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Ann Margaret Lim, Opal Palmer Adisa, Tanya Shirley, Diana McCauley, Earl McKenzie, Millicent A A Graham, Mutabarika, Ella Brodber, and Olive Senior.
Local host: Kwame Dawes
Friday, February 12, 2021
When things come together so beautifully that one cannot imagine a world without it, a word adopted by Rastafarians wisdom speakers comes to mind, “fruition”, or better still, “fru-i-shon”. Calabash has become, by its existence and its persistence, exactly such a fruition – a project which has come to be the enactment of years of creative struggle, of apprenticeship, of labour and invention. Each of the writers celebrated in this event can speak to their emergence as voices carrying on the legacy of liberation, invention and imagination which has been at the core of the Jamaican character and spirit at its best. It is our delight to welcome you to just a hint of the bounty which is our fruition as a festival and as a nation. Meet Ann Margaret Lim, Opal Palmer Adisa, Tanya Shirley, Diana McCauley, Earl McKenzie, Millicent A A Graham, Mutabarika, Ella Brodber and Olive Senior.
Presented by Calabash Festival, Treasure Beach, Jamaica
Jillian Christmas, Tawhida Tanya Evanson, Jayda Marley, and Motion.
Local host: Britta B
Friday, February 12, 2021
Whether it be poetry written for the page, the silver screen, the poetry slam or the melody, every poet plays with language to reveal the inexpressible. The Toronto International Festival of Authors and JAYU present the new generation of Canadian poetry which is pushing the possibilities and playing with the rules. Tune into four distinguished Canadian poets who will take us on a journey through the physical, vocal and material elements of their poems. Featuring Jillian Christmas (Vancouver) Tawhida Tanya Evanson (Montreal), and Motion (Toronto). Emcee for the evening is poet Britta B (Toronto).
Presented by Toronto International Festival of Authors, Canada, in partnership with JAYU
Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida in conversation with Daniel Gumbiner.
Local host: Cherilyn Parsons
Friday, February 12, 2021
From the Beat poets of the 1950s to Summer of Love musicians and Silicon Valley innovators, California’s San Francisco Bay Area is renowned for bold and often irreverent pioneers. The region’s contemporary literary scene is no exception. Once largely ignored by the East Coast establishment, California authors are now in the vanguard of the nation’s literature – radically shaping aesthetics and redefining who can be an author and what stories can be told. The two featured authors, Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida, are a married couple at the epicentre of this transformation. Their own award-winning literary work ranges from novels to memoirs, children’s books and screenplays, set all over the world. They have also built a thriving literary ecosystem which includes book imprints (such as the San Francisco-based McSweeney’s and its human-rights-focused Voices of Witness series), multiple magazines and journals (such as The Believer, which has also spawned a festival), and the hugely successful 826 National network (the largest youth writing network in the country). Join us to hear their inspiring story, to celebrate Vendela’s just-published sixth novel (We Run the Tides, set in San Francisco), and to discover just how a pirate store fits in.
In conversation with their friend, colleague, and fellow author Daniel Gumbiner, and introduced by host Cherilyn Parsons, founder and executive director of the Bay Area Book Festival.
Presented by the Bay Area Book Festival - yes - that's us 🙂
Tuesday, November 24
Helen Macdonald’s bestselling memoir H Is For Hawk, a transcendent meditation on grief, relationships, and falconry, established her as one of the world’s foremost nature and culture writers. She’s setting our imaginations soaring again with Vesper Flights, a collection of her best-loved essays, illuminating everything from mushroom-hunting to the poignant particulars of birds’ nests. As Helen wrote, “animals don’t exist in order to teach us things,” but her live conversation with American Book Award-winning poet Camille T. Dungy will show us how much we can learn by letting nature keep its secrets.
This is a public rebroadcast of a live event for Women Lit members. To join Women Lit or to learn more, click here.
Presented in partnership with: Environmental Action Committee of West Marin (EAC), Bay Nature, and the Golden Gate Audubon Society
Sunday, November 15
Produced by Bay Area Book Festival in collaboration with literary festivals worldwide
After a tumultuous year of protest, Hong Kong’s streets are quiet again following the adoption of the national security law on June 30. Join four experts for this indispensable analysis of the protest movement and its broader significance for freedom globally. In City on Fire: The Fight for Hong Kong, Hong Kong-based lawyer and writer Antony Dapiran takes readers to the frontlines of the protests and reveals the protesters’ unique tactics. In Vigil: Hong Kong on the Brink, Jeffrey Wasserstrom, one of America’s leading China specialists, draws on his knowledge of the history of repression and resistance, to help us understand the deep roots and the broad significance of the events of 2019. These authors are joined by Financial Times news researcher Nicolle Liu, who reported from the streets throughout the protests. Conversation moderated by Orville Schell, author of several books on China, and Arthur Ross, Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at Asia Society in New York.
