Bay Area Book Festival Podcast
Between audio books? Curious about the writers themselves? Listen to full-length sessions from the Bay Area Book Festival, where readers and writers meet each year in Berkeley, CA, to engage with their favorite authors, including Pulitzer Prize winners, chefs, and activists, to discuss writing, race, love, mystery, and more.
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Taking Pride in Transformative Latin American Works
08/07/2026
Taking Pride in Transformative Latin American Works
From prose to verse to visual art, the powerful narratives of this panel take pride in the intersection of being queer, Latine, and unapologetically proud. Julián Delgado Lopera’s Pretend You’re Dead and I Carry You depicts Bogotá’s underground queer scene, where a luminous travesti steps in as a mother figure to a listless widower’s teenage daughter, fearing that his grief and guilt-driven self-destruction may unleash a river of curses on them all. Roque Raquel Salas Rivera turns to epic poetry in Algarabía to describe the journey of Cenex, a trans being who retrospectively narrates his life while navigating the stories told on his behalf, inscribing an origin narrative for trans people in the face of their erasure from both colonial and anti-colonial literary cannons. When Language Broke Open features Afro-Indigenous poet and artist Alan Pelaez Lopez’s collection of poetry, prose, and visual art from forty-five queer and trans Black writers of Latin American descent, centering the multifaceted realities of the LGBTQ community by illustrating Blackness as a geopolitical experience that is always changing. Join us to celebrate our talented queer Latine writers in this transformative panel, moderated by Uruguayan writer, professor, and first openly nonbinary person to receive the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature Caro De Robertis. This event took place in Downtown Berkeley, at the Bay Area Book Festival, May 29-31 2026. Support our work and help to keep the Bay Area Book Festival 96% free! Check out our upcoming events Follow us on instagram:
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A Time to Hide: Marion Seidemann Fredman and Elisa Kleven
08/07/2026
A Time to Hide: Marion Seidemann Fredman and Elisa Kleven
This powerful session celebrates two of Berkeley’s own creators sharing powerful stories through art and writing. Deeply poignant and relevant, A Time to Hide is Marion Seidemann Fredman and her family’s courageous story of surviving the Holocaust told through personal testimony, historical photographs, and evocative illustrations including those by Bay Area author and illustrator Elisa Kleven. Together, they will converse about Marion’s experiences as a child born to parents forced into hiding in a Dutch attic, and who is now sharing her family’s story with young readers. Moderated by author and activist Rachel Sarah, this illuminating read-aloud and discussion will honor memory, teach history, and help ensure the next generation understands and remembers this powerful legacy of survival. This event took place in Downtown Berkeley, at the Bay Area Book Festival, May 29-31 2026. Support our work and help to keep the Bay Area Book Festival 96% free! Check out our upcoming events Follow us on instagram:
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Post-Disaster Futures: Sci-Fi Visions of Survival and Renewal
08/06/2026
Post-Disaster Futures: Sci-Fi Visions of Survival and Renewal
When the world ends but life persists, what remnants of humanity, hope, and connection remain? In this futuristic sci-fi conversation, authors T. K. Rex, Chuck Tingle, and Susanna Kwan imagine the strange new worlds that follow catastrophe, confronting ecological collapse, improbable survival, and the fragile bonds that hold us together. T. K. Rex’s The Wildcraft Drones charts a near-future shaped by the intertwined evolution of machines, ecosystems, and the people who depend on both. Through stories of AIs, dolphins, and rebel biologists amid environmental decay, Rex explores what intelligence means when nature itself is learning to adapt. Chuck Tingle’s Lucky Day shifts the lens to probability run amok, where a world altered by freak chance teeters between chaos and fate. His signature blend of absurdity and heart becomes a meditation on what it means to rebuild meaning and love in the aftermath of statistical disaster. In Awake in the Floating City, Susanna Kwan renders a tender apocalypse in the drowned remains of a futuristic San Francisco, where an artist and an aging woman forge a powerful connection against the inevitable tide. Moderated by Lara Messersmith-Glavin, author of Ruiner and Spirit Things, this panel dives into the new mythologies born after disaster, where the ruins of the past give rise to glittering, uncanny futures. This event took place in Downtown Berkeley, at the Bay Area Book Festival, May 29-31 2026. Support our work and help to keep the Bay Area Book Festival 96% free! Check out our upcoming events Follow us on instagram:
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Abominable Squiggle Time!
