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The funny and heartfelt stories of this panel honor the chosen family who show up at the most unexpected, but perhaps most necessary, moments in our lives. Woodworking by Emily St. James follows a trans high school teacher from a small town in South Dakota who befriends the only other trans woman she knows: her seventeen-year-old student, the high school’s resident political dissident and Only Trans Girl. As their unlikely friendship evolves, it comes under the scrutiny of their community, and both women are forced to confront what happens if they choose to hide their true selves. Renee Swindle’s Francine’s Spectacular Crash and Burn features another unexpected encounter between a young executive assistant and aspiring photographer, whose life is upended after the sudden death of her agoraphobic mother, and the ten-year-old who keeps showing up at her doorstep after she rescues him from a group of bullies. Meeting the boy’s foster mother, who turns out to be her fiery high school crush, leads Francine to make a consecutive string of bad choices, and she is left wondering how to become the kind of person her young friend can depend on. The tumultuous journeys of self-discovery in this humorous yet moving panel, moderated by award-winning Sri Lankan American writer and educator Nayomi Munaweera, portray the power of chance, intergenerational queer friendships, and found family.

Amidst the oppression and unregulated violence against our communities, we cannot afford to stop fighting, and the authors of this panel provide resources to do so sustainably. In The Medicine of Flow, certified qigong teacher and integrative medicine doctor Cynthia Li draws from modern science alongside time-tested methods for healing to explain embodied flow, an inner state of physiological coherence, harmony, and energy efficiency that activates the body’s peak healing capacity to overcome chronic illness, anxiety, and stress. Yoga educator, author, and practitioner Anjali Rao bridges scholarship, history, and cultural analysis to explore the relationships between caste and gender in yoga. Her book, Yoga as Embodied Resistance, offers radical ways to re-envision a yoga grounded in inquiry, discernment, and collective liberation. As professor Ronald E. Purser details in Mind Space, meditation is another practice that can be radically reimagined by letting go of goal-oriented peace and instead allowing a natural concentration and unfabricated presence to arise in every moment. Moderated by Kei Yamamoto, the Bay Area Political Organizer for the California Working Families Party, this panel will offer strategies for replenishment and remaining grounded during tumultuous times.

When trauma and unpredictable life changes demand difficult sacrifices, the inspiring authors and characters of this panel choose to take any risk necessary to preserve the tenderness and creativity of humanity, and the humanities. Inspired by journalists Christiane Amanpour and Sylvia Poggioli, Midnight, at the War is Devi Laskar’s novel about a foreign correspondent who leaves New York for the war-torn Middle East after learning she is pregnant, an assignment that forces her to grapple with the physical and emotional tolls of her pregnant body and a turbulent region. A renowned dancer faces a career-ending neurologic disorder and a strained marriage in The Edge of Yesterday by Rita Woods, and she is offered an escape from the sorrow of her “real life” when she stumbles through a vortex that transports her from 2025 back into 1925 Detroit, where she meets a handsome, charming doctor. In her book Sacrament, Susan Straight highlights the quiet heroism and extraordinary bravery of a group of ICU nurses living in a makeshift RV camp close to the hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic, facing personal and professional challenges as they care for strangers. When big changes blow up our lives, it takes courage to create from the empty space left behind, and life coach Naomi Vladeck’s Braving Creativity provides women with creative tools needed to flourish in work and in life, inspiring creatives to ignite their courage to face the unknown path ahead. Moderated by Seema Vennam, this inspiring panel uplifts women’s stories about using change as a catalyst for taking the necessary risks to be their creative and human selves.

What kinds of futures unfurl when we stop acquiescing to what we’ve inherited and start building spaces with intention? In this forward-looking conversation, Shizue Seigel (Courting A Man Who Doesn’t Talk; Uncommon Ground: BIPOC Journeys to Creative Activism), Kimi Sugioka (Wile & Wing), Kelechi Ubozoh (We’ve Been Too Patient), and Andre Le Monte Wilson (Hauntings) gather to talk about how writers and artists of color are imagining and making creative spaces that feel livable and can grow with us.