Presented in partnership with: Literary Arts, Pen America, Human Rights Watch, AJC Decatur Book Festival, Virginia Festival of the Book, Brooklyn Book Festival
Wednesday, October 28
As a genre, memoir has never shied away from tough topics, but the subject of Jennifer Risher’s new book candidly grapples with what may be one of the last lingering taboos: money. Risher and her husband started working for Microsoft in the 90s, and found themselves unexpectedly millionaires in the thick of the dot-com boom. We Need to Talk: A Memoir About Wealth sensitively and introspectively examines the impact of personal wealth on everything from relationships to self-image to a sense of place in the world, within a framework of acute awareness of the dramatic income inequality in today’s America. In a frank and fearless conversation with Robin Richards Donohoe, whose venture philanthropy firm, Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation, tackles innovative solutions to social problems, Risher will get refreshingly real about a subject as discomfiting as it is necessary.
This is a re-broadcast of a Women Lit member-only LIVE webinar. To be able to participate in upcoming LIVE webinars, join Women Lit!
Jennifer Risher, A We Need to Talk: A Memoir About Wealth
Order your copies from one of our independent bookstore partners
Wednesday, October 21
Author of Real Happiness and columnist for the Peabody Award-winning On Being, Sharon Salzberg has built a devoted fanbase and major excitement for her latest book, Real Change. A renowned figure in the world of meditation, Salzberg offers us a guide for harnessing mindfulness in ways that benefit ourselves, our loved ones, and the world around us. She dispenses her invaluable wisdom, expertise, and counsel for vanquishing fear and anxiety at a time when awareness of mental health and emotional well-being is more important and necessary than ever.
Join Women Lit, Sharon Salzberg, and her fellow On Being columnist, Courtney E. Martin, for a dazzling night of transformation that is sure to deepen your understanding of your own inner power in the face of struggle.
This is a re-broadcast of a Women Lit member-only LIVE webinar. To be able to participate in upcoming LIVE webinars, join Women Lit!
Sharon Salzberg, Real Change: Mindfulness to Heal Ourselves and the World
Courtney E. Martin, The New Better Off: Reinventing the American Dream
Order your copies from one of our independent bookstore partners
“Inspiring, loving, and empowering. The perfect medicine for these difficult times.”
– Jack Kornfield, author of A Path With Heart
“No matter what troubles have befallen you or what difficulties you have caused yourself or others, with love for yourself you can change, grow, make amends, and learn. Real love is not about letting yourself off the hook. Real love does not encourage you to ignore your problems or deny your mistakes and imperfections. You see them clearly and still opt to love.”
– Sharon Salzberg from her monthly column titled “Self-Love is an Adventure, Not a Destination”
Wednesday, October 14
Join us for an amazing conversation that we guarantee will lift you up! Two-time Grammy winner and Oakland native Fantastic Negrito (blues and black roots music) meets multiracial, eight-time Swedish Grammy-winning rapper (and debut author) Timbuktu — and each discovers a brother. In a highly personal conversation, these two extraordinary artists, each with a huge fan base, share their experiences of racism, fatherhood, ancestors, and what it means to be an “elder.” They talk especially about gratitude, joy, and of course the power of music. The hour includes a riveting performance clip of a full song by each of them, which they discuss.
Raised in an Orthodox Muslim household (which he left at twelve, running away into the streets of Oakland), Fantastic Negrito describes himself as “the incarnation of a musician who is reborn after going through a lot of awful s**t.” His latest album, “Have You Lost Your Mind Yet?’”, came out this past August. Fans call his music “medicine for the soul” and state, “This is the art the world should be experiencing right now” (YouTube comments).
Timbuktu’s most recent creative work was literary: the award-winning memoir A Drop of Midnight (published under his real name, Jason Diakité), which was a major bestseller in Sweden and was recently translated into English. Born to interracial American parents in Sweden, Timbuktu is part Swedish, American, black, white, Cherokee, Slovak, and German. The memoir describes his journey, both physical and emotional, into understanding his own identity — from South Carolina slavery to twenty-first-century Sweden. Readers call the memoir “heartfelt, vivid, raw and superbly written” and “magnificent” (quotes from Amazon, where the book is rated 4.4/5).
Come catch a bit of music history being made as these two renowned artists connect for the first time.