08/06/2026
Abominable Squiggle Time!
Join author-illustrator Steph Lau for a sparkly, cryptid and unicorn-tastic read-aloud of The Abominable Snow Dancer and live drawing demo! Steph will read from her picture book about a yeti who dreams of dancing, and then share how to create “squiggle” characters, using audience suggestions and volunteers from the crowd. This event took place in Downtown Berkeley, at the Bay Area Book Festival, May 29-31 2026. Support our work and help to keep the Bay Area Book Festival 96% free! Check out our upcoming events Follow us on instagram:
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What the Magic Hides: Moral Truths and Mystery in YA Fantasy
08/05/2026
What the Magic Hides: Moral Truths and Mystery in YA Fantasy
Join us for an engaging exploration of mystery and magic in young adult fiction, where the fantastical reveals deeply human truths. Emily Renk Hawthorne, Ama Ofosua Lieb, Lio Min, and S. Hati each craft imaginative worlds shaped by secrets, identity, and transformation. In Of Mountains and Seas, hidden histories and stolen magic ripple beneath the ocean’s surface. Goldenborn follows Akoma as she searches for the truth behind her father’s mysterious coma, weaving Ghanaian myth with moral reckoning. The L.O.V.E. Club blends music, queer youth culture, and magical realism while asking what really happened to a missing classmate. And in Morbid Curiosities, a teen uncovers unsettling clues, investigates the academy that isn’t what it seems, and ultimately must decide how far she’s willing to go for the truth. Moderated by playwright and novelist Michelle Ruiz Keil, author of Summer in the City of Roses, this panel explores how YA authors use mystery and magic to uncover powerful truths about belonging, loss, and courage. This event took place in Downtown Berkeley, at the Bay Area Book Festival, May 29-31 2026. Support our work and help to keep the Bay Area Book Festival 96% free! Check out our upcoming events Follow us on instagram:
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Walking to the Beat of Our Streets
08/05/2026
Walking to the Beat of Our Streets
Activism can show up in spaces big and small—we just need to keep up the tempo! R. J. Owens shows us the power of taking steps toward meaningful change in his picture book Walk the Walk, which follows Dex’s day walking the walk with his Papa by joining the Montgomery Bus Boycott and standing up against segregation. In Searching for Mr. Johnson’s Song, music makes the air vibrate like a thousand protesters marching for equality in Ariel Vanece’s touching story about a boy who helps his elderly neighbor find the rest of the song that has been forgotten due to dementia. With warmth and gentle authenticity, this read-aloud and discussion moderated by author, illustrator and Social Justice Book Fair co-organizer Rob Liu-Trujillo remind us about kindness and neighborliness, inspiring a new generation of activists willing to keep on walking to fight for our communities. This event took place in Downtown Berkeley, at the Bay Area Book Festival, May 29-31 2026. Support our work and help to keep the Bay Area Book Festival 96% free! Check out our upcoming events Follow us on instagram:
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Who Did It? A Thriller Panel of Secrets and Suspicion
08/04/2026
Who Did It? A Thriller Panel of Secrets and Suspicion
In this high-stakes thriller panel, three acclaimed authors explore stories where violence shatters ordinary lives and the search for answers grows increasingly perilous. Each novel begins with a crime but what unfolds is a deeper reckoning with truth, justice, and the forces that shape suspicion. In Missing Sam, bestselling author Thrity Umrigar crafts a tense, twist-filled tale of a woman who vanishes during a morning run and the spouse left to navigate mounting scrutiny. As the investigation tightens, the novel probes racial bias, queer identity, and the quiet dangers simmering beneath suburban life in today’s political climate. Dead Note by Victor Manibo opens with a murder marked by a chilling signature: the same song sung at two separate killings years apart. What begins as an open-and-shut case spirals into an investigation through Manila’s criminal underworld, where corruption, memory, and obsession intertwine. In The Reckoning, crime writer Kelli Stanley