidden talent for floral arrangement in her family’s flower shop–only to make another discovery that leads her to fight, for the first time in her life, for what’s important to her. In Abigail Hing Wen’s Loveboat, Taipei, Ever Wong has a summer in Taiwan she’ll never forget, on an anything-goes Loveboat where adult supervision is nil and every student–including Ever herself–has a secret. This coming-of-age conversation grapples powerfully with the truths and milestones of growing up and growing into yourself.

Recommended Reading

Misa Sugiura – This Time Will be Different
Abigail Hing Wen – Love, Taipei

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Bestselling journalist and author David Talbot (Season of the Witch), founder and former editor-in-chief of Salon, is known for his out-of-the-box, headline-making insights on everything from current events to popular culture to hidden history, so it’s not surprising that he wrote an illness memoir with a twist. His lauded Between Heaven and Hell: The Story of My Stroke intimately chronicles the life-changing year following his massive stroke — a year he writes that “saved” him, and not just in a medical sense. In a moving account praised by Dave Eggers as “a deeply affecting examination of mortality, ambition and the priorities of a man who dodged death to live better days,” Talbot details a process of deeply personal and social transformation.

From the remarkable care he received on the stroke ward of Davies Hospital to daily life in recovery, this Type-A journalist was forced to slow down radically, depend on the kindness of others, and learn the day-to-day value of what truly matters. Toward that end, he is launching a new venture, a podcasting network powered by Bay Area talent and based on progressive “San Francisco values.” David will share his experience and new plans in conversation with Sir Michael Moritz, a journalist, author, and venture capitalist who helped launch some of the world’s most significant tech companies of the past 30 years. If you’ve ever wondered what good can come of hardship, or how resilience and humility can work together to move mountains, you won’t want to miss this fascinating, life-affirming conversation.

Recommended Reading

David Talbot, Between Heaven and Hell: The Story of My Stroke
Sir Michael Mortiz, Return to the Little Kingdom: How Apple and Steve Jobs Changed the World

Get fired up for this inspiring and rabble-rousing conversation, perfect for kids who love rooting for the underdog and discovering the power of teamwork, inner strength, and what’s really important in life. San Francisco Chronicle sports columnist Scott Ostler is the author of Bouncing Back (“a sports story that’s as heartwarming as it is action-packed” – Kirkus), which introduces us to Carlos, the star player in his old basketball league, who, after a shocking incident changes his life, discovers a new definition of “winning” as a member of a wheelchair basketball team. Author Mae Respicio‘s Any Day with You explores the real meaning of “winning” as well, taking us on aspiring California filmmaker Kaia’s quest to win a filmmaking contest as a way of convincing her great-grandfather not to move back to the Philippines. Said Booklist, “this book will leave readers with smiles on their faces and tears in their eyes.” This conversation, moderated by local book-lover and middle-grade student Quinn Boyd-Roberts, will get you inspired, moved, and ready to take on the world.

Recommended Reading

Scott Ostler – Bouncing Back
Mae Respicio – Any Day With You

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The trajectory of Eimear McBride’s career is an underdog’s dream: she spent six months writing her debut novel, A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing, and nine years trying to sell it, only to take the literary scene by storm when it was finally published in 2013 to an avalanche of acclaim, awards (including the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction), and rapturous comparisons to James Joyce and Samuel Beckett. Now, McBride is joining Women Lit in a live virtual conversation with Brooke Warner, publisher of She Writes Press and SparkPress, in celebration of her eagerly awaited new novel, Strange Hotel, which further cements her singular place in the contemporary canon. As unforgettable as her debut, McBride’s latest book depicts a rootless woman’s exile as she hotel-hops across the globe, seeking to quash her ghosts and escape the dangers that haunt her.

Recommended Reading

Eimear McBride, Strange Hotel
Brooke Warner, Write On, Sisters!