Timbuktu (aka Jason Diakité), A Drop of Midnight
Order your copies from one of our independent bookstore partners
This program is brought to you by Consulate General of Sweden, San Francisco
Sunday, October 4
It’s not an exaggeration to say that the future of the American republic hangs in the balance. There are few levers as powerful in tipping that balance as interpretations of the U.S. Constitution by the Supreme Court. One of the nation’s preeminent constitutional law scholars, Erwin Cherminsky, asserts that there has never been a more important time to adopt a progressive vision of the U.S. Constitution, a living blueprint that can ensure justice, equality, and opportunity for all.
Featuring
Erwin Chemerinsky is the dean of Berkeley Law, one of the top-cited legal experts in the nation, and author of numerous books, including the core text on constitutional law for law schools nationwide, the popular bestseller We the People: A Progressive Reading of the Constitution for the Twenty-First Century, and The Religion Clauses: The Case for Separating Church and State, published in September 2020. Full bio.
Congresswoman Barbara Lee is the highest ranking African American woman — and forceful, progressive voice — in the United States Congress where she has served with distinction since 1998. Full bio.
Main Stream
Sunday, October 4
Even before COVID-19 shined a light on the precarity faced by food servers, farm laborers, and meat processing workers—and how their working conditions impact us all—it was clear that we were desperately in need of a food revolution. From the environmental toll of factory farming to the health dangers stemming from corporate control of food and water, our current food system is failing us, our kids, and the planet. Where can we turn for a scalable vision of a sustainable, equitable, and delicious future?
Look no further than two culinary iconoclasts: Chez Panisse founder Alice Waters, legendary maven of the “slow food movement,” and firecracker food labor activist Saru Jayaraman. Their ideas, advocacy, and leadership have helped change the way we think about growing and consuming food, from seed to soil to serving platter. Now they’re coming together, in a time of climate change, pandemics, and global hunger, to examine how we got here, and cook up a bold recipe for implementing transformative changes to our food system. You’ll savor this forward-thinking conversation, moderated by Davia Nelson of NPR’s The Kitchen Sisters, about creating a revolution that sticks—to our principles, and our ribs.
Featuring
Food activist Saru Jayaraman is no stranger to the bright light of recognition: she’s appeared on CNN and NBC Nightly News, was named a Champion of Change by the Obama White House, and was Amy Poehler’s date to the Golden Globes in 2018 to shine awareness on harassment in the restaurant industry. But as Director of the UC Berkeley’s Food Labor Research Center and President of One Fair Wage, she organizes on behalf of an often-invisible workforce: tipped workers, many of them women of color and immigrants, who are struggling to survive. The author of books—including her latest, Bite Back: People Taking on Corporate Food and Winning, with Kathryn De Master—that map out a long-overdue food-industry revolution, Saru is the co-founder of Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC United), a restaurant-worker-powered nonprofit that now has tens of thousands of members nationwide. Full bio.
Called “the maven of the slow-food movement” by PBS NewsHour, author and food activist Alice Waters is the founder and owner of Berkeley’s legendary Chez Panisse Restaurant, where she spearheaded an organic and locally-grown revolution that has indelibly transformed the food landscape. “The Alice Waters Effect,” as her legacy is known, is powered by the belief that good food should be available to everyone. This simple-but-profound credo has left its mark on everything from agriculture to fine dining to education. The Edible Schoolyard Project, which Alice founded in Berkeley in 1995, now exists in 33 countries; and she received the National Humanities Medal from President Obama for her visionary commitment to food as a moral and social issue. With fifteen books under her belt, including the New York Times bestsellers The Art of Simple Food I & II and Coming to My Senses: The Making of a Counterculture Cook, Alice continues to pioneer new visions of sustenance in an era that needs them more than ever. Full bio.
Davia Nelson, along with co-producer Nikki Silva, is one half of NPR’s dynamic duo The Kitchen Sisters, whose Hidden Kitchens on Morning Edition has uncovered culinary revelations ranging from the immigrant story behind Rice-a-Roni to the dramatic birth of the Frito. Praised by The New Yorker for “producing immersive, beautifully observed, historically relevant stories for public radio since 1979,” The Kitchen Sisters have won two Peabody Awards and a James Beard Award, as well as trained a new generation of voices for public media at UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Davia is also a screenwriter and casting director who has worked on such films as The Nightmare Before Christmas and The Rock. She and Nikki are working on their second book, Show the Girls the Snakes, as well as their first Broadway musical. Full bio.
Main Stream
This program is brought to you by the Schmidt Family Foundation