In this visionary speculative fiction panel, Charlie Jane Anders, Syr Hayarti Beker, and Annalee Newitz explore the craft and theory of queer worldbuilding imagining futures and fantastical realms where queer characters and communities are not exceptions, but the norm. Across their work, queerness is foundational to how magic systems function, how technology evolves, and how societies are structured. In Lessons in Magic, Charlie Jane Anders continues her tradition of expansive, emotionally rich storytelling, building transformative worlds shaped by fluid identity and chosen connection. In What a Fish Looks Like, Syr Hayarti Beker reimagines fairy tale and climate narrative through mutated, lyrical forms that center queer embodiment and ecological intimacy. In Automatic Noodle, Annalee Newitz envisions near-future solidarity between humans and robots, crafting communities that challenge capitalism while foregrounding queer belonging.

Moderated by Kristina M. Canales, a queer Puerto Rican author and community builder with the LGBTQIA+ Lit Collective, this conversation will dive into craft, theory, and possibility. How do writers construct queer-norm worlds without replicating oppressive structures? What narrative tools allow authors to center fluidity, chosen family, and collective liberation? And how can speculative fiction create blueprints for futures rooted in care, resilience, and radical imagination? Join us for a dynamic discussion about building worlds where queerness shapes the rules of magic, technology, and society itself.

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As women’s rights are increasingly violated in the US, the historical narratives and personal accounts of this crucial panel discussion will remind us of the work we’ve already done and inspire us to continue pursuing a world where women are truly free. Just Pills: The Extraordinary Story of A Revolution in Abortion Care documents journalist Rebecca Kelliher’s research into the little-known history of mifepristone and misoprostol, better known as the abortion pills, which are safe, cheap, and clinic-less means of ending a pregnancy that are already changing the fight for abortion access as we understand it. Prior to the approval of abortion pills in the 1990s and 2000s, however, women’s options were severely limited. In her historical novel Where the Girls Were,Kate Schatz writes about a pregnant teenager’s struggle with agency after being sent to a home for unwed mothers in 1960s San Francisco. Shame, faith, and morality all shape a woman’s choice to abort or carry to term, and Judy Juanita reflects on self-induced abortion and California’s Therapeutic Abortion Act of 1967 through the poetry, fiction, essays, and creative nonfiction in Abortion (or Woman As Threefold Murderess) which reveal that choosing to abort is not simply a political or moral issue of right and wrong, but one tied to safety, survival, and the meaning of life itself. Moreover, abortion care is ethical care, grounded in competence, compassion, sensitivity, as exemplified by Shelley Sella, a board-certified OB-GYN and the first woman to openly practice third-trimester abortion care in the US. In her book Beyond Limits: Stories of Third Trimester Abortion Care, Dr. Sella challenges preconceived notions of who gets abortions and why, inviting readers into a typical week at her clinic to demystify third-trimester abortion, which is still often stigmatized and misunderstood within both the anti-abortion and pro-choice movements. Carole Joffe, professor of obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive sciences and author of After Dobbs: How the Supreme Court Ended Roe But Not Abortion, will moderate this panel honoring the women affected by abortion and pregnancy, the hard-working individuals who have kept abortion afloat in the wake of Roe v. Wade’s destruction, and the continued help urgently needed if we want to sustain our right to abortion care.

“The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” (Audre Lorde), but the tools that have been used for dismantling in the past might just be the ones we use to build the future. For Octavia Butler, science fiction stories were her tools for speculating the devolution of the American empire and simultaneously offered cautionary tales about our propensity for violence and sanguine manifestations that alter our current paradigms and envision Black women at the center of the world. In her cultural biography, Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler, Black feminist Afrofuturist writer, scholar, and cultural critic Susana M. Morris places Butler’s story within the historical and social contexts that influenced the ideas central to her celebrated writing. Similarly, in Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde, researcher Alexis Pauline Gumbs asks us to look beyond the surface of another iconic writer and symbol of Black feminism. Audre Lorde is well-known for her quotable essays, but Gumbs’ groundbreaking research into the full depths of Lorde’s manuscript archives reveal her deep engagement with the planetary dynamics of geology, meteorology, and biology. In a society that rejected her Black feminist lesbian warrior poet existence, these ecological images provided the literal guides for self-defense, for survival, and for writing the future. Moderated by Isis Asare of Sistah Scifi, the first Black-owned bookstore in the nation dedicated to science fiction, this panel will examine the environments that influenced the two visionary Black feminist writers and the wisdom their works provide for dismantling unjust realities as we create our own futures.