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This empowering, informative program, moderated by Khepera Lyons-Clark, senior of Bentley School and a member of Cinnamongirl, Inc, is the young-adult complement to BABF’s robust Voting Rights Program, a centerpiece of our 2020 virtual programming in response to this year’s hugely consequential election and the challenges posed to voting rights due to COVID-19. Aimed at teens who will be first-time voters in 2020, this panel features bestselling National Book Critics Circle Award winner Carol Anderson with the YA edition of her seminal book One Person, No Vote; award-winning author Liz Rusch with You Call This Democracy?, and author and journalist Jeff Fleischer with Votes of Confidence: A Young Person’s Guide to American Elections.

Want to take action in response to what you hear? Check out our Resources page!

Our series on Voting Rights has been generously supported by the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, Stephen M. Silberstein Foundation, Guy and Jeanine Saperstein, and Mal Warwick Donordigital.
And a special thank you to our distribution partners, including AJC Decatur Book Festival (Decatur, GA), JLF Colorado (Boulder, CO), Literary Arts (Portland, OR), and the Wisconsin Book Festival (Madison, WI).

Recommended Reading

Carol Anderson – One Person, No Vote (YA Edition): How Not All Voters Are Treated Equally
Elizabeth Rusch – You Call This Democracy?
Jeff Fleischer – Votes of Confidence: A Young Person’s Guide to American Elections

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 “Old age” has been defined as beginning between ages 60 and 70, meaning most people spend more of their lives in elderhood than they do in childhood. Despite the fact that we’re beginning to live longer, more fulfilling lives, many of us dread entering our golden years. But what if we had another way of approaching this richly complex phase of life? Louise Aronson, New York Times bestselling author, geriatrician, and Professor of Medicine at UCSF, recently sparked discussion with her necessary, clear-eyed Times essay on the perceived value of elders’ lives in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. This piece is a fitting complement to Elderhood, a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction. In this illuminating and incisive book, which has drawn comparisons to Oliver Sacks as well as Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal, Aronson uses stories from her own life and experience with patients, as well as history, science, and pop culture, to illustrate a new, realistic, and groundbreaking approach to aging. This conversation between Aronson and KALW host Jeneé Darden promises to be a virtual hour of hope, connection, and frank discussion on what elderhood really is, and what it has the potential to be.

Sponsored By

bayer.us

Recommended Reading

Louise Aronson, Elderhood

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The Bay Area Book Festival is joining up with the hugely popular, community-building writing initiative National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo for short) for a special virtual “write-in” for middle-grade and high school writers, led by two popular YA guest authors, Mitali Perkins and Maggie Tokuda-Hall, who will provide writing tips and interactive prompts for participants. In this time of social isolation, NaNoWriMo has reported great demand for this communal, interactive “writing lab” that takes the self-consciousness and “inner editor” out of writing, sparks a spirit of playfulness and adventure, and includes options for participants to chat and build a sense of community.

 Recommended Reading

Maggie Tokuda-Hall, The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea
Mitali Perkins, Between Us and Abuela

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Homelessness, income inequality, mass incarceration, wage stagnation, housing shortages: COVID-19 didn’t create any of these things, but it did drag them blatantly and unmistakably into the light. With millions of Americans unemployed, uninsured, unable to pay rent, and at disproportionate risk of contracting COVID-19, it’s become impossible to avoid the fact that our social safety net has long been full of holes. Can this crisis be an opportunity to remake some of the structural inequities that have divided and stratified us for so long?

