CurbFest for Political Prisoners
Connecting organizers, community members, and political education, CurbFest for Political Prisoners raises awareness of political prisoners held captive in the US. Curbfest encourages people to embody self determination by working together,…
Redefining Home
Featuring stunning literary debuts from authors who are enrolled members of the Akwesasne Kanienkehaka and the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians, this panel centers the Native experience as influenced by modern political…
Bringing our Youth Back to the Land
Within societies that have been constructed in ways that separate generations and sever connections to storytelling traditions, Indigenous and colonized communities see high rates of teen depression, disenfranchisement, and suicide. In response,…
Organized Resistance From the Ground Up
Learn from the best of community organization leadership in this empowering panel, which will get to the bottom of how to build resilient and justice-oriented communities. Jaz Brisack, a leader of the Starbucks and Tesla union movements, narrates…
A Revolution of Raised Voices
Join authors Devi S. Laskar and Elizabeth Stark for a generative writing workshop! Play with voice, practice putting your vision and truth (even fictional truths) into words. Live out loud! Try out some new writing techniques and strategies.…
Official Launch of the BABF Affinity Lit Collectives
Join us at the Downtown BART Plaza for the exciting official launch of the Bay Area Book Festival’s three affinity lit collectives: Women Lit, LGBTQIA+ Lit, and Mixed Race Lit (final collective names to be decided in their first meetings).…
Poetry Postcards (all day drop-in activity)
Poetry Postcards is an interactive offering inviting festival-goers to write a poem and send it into the world. We provide the materials: pre-stamped postcards with poems by 7 poets and pens. You bring the intention. Write a few lines, something…
Incantations to Open Portals
We begin with invocation—of memory, of resistance, of radical possibility. Incantations to Open Portals is the ceremonial opening of the poetry stage at the Bay Area Book Festival, co-sponsored with the Berkeley Poetry Festival, where poetry…
Strength and Solace in Numbers
In times of love and loss, demonstrations of care can be another form of activism. This sentiment is perhaps most evident in the AIDS epidemic, when physical touch became paradoxically a symbol of tenderness yet agonizingly painful for someone…
So Many Stars: A Celebration of Trans, Nonbinary, Genderqueer, and Two-Spirit People of Color
Join us for an insightful conversation surrounding So Many Stars: An Oral History of Trans, Nonbinary, Genderqueer, and Two-Spirit People of Color by Caro De Robertis. In this groundbreaking work, De Robertis brings together the voices of trans,…