delivers an atmospheric thriller in which long-buried secrets resurface and past actions demand accountability. As hidden histories come to light, the line between guilt and innocence grows increasingly blurred. Moderated by Nicholas Louis Baham III, California State University professor and author of The People’s Detective, this electrifying panel will explore how contemporary thrillers confront social tensions, moral ambiguity, and the enduring power of the whodunit. From suburban streets to international underworlds, these novels remind us that solving the crime is only the beginning. This event took place in Downtown Berkeley, at the Bay Area Book Festival, May 29-31 2026. Support our work and help to keep the Bay Area Book Festival 96% free! Check out our upcoming events Follow us on instagram:
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Protecting Nature’s Patterns
08/04/2026
Protecting Nature’s Patterns
From fractals to spirals to cycles, nature is beautifully arranged in organized ways that are highlighted in the inspiring picture books of this session. In the mountains of Meghalaya, India, a boy learns how to care for and weave the roots of the living tree bridges in Living Bridges: The Hidden World of India’s Woven Trees by Sandhya Acharya. But when he notices litter on the bridge and scars on the roots from people stealing sap, he must rally his community to protect the living tree he loves. Colleen Paeff writes about another empowering story in Firefly Song: Lynn Frierson Faust and the Great Smoky Mountain Discovery, a nonfiction picture book about how one woman proved to skeptical scientists that the fireflies of the Great Smoky Mountains put on dazzling synchronized light shows each night! Join this environmentally focused read-aloud and discussion, moderated by author Meera Sriram, that encourages young kids to take wonder in the environment and action to sustain it. This event took place in Downtown Berkeley, at the Bay Area Book Festival, May 29-31 2026. Support our work and help to keep the Bay Area Book Festival 96% free! Check out our upcoming events Follow us on instagram:
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Speculative Belonging: Crafting Queer-Centered Realities
08/03/2026
Speculative Belonging: Crafting Queer-Centered Realities
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. This event took place in Downtown Berkeley, at the Bay Area Book Festival, May 29-31 2026. Support our work and help to keep the Bay Area Book Festival 96% free! Check out our upcoming events Follow us on instagram:
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Flying High with Crows & Ravens
08/03/2026
Flying High with Crows & Ravens
Flap your wings and fly high with these lyrical and poignant picture books about the magnificent birds around us! Learn about the resilient and mysterious crows, who roost together by the thousands and teach us important lessons about cooperation and survival in I Am We: How Crows Come Together to Survive by Leslie Barnard Booth. Soaring alongside the crows is a special type of raven, a leucistic raven, who must rise above rejection to gain self-acceptance with the support of a child’s kind and resilient spirit in Kathryn Otoshi’s The White Raven. Warble, chirp, and chatter your way through this meaningful session, moderated by Tomiiko Baker, which will feature read-alouds and a discussion between the authors! This event took place in Downtown Berkeley, at the Bay Area Book Festival, May 29-31 2026. Support our work and help to keep the Bay Area Book Festival 96% free! Check out our upcoming events Follow us on instagram:
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Hidden Agendas: Cults, Corruption and Conspiracy in the Modern Thriller
07/31/2026
Hidden Agendas: Cults, Corruption and Conspiracy in the Modern Thriller
Secrets fester in isolated communities. Corporations conceal monstrous truths. Grief curdles into vengeance. In this high-stakes thriller panel, Sarah Gailey, Jendia Gammon, Luke Goebel, and Paddy Hirsch explore conspiracy as both engine and mirror, reflecting our deepest anxieties about belonging, power, and truth. In Make Me Better, Gailey crafts an eerily seductive psychological thriller set on a remote island promising healing, transformation, and the end of suffering. As an exclusive festival draws seekers desperate for connection, the novel interrogates cult psychology, toxic self-improvement culture, and the terrifying allure of surrendering autonomy in exchange for belonging. Goebel, known for his boundary-pushing fiction and screenwriting, brings a raw, literary intensity to the thriller form in Kill Dick. In this dark and satirical collection of short stories, obsession, violence, and fractured identities blur the line between perpetrator and victim while exposing the stories we tell ourselves to survive complicity and guilt. In PRIMED, Hirsch delivers a transatlantic revenge thriller that begins with a decades-old bombing and a single photograph. As a grieving father hunts the man he believes responsible, the chase stretches from Northern Ireland to Los Angeles, unraveling into espionage, political shadows, and the devastating costs of living for vengeance. Across their work, these authors probe the architecture of conspiracy: closed communities that promise salvation, corporations that distort truth, governments that obscure accountability, and individuals whose private grief fuels public violence. Moderated by podcast host of Twisted Passages and Dark Obsessions author Marie Sutro, join us for a conversation discussing writing paranoia in an era of misinformation, sustaining suspense while deepening character psychology, and why the thriller remains one of the most urgent genres for confronting systems of power, and ourselves. This event took place in Downtown Berkeley, at the Bay Area Book Festival, May 29-31 2026. Support our work and help to keep the Bay Area Book Festival 96% free! Check out our upcoming events Follow us on instagram:
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Legendary Frybread Drive-In Featuring Printz Award-Winning Cynthia Leitich Smith
07/31/2026
Legendary Frybread Drive-In Featuring Printz Award-Winning Cynthia Leitich Smith
Celebrate laughter, love, Native pride, and the world’s best frybread with the phenomenal Cynthia Leitich Smith, critically-acclaimed Mvskoke author and curator of Heartdrum, a Native-focused imprint at HarperCollins publishing. She has written several bestselling books, including Jingle Dancer, Eternal, and Hearts Unbroken, which won the American Indian Youth Literature Award. Her latest book, Legendary Frybread Drive-In: Intertribal Stories, features stories from Indigenous writers connected by the big green-and-gold sign of Sandy June’s Legendary Frybread Drive-In, and it won the Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature and the American Indian Youth Literature Award! In this incredible session, Cynthia Leitich Smith will be joined by moderator Laura Atkins—children’s book author, editor, and co-organizer of the Social Justice Children’s Book Fair and YouthLit at the Bay Area Book Festival—to discuss her renowned stories, her advocacy for Native writing, and the inspiration behind her latest legendary book. This event took place in Downtown Berkeley, at the Bay Area Book Festival, May 29-31 2026. Support our work and help to keep the Bay Area Book Festival 96% free! Check out our upcoming events Follow us on instagram:
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Inherited Hauntings: Horror at Home
07/30/2026
Inherited Hauntings: Horror at Home
The monsters we fear most often live behind closed doors. In this chilling and deeply human conversation, Eirinie Carson, Victor Manibo, and Tamika Thompson reveal how horror seeps into family ties, domestic spaces, and generational legacies, where the home becomes both refuge and ruin. Eirinie Carson’s Bloodfire, Baby reimagines the maternal gothic through the eyes of a new mother unraveling in isolation, haunted by postpartum dread and a centuries-old specter that mirrors her buried fears. In The Villa, Once Beloved, Victor Manibo conjures a decaying ancestral estate in the Philippines, where grief, folklore, and a fractured family collide and the curse of inheritance refuses to stay buried. Tamika Thompson’s The Curse of Hester Gardens brings the haunted house to public housing, reworking the genre into a fierce meditation on systemic violence and maternal sacrifice, where every hallway hums with ghosts, both social and supernatural. Moderated by Allison Mick, whose debut novel Humboldt Cutblends eco-horror with ancestral reckoning, this panel examines how horror exposes what families hide, asking what it means to protect those we love when the true terror lives within the walls we’ve built. This event took place in Downtown Berkeley, at the Bay Area Book Festival, May 29-31 2026. Support our work and help to keep the Bay Area Book Festival 96% free! Check out our upcoming events Follow us on instagram:
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Dreaming for the Stars: Black Joy from Present to Future (Panel and Read-Aloud)
07/30/2026
Dreaming for the Stars: Black Joy from Present to Future (Panel and Read-Aloud)
Celebrate joyful and uplifting Black stories at this interactive panel and read-aloud! Alice Faye Duncan will introduce The Dream Builder’s Blueprint: Dr. King’s Message to Young People, a found poem based on Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Street Sweeper” speech that highlights his principles of excellence, activism, and compassion in a way that kids can understand. Capturing the dreams that parents have for their children, As You Are: A Hope For Black Sons by Kimberley A. Gordon Biddle warmlyreminds every Black boy that he is loved, powerful, and enough just as he is, even if the world may not always see him the same way. Looking toward the future, Natasha Tarpley imagines the endless possibilities for Black and Brown children in The Me I Choose to Be, an uplifting ode to the power of potential and self-love, featuring fabulous afro-futuristic photography! This empowering session, moderated by screenwriter, poet, and educator Shia Shabazz Smith, will combine read-alouds and discussions for families that inspire kids to believe in themselves and dream big! This event took place in Downtown Berkeley, at the Bay Area Book Festival, May 29-31 2026. Support our work and help to keep the Bay Area Book Festival 96% free! Check out our upcoming events Follow us on instagram:
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Swords, Seas, and Returning Home: Epic Quests and Cultural Magic in YA Fantasy
07/29/2026
Swords, Seas, and Returning Home: Epic Quests and Cultural Magic in YA Fantasy
Magic, masks, and seadragons collide in this YA fantasy panel about young heroes who must face the past to claim their futures, drawing power from the cultures that shaped them. Sandra Proudman, Makiia Lucier, and Samantha Chong craft lush, high-stakes adventures where family, legacy, and identity are as potent as spells. In Salvación, Mexican American author Sandra Proudman reimagines El Zorro through a Latinx heroine who defends her Alta California town’s mystical sal negra and her family from encroaching violence, blending swashbuckling romance with Mexican history and resistance. Makiia Lucier, who grew up on the Pacific island of Guam, channels island life and oceanic mythology in Dragonfruit, following exiled Hanalei as she studies seadragons and seizes a single, impossible chance to return home and right a terrible wrong. Malaysian writer S. Chong’s Prodigal Tiger sends an exiled witch from a magical academy in New York back to Penang, where Malaysian folklore, Peranakan heritage, and vengeful ghosts force her to confront what it means to belong in the diaspora. Moderated by bookstagrammer and literary influencer Dahlia De La Vega of @ofpagesandprint, who champions YA, fantasy, romance, and historical fiction, this conversation dives into how culture, community, and home shape the new fantasies and futures young readers can now see themselves in. This event took place in Downtown Berkeley, at the Bay Area Book Festival, May 29-31 2026. Support our work and help to keep the Bay Area Book Festival 96% free! Check out our upcoming events Follow us on instagram:
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Mysterious Monsters and Ghostly Encounters (Read-Aloud)
07/29/2026
Mysterious Monsters and Ghostly Encounters (Read-Aloud)
What’s scarier than ghosts or monsters? Bringing nothing for show-and-tell! Rachel Wilson will show you how to befriend and build the perfect ghost trap in To Catch a Ghost, but when the moment finally arrives, will you be able to catch a friend? Best friends Valentina, Jasmine, Andy, and Xander also face something menacing in The Wild Ones by Megan and Jorge Lacera, and they must turn to the mythical monsters from their respective cultures to help them save the only home they’ve ever known. This adventurous read-aloud, emceed by the intrepid Cinnamongirl, will be full of mysterious monsters, ghostly encounters, and unexpected twists! This event took place in Downtown Berkeley, at the Bay Area Book Festival, May 29-31 2026. Support our work and help to keep the Bay Area Book Festival 96% free! Check out our upcoming events Follow us on instagram:
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Grim Kingdoms & Reckless Magic: Dark Fantasy in Revolt
07/28/2026
Grim Kingdoms & Reckless Magic: Dark Fantasy in Revolt
In this epic dark fantasy panel, three rising stars of the genre: Andrea Stewart, Madeleine Nakamura, and Evan Leikam plunge readers into worlds where power corrupts, gods wage war, and survival demands impossible choices. From grimdark assassins to divine battlefields to queer magic under siege, these stories ask: what does it cost to defy a king, or a god? Moderated by Flight of the Fallen fantasy author Hana Lee, the conversation will explore morally complex heroes, ruthless magic, and the shadowed spaces where crowns are claimed and shattered. In Anji Kills a King, Evan Leikam delivers a brutal, high-velocity debut in which a servant assassinates a king and becomes the target of legendary, magic-wielding mercenaries. As the hunt intensifies, alliances shift and a kingdom’s future hangs in the balance. Angel Eye by Madeleine Nakamura returns to a world of inquisitors, forbidden magic, and psychological peril. A string of murders ignites suspicion and witch hunts, forcing a traumatized scholar of magic to confront both external threats and his own unraveling mind. In The War Beyond, bestselling author Andrea Stewart escalates a divine conflict as sisters stand on opposing sides of a war between gods. Faith, loyalty, and destiny collide in a sweeping tale of rebellion and sacrifice. This event took place in Downtown Berkeley, at the Bay Area Book Festival, May 29-31 2026. Support our work and help to keep the Bay Area Book Festival 96% free! Check out our upcoming events Follow us on instagram:
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Friends, Not Food! (Read-Aloud)
07/28/2026
Friends, Not Food! (Read-Aloud)
Laugh out loud with these humorous, unexpected picture books that make us question how we treat different species: who are our friends, and who do we eat? Stephanie Lucianovic’s Zombie and Brain Are Friends follows Zeb, a young zombie from a family of brain farmers who suddenly comes across the tiniest, pinkest, squishiest brain he ever did see! Will Zeb successfully convince his parents that his brainy bestie is better off as a member of the family than family dinner? Eight-year-old Beatrice of New York City’s Chinatown feels the same way about Lillie, a tic-tac-toe-playing chicken living in a dark arcade. Based on the true story of Lillie, Tic-Tac-Toe Chicken by Kimberly Tso follows Beatrice’s clever plan to give Lillie a better environment to live in. Emceed by Cinnamongirls Claire and Devin, this empowering panel showcases the natural empathy that drives us to stand up for all living beings. This event took place in Downtown Berkeley, at the Bay Area Book Festival, May 29-31 2026. Support our work and help to keep the Bay Area Book Festival 96% free! Check out our upcoming events Follow us on instagram:
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From Sideline to Spotlight: YA Romance
07/27/2026
From Sideline to Spotlight: YA Romance
There’s nothing like the arts to uncover secrets of the past and kindle buried feelings, as the romantic YA novels of this panel reveal. In Delali Adjoa’s The Free Verse Society, two teens desperate to keep their pasts hidden find fresh starts through their high school poetry club, where the power of the written word tears down the walls they’ve built around their secrets, and their hearts. Taking place at an exclusive writers’ retreat, Love on Paper by Danielle Parker features two ambitious teenage writers from rival families of the publishing world, who must fight through writer’s block, step out of their parents’ shadows, and find the courage to create their own love stories for a chance at publication. For the high school exes in Eva Des Lauriers’ I’m Gonna Get You Back, returning to their small town is their only way for one of them to get into their dream film school and the other to maintain a college scholarship, but any time people return to the mountain, drama follows…especially when an anonymous social media account starts airing everyone’s dirty laundry. Join this tender and heartfelt panel, moderated by Lauren and Tiina of Boutique Book Retreats, to explore the power of love, arts, and second chances in drawing people together. This event took place in Downtown Berkeley, at the Bay Area Book Festival, May 29-31 2026. Support our work and help to keep the Bay Area Book Festival 96% free! Check out our upcoming events Follow us on instagram:
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Names Like Chameleons: Language and Identity (Read-Aloud)
07/27/2026
Names Like Chameleons: Language and Identity (Read-Aloud)
The colorful picture books of this read-aloud explore the changing names and languages we use depending on our environment, which in turn affect the meaning, history, and heritage that those words carry. In Wanjiku, Child of Mine by Ciiku Ndung’u Case, a young Gikuyu girl moves from the Kenya countryside to attend a boarding school in Nairobi, where people call her Catherine, and children are expected to figure things out on their own. But at home, she is again Wanjiku, daughter of the Gikũyũ people, who loves to hear her grandmother Cũcũ tell the origin story of her name. On the Eastern Plains of Taiwan, in Erica Schlaikjer’s Wild Greens, Beautiful Girl, a young girl learns that the spiky, stalky weed she is about to pull out has a different name in the Amis language: dadugum. Her ina teaches her about the flowering shrub and its many uses, showing her to appreciate the bounty of nature and the beauty of her indigenous Taiwanese identity. Emceed by Cinnamongirl, this lyrical read-aloud will serve as a gentle reminder that what we call things matters. This event took place in Downtown Berkeley, at the Bay Area Book Festival, May 29-31 2026. Support our work and help to keep the Bay Area Book Festival 96% free! Check out our upcoming events Follow us on instagram:
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On Loop: Black Sonic Politics in Oakland
07/24/2026
On Loop: Black Sonic Politics in Oakland
As both a means of empowerment and a magnet for policing, Black dance music has transformed not only Oakland’s nightlife, but also its streets, parks, and neighborhoods. From the mobilization of funk music and boogaloo dance during Black Power to the policing of the Hyphy movement in the 2000s, Black dance music is not merely a soundtrack to or record of urban resistance, argues geographer, DJ, and housing justice advocate Alex Werth in On Loop: Black Sonic Politics in Oakland. Rather, its very sound waves have animated looping clashes over development, dispossession, and Black freedom. Through studies of downtown nightclubs, Lake Merritt, and the Eastmont Mall—geographies rarely considered, yet critical to Oakland’s culture and politics—Werth reveals how the liberatory sonic politics of funk, hip-hop, and hyphy rap have been met with a repetitive “war on nuisance.” Joining him is Yakpasua Zazaboi, filmmaker, who is featured in the book .The Oaklandside’s arts and community reporter Azucena Rasilla will moderate this discussion about studies of the geographies that are rarely considered, yet critical to Oakland’s culture and politics, and how struggles over Black sound have shaped Oakland’s culture, politics, and geography. This event took place in Downtown Berkeley, at the Bay Area Book Festival, May 29-31 2026. Support our work and help to keep the Bay Area Book Festival 96% free! Check out our upcoming events Follow us on instagram:
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Landscape as Dreamscape: Environmental Stories
07/24/2026
Landscape as Dreamscape: Environmental Stories
From sequoias to salt lakes, deserts to deep connections, the natural world serves as inspiration for the writers of this panel, who place nature’s breathtaking landscapes not as a backdrop to, but at the center of their stories. In his 2025 Banff Mountain Book Competition Finalist graphic memoir, Eventually a Sequoia: Stories of Art, Adventure & the Wisdom of Giants, Jeremy Collins documents the people living in the endangered corners of the world whose small seeds produce enormous results. Switching the lens to the uncanny, shimmering ecosystems of salt lakes, whose rapid decline is a harbinger of rising sea levels, life-threatening dust storms, and environmental collapse, Caroline Tracey parallels their environmental journey to her personal story of finding queer love and building a home amidst ecological crises in her book Salt Lakes: An Unnatural History, which blends travel writing, memoir, and reportage in an inspiring call to fight for all that is fragile in our lives. Moderated by Rue Mapp, Founder and CEO of Outdoor Afro, the nation’s foremost non-profit organization inspiring Black leadership and connections in nature, this panel will provide a glimpse into the wondrous and nurturing beauty of our natural world worth protecting. This event took place in Downtown Berkeley, at the Bay Area Book Festival, May 29-31 2026. Support our work and help to keep the Bay Area Book Festival 96% free! Check out our upcoming events Follow us on instagram:
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Hair Hugs (Read-Aloud)
07/23/2026
Hair Hugs (Read-Aloud)
From coils and long locs to waves and braids, caring for hair can bring families together! Although going to the salon can feel overwhelming with so many options to choose from, the little girl in Salon Saturday by Janelle Harper learns to see her own kind of beautiful during her first trip to the salon with the guidance of her Grandma, Momma, and Sissy. Tasha from Wash Day Love by Tanisia Moore used to dread washing her hair at home every week because it meant stinging eyes, aching back, and water everywhere, but the weekly ritual soon becomes a special bonding time for singing, dancing, and sharing stories with her sister, Mama, and Granny! This read-aloud, emceed by Cinnamongirls Laila and Zoë, is a joyful and vibrant celebration of Black hair, intergenerational love, and ever-evolving journeys of self-expression. This event took place in Downtown Berkeley, at the Bay Area Book Festival, May 29-31 2026. Support our work and help to keep the Bay Area Book Festival 96% free! Check out our upcoming events Follow us on instagram:
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“Yeah I’m a Writer. Now What?” A panel discussion for emergent authors and literary program alums looking for advice on what’s next
07/23/2026
“Yeah I’m a Writer. Now What?” A panel discussion for emergent authors and literary program alums looking for advice on what’s next
If you are a new writer looking for tips on how to live a writer’s life in service to your community, this is the panel for you. Join three working poets and organizers doing exciting things in the fields of music, publishing, activism, arts education, and beyond for a discussion on ways new authors can apply their craft in impactful ways once they’ve chosen the writer’s life. Walk away inspired and with a clearer sense of direction as authors Giovanna Lomanto (Game Over Books), Aleah Bradshaw (aka Nyfe of musical duo “Closegood,” Youth Speaks), and Daniel Summerhill (Divine, Divine, Divine and Mausoleum of Flowers) share advice from each of their unique paths through the literary world beginning as alums of youth and college writing programs. This panel discussion is open to all, especially alums of the Bay’s rich tapestry of youth literary arts organizations and emerging artists looking for advice on what’s next. This event took place in Downtown Berkeley, at the Bay Area Book Festival, May 29-31 2026. Support our work and help to keep the Bay Area Book Festival 96% free! Check out our upcoming events Follow us on instagram:
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Tales for Littles (Read-Aloud)
07/22/2026
Tales for Littles (Read-Aloud)
Breakfast? NO! Sharing? NO! Clean diaper? NO! How do kids with big feelings tell adults what they want? The Baby Who Only Said No! by Sandra Salsbury is a hilarious picture book that will have parents and older siblings laughing along together as they try to get their own ferocious little one to say anything but NO! Eunice Moyle’s My Box of Feelings, a bright and colorful collection of six original mini board books all about feelings, will come in handy for any young one learning to identify, describe, and regulate their emotions. Anger, happiness, calm… what about love? Kati Douglas’ How We Love, a board book full of stellar photography and LGBTQA+ representation of real families and friends, shows love in action through sharing, hugging, showing kindness, demonstrating bravery, and stepping