Experts on the front lines of these issues will delve deep into the context, history, and reality of some of our most entrenched ills, in “normal” times and extraordinary ones, and will discuss what we need to do to create a fairer future. Zach Norris, Executive Director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, makes a strong case for the importance of collective accountability with We Keep Us Safe: Building Secure, Just, and Inclusive Communities, which Just Mercy‘s Bryan Stevenson called “an enormous contribution in the effort to advance human rights in this country.” He’s joined by New York Times reporter and housing expert Conor Doughtery, author of Golden Gates, praised by The Washington Post as “a compelling and accessible overview of California’s housing crisis.”  Because no examination of inequality is complete without addressing one of California’s most deep-rooted issues—homelessness—we also welcome Joe Wilson, Executive Director of San Francisco’s Hospitality House, whose work on the front lines to protect unhoused people from the threat of COVID-19 has been shaped indelibly by his own past experiences living on the street. Discussion moderated by journalist Heather Knight, who regularly covers these issues for The San Francisco Chronicle.

Recommended Reading

Conor Dougherty, Golden Gates
Zach Norris, We Keep Us Safe: Building Secure, Just, and Inclusive Communities

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They say history is written by the winners. But when important stories and facts are suppressed, disguised, or forgotten, the worst patterns of history are doomed to repeat themselves–and no one wins. Kate Schatz and illustrator Miriam Stahl’s Rad American History A-Z: Movements & Moments that Demonstrate the Power of the People, uncovers the hiding-in-plain-sight histories they don’t teach you in school. In this conversation, which touches on Black Lives Matter, the Women’s March, the Stonewall riots, and Trump’s recent trouncing at the hands of teen Tiktok users, moderator Sammy Destin–member of Gender Sexuality Alliance, burgeoning activist, and eighth-grade wunderkind–steals the show, and shows us exactly how bright the future can be when we truly understand our history.

Event Aired: Saturday June 27, 11:00 AM PDT

Recommended Reading

Kate Schatz, Miriam Klein Stahl, Rad American History A-Z: Movements & Moments That Demonstrate the Power of the People

Catch it here first! Come see hosts Brooke Warner of She Writes and Grant Faulkner of NaNoWriMo interview Courtney Maum about her indispensable new book, Before and After the Book Deal, for the popular Write-minded podcast. This conversation delves into everything aspiring authors want and need to know but might be afraid to ask, and doesn’t shy away from scary and taboo topics like rejection, money, and how much you really need to be on social media if you want to be successful. Forget the conventional wisdom you may have heard: this session is a myth-buster, setting the record straight about the world of book publishing. It’s sure to empower any writer to tackle the important journey to publication, and to sort out the expectations of what you can, should, and shouldn’t do to maximize success along the way.

Recommended Reading

Courtney Maum, Before and After the Book Deal
Brooke Warner, Write On, Sisters!

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Our neighborhood eateries and watering holes are more than places to gather and break bread. For patrons, they’re cornerstones of community life. And for staff, they’re a second home and a labor of love. But the public health risk from COVID-19 is radically reshaping the dining-out landscape in America, with thousands of restaurants forced to close permanently. And those that stay open face a devastating new normal in an industry that’s always been notoriously tough. In a new world of takeout-only and meal delivery, employees who were already living paycheck-to-paycheck are risking their health in order to serve customers. Immigrant and undocumented industry workers–a significant portion of the restaurant workforce–face an especially precarious reality. How do we support the people who keep us fed?

Saru Jayaraman is president of One Fair Wage, an organization fighting for higher wages for tipped workers, many of them women of color. She’s joined by Caleb Zigas of La Cocina, an organization dedicated to creating equity in business ownership for women, immigrants, and people of color in the restaurant industry, and Soleil Ho, Restaurant Critic at the San Francisco Chronicle and former co-host of the Racist Sandwich podcast. Moderated by Davia Nelson, half (with her sister Nikki Silva) of the Peabody Award-winning public radio producer duo The Kitchen Sisters, whose series include NPR’s “Hidden Kitchens.”

 Recommended Reading

Saru Jayaraman, Bite Back
Caleb Zigas, We Are La Cocina: Recipes in Pursuit of the American Dream

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Introduction by award-winning filmmaker Louie Schwartzberg, the creator and director of the blockbuster documentary Fantastic Fungi. Plus, a brief montage of mind-blowing fungi images to open the event!

In 2016, a New Yorker profile by famed naturalist Robert Macfarlane introduced the world to one of the most important young thinkers of our age: Merlin Sheldrake. Moving from the labs of Cambridge to the jungles of Central America, this revolutionary plant scientist had a hunch that fungi possess superpowers far beyond the mushrooms we know, however mind-blowing their culinary or psychedelic varieties might be. He discovered that fungi are an ancient underground communication network that undergirds the natural world and offers inspiration for rethinking human society. Merlin’s riveting first book, Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures, has become an instant classic of nature and philosophy — a work of rigorous science and poetic expression, drawing us into the mystery and meaning of this most magical life form.

In our live conversation, Merlin and bestselling nature and culture writer Michael Pollan (How to Change Your Mind, The Omnivore’s Dilemma) will delve into “The Wood Wide Web”: an enchanting “superorganism” whose secrets just might save the world. This event is for everyone who believes that wonder still exists and hope can be found in the unlikeliest places: around us, under us, even inside us. You’ll come away with a sense of awe for “life’s labyrinths,” in Merlin’s words, where “some of the vexed hierarchies that underpin modern thought start to soften.”

Event requires book purchase or ticket ($20).
Free perks and special offers for ticket purchasers only,
such as a Back to the Roots Organic Mushroom Grow Kit! Info on ticketing page.

NOTE TO THOSE WHO WANT TO WATCH BUT CAN’T MAKE THE LIVE PROGRAM AT NOON: No worries! You can still see this amazing conversation and get the perks below. We’ll make an exclusive link available that same night to ticket-buyers who select that option instead of seeing the live event. Just buy the ticket of your choice, and, in the checkout window, click the box that states you would prefer to watch the event later. You’ll get the usual confirmation materials and perks, but instead of the noontime webinar link you’ll receive an email by 7pm that evening with a private link. Email ticketing@baybookfest.org  with any questions.

Recommended Reading

Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures

Michael Pollan, How to Change Your Mind

One war, three continents, and a quartet of necessary voices in conversation. Seventh-graders Quinn Boyd-Roberts and Tej Wong interview bestselling authors Lois Lowry and Jan Terlouw in a fascinating look at war, heroism, and humanity that transcends geography, nationality, and time. With On the Horizon, two-time Newbery Award medalist Lowry draws from her own childhood memories of Hawaii and Japan in an honest and empathetic account of lives lost and forever altered by the twin tragedies of Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima. Jan Terlouw’s Winter in Wartime has been in print for almost fifty years, for good reason: this beloved novel, based on Terlouw’s own boyhood in wartime Holland, is a young-adult classic with the suspenseful pacing of a thriller. Heroism, not war, takes center stage in this conversation: the everyday heroism of young people in extraordinary times, drawn from a well of universal humanity.

Event Airs: Saturday July 11, 11:00 AM PDT

The Bay Area Book Festival’s Writing Contest aims to encourage people to engage with the craft of writing. This year’s prompt was centered around the theme of expectations, and submissions were judged in three categories: Adult (18+), High School, and Middle School. There was a first, second, and third place winner in each category, and we’re excited to showcase many of them here. To read their full pieces, visit this page: https://www.baybookfest.org/2020-writing-contest/.

Recommended Reading

To read their full pieces, visit this page: https://www.baybookfest.org/2020-writing-contest/.

Dive into an exploration of female power and brilliance like you’ve never seen before with bestselling authors Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees, The Invention of Wings) and Lisa See (The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane) moderated by Aimee Phan (The Reeducation of Cherry Truong). Lisa’s latest novel, the multi-generational saga The Island of Sea Women, unforgettably brings us into the lives and adventures of Mi-ja and Young-sook, two best friends on the Korean island of Jeju, who join their village’s all-female diving collective at a tender age. Sue’s newest novel, The Book of Longings, praised by the New York Journal of Books as “a practically perfect historical novel…from a writer at the top of her game,” puts us in the skin of Ana, a gifted Galilee rebel whose chance encounter with Jesus Christ changes her life forever. Meet these phenomenal authors at the fascinating intersection between tradition and bold self-realization, where the roles of friend, daughter, iconoclast, and artist converge.

Recommended Reading

Sue Monk Kidd, The Book of Longings
Lisa See, The Island of Sea Women
Aimee Phan, The Reeducation of Cherry Truong

Order your copies from one of our independent bookstore partners

When this compelling all-star event aired live as a ticketed fundraiser in May 2020, the response was powerfully moving. “Incredible,” “fascinating,” and “you’re helping me to feel less isolated” were just a few of the comments from attendees. We’re thrilled to make this nourishing event available to everyone, at a time when its lessons and takeaways are more relevant than ever. Best-selling novelist R.O. Kwon’s New York Times essay about grief in times of uncertainty—an all-too-pertinent theme in our current moment—was the inspiration for this conversation. In a raw, emotionally profound exchange not without its moments of levity and transcendence, she was joined by Pulitzer Prize winners Anthony Doerr, whose blockbuster World War II novel All the Light We Cannot See illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another; and Viet Thanh Nguyen, whose witty, exquisite The Sympathizer captures the ambivalence and humanity of “a man of two minds” in the midst of a traumatic war. These literary luminaries share an uncanny gift for describing the indescribable, and that’s exactly what they do in a conversation that has made many of us feel seen and understood in all our complexity. Moderated by award-winning author Danielle Evans, whose beautiful Sewanee Review essay about sheltering-in-place, “How to Be Alone,” was recently adapted and updated for an episode of NPR’s “This American Life.”

Recommended Reading

Anthony Doerr, All The Light We Cannot See
Danielle Evans, Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self
R.O. Kwon, The Incendiaries
Viet Thahn Nguyen, The Sympathizer

Order your copies from one of our independent bookstore partners

The Graton Writing Project is a series of writing workshops open to middle- and high-school Native students from Sonoma, California, that culminates in a published youth anthology. This year, students were asked to write on the theme of environmental issues. Come hear the students read excerpts from their pieces and share their insights. Presented by the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria.

In 2016, a New Yorker profile by famed naturalist Robert Macfarlane introduced the world to one of the most important young thinkers of our age: Merlin Sheldrake. Moving from the labs of Cambridge to the jungles of Central America, this revolutionary plant scientist had a hunch that fungi possess superpowers far beyond the mushrooms we know, however mind-blowing their culinary or psychedelic varieties might be. He discovered that fungi are an ancient underground communication network that undergirds the natural world and offers inspiration for rethinking human society.

Merlin’s riveting first book, Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures, has become an instant classic of nature and philosophy — a work of rigorous science and poetic expression, drawing us into the mystery and meaning of this most magical life form.

In this conversation, which originally aired as a sold-out ticketed event and is now being made available to the public, Merlin and bestselling nature and culture writer Michael Pollan (How to Change Your Mind, The Omnivore’s Dilemma) delve into “The Wood Wide Web”: an enchanting “superorganism” whose secrets just might save the world. Their conversation had attendees on the edge of their seats, giving everyone a peek behind the curtain of a hidden world’s magic. “[Pollan and Sheldrake had] fantastic chemistry…It was a joy to witness” and “I am now obsessed with mushrooms,” were just a couple post-event reactions. We invite you to get obsessed, too. This event is for everyone who believes that wonder still exists and hope can be found in the unlikeliest places: around us, under us, even inside us.

Thank you to our program sponsors: Fantastic Fungi, Back to the Roots, MAPS, Mycological Society of San Francisco, Chacruna, Tam Integration, MUD/WTR, and 11th Hour Project.

Recommended Reading

Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures
Michael Pollan, How to Change Your Mind

Order your copies from one of our independent bookstore partners

Program Sponsors