One Story, Unlimited Possibilities: A Choose Your Own Adventure Workshop
If crafting the perfect ending is the hardest part of writing a story, how do you come up with more than two dozen endings? That's just one of the conundrums facing authors of Choose Your Own Adventure novels—in this workshop, artist and writer…
Musical Story Time
Fresh from their legendary residency at Freight & Salvage, Berkeley Public Library's Story Time Band is making a special appearance at the festival! We're pleased to welcome these local celebrities (and librarians!) who will entertain the…
Alta Live: Author Jane Smiley
Jane Smiley fans, get excited! The Pulitzer Prize–winning author’s forthcoming book, The Questions that Matter Most: Reading, Writing, and the Exercise of Freedom, explores a number of provocations around class, race, and gender in the Western…
Celebrate National Poetry Month!
Two nationally known award-winning poets read from their new works and talk about their influences and passions. Henri Coles explores the formality and density of the sonnet with its glorious layers of emotion with a contemporary twist in his…
German Writer Thomas Brussig with Jonathan Franzen
Thomas Brussig’s classic German novel, The Short End of the Sonnenallee, now appearing for the first time in English, is a moving and miraculously comic story of life in East Berlin before the fall of the Wall. Translator and author Jonathan…
Special All-Day Event: Where’s Waldo? Scavenger Hunt
That tricky Waldo has been hiding in plain sight for more than thirty-five years—now he's in Berkeley and sneaking around our book festival! Can you find him? We got a tip that he's made his way to the Outdoor Fair! Search in and around the…
Bagels with Writers
We’ll kick things off with complimentary bagels, spreads, coffee and tea, then gather to listen to our four authors, who will each share their best fifteen minutes of writing (and publishing ) advice. Then we'll open the floor for a half-hour…
Black Fire This Time
Inspired by Black Fire This Time, an anthology featuring over 100 poets and writers celebrating the roots and legacy of the Black Arts Movement, this writing workshop will feature Heather Buchanan. Buchanan presents writing workshops and readings…
Survive & Thrive: A Literary Reading & Conversation with Devi S. Laskar & Lucy Jane Bledsoe
What is redemption? How do you get it? How is it different from revenge? Multi-award winning authors Lucy Jane Bledsoe and Devi S. Laskar will read from their new novels and discuss how they write with an eye toward redemption that is true…
Spies & Journalists: Daughters Breaking Silence
Leslie Absher, daughter of a CIA father, and Eric Newton, husband of the late author and Bay Area journalist Mary Ann Hogan, discuss how memoir led each writer to better understand themselves and their secretive fathers. This is a free e…