Introductory live music performance by Bushwick Book Club Oakland

To write an inclusive future, we must publish diverse voices who represent our collective interests and stories. The publishers and imprints represented in this headliner panel will discuss the implications of the current political climate on the future of publishing and put forward creative solutions to the lack of opportunities for publishing underrepresented stories. Tiny Reparations Press, founded by standup comedian, bestselling author, producer, and actress Phoebe Robinson, is a highly curated imprint dedicated to fiction and nonfiction that pushes the conversation forward. HeartDrum, an acclaimed imprint of HarperChildren’s featuring stories that emphasize the present and future of Native peoples and the strength of young Indigenous heroes, will be represented by its author-curator and award-winning writer Cynthia Leitich Smith. Turning the page to publishers, Palestinian American author and book worker Hannah Moushabeck runs Interlink Publishing alongside her family, the only Palestinian-owned independent publishing house in the United States offering global perspectives to readers through works of literature-in-translation, history, activism, politics, art, cultural guides, award-winning cookbooks, and illustrated children’s books. Through publishing talented writers whose works have been overlooked by large-scale publishers, co-founder Kate Gale of Red Hen Press fosters diversity, promotes literacy in local schools, and supports the Greater Los Angeles Area and international communities with arts-based events and literary advocacy. Moderated by acting Co-CEO of the intersectional, feminist press Aunt Lute, María Mínguez Arias, this inspiring panel is a celebration of the innovative and diverse members of the publishing industry dedicated to creatively curating and publishing the voices of our future.

Introductory live music performance by Bushwick Book Club Oakland

In the midst of white nationalism, global capitalism, and authoritarian regimes that drive individualism and isolation, a look to our past and envisioned futures reveals the prevailing strength of creativity and rebellion across time. By surveying a world that has changed dramatically since 1960 in her book The Beginning Comes After the End: Notes on a World of Change, historian and activist Rebecca Solnit unveils the sheer breadth and scale of social, political, scientific, and cultural changes that have shaped a more interconnected, relational world which embraces antiracism, feminism, a more expansive understanding of gender, environmental thinking, scientific breakthroughs, and Indigenous and non-Western ideas. Because transformation is obscured within a longer arc of history, its scale is seldom recognized, but change is inevitable, brought about by dismantling an old civilization and building a new one, whose newness is often the return of the old ways and wisdoms. Poet, performer, and director Saul Williams charts his own creative visions for change in Martyr Loser King, his graphic novel about a global cyberattack rebellion in a small East African country where the Black population and the land are exploited for the mining of the precious ore coltan. Simultaneously a cautionary tale and hopeful vision for the future, this cyberpunk fable raises incisive questions about capitalism, colonialism, and the future of technology. Moderated by writer, producer, and activist Christie George, who is working at the intersection of media, technology, and social change, this headlining conversation features the creative minds who are mapping and shaping the trajectory of our futures despite the forces seeking to turn back the clock on history.

Illustrator Morgan Sörne will join for book signing after this headliner conversation.

Introductory live music performance by Bushwick Book Club Oakland

Drawing on the expertise of mindfulness educators, frontline organizers, and America’s greatest literary voices, this panel provides guidance for navigating political burnout and civic despair. On Mindful Democracy: A Declaration of Interdependence to Mend a Fractured World is professor Jeremy David Engels’ compact guide offering 27 powerful teachings of interdependence and how to show up for democracy with compassion, clarity, and courage. In this age of disaster, community-shaped strategies are essential for practically navigating the challenges posed by overlapping catastrophes, and Kailea Rose Loften and Kate Rose Weiner present engaging prompts, concise checklists, and heartfelt advice for building and sustaining durable mutual aid networks in Compassion in Crisis: Building Disaster-Resilient Communities. Liza J. Rankow combines the compassion of a seasoned spiritual guide and the insightful analysis of a longtime grassroots activist in Soul Medicine for a Fractured World, which offers questions for reflection as well as an array of spiritual and healing practices to guide readers on an integrative path forward through healing and transformation, rooted in our kinship with one another, the Earth, and all of life. Diving deeply into a dharma of liberation, Rima Vesely-Flad examines the writings of Audre Lorde and James Baldwin through key Buddhist principles, revealing that liberation depends not only on organizing and mass movements, but also the generative power of inner well-being, authenticity, art, and embodiment. Whether you’re a seasoned activist or a tender-hearted citizen seeking a new path forward, this nourishing panel moderated by Rev. Dereca Blackmon of the East Bay Church of Religious Science is an invitation into the lifelong work of caring for one another in pursuit of our collective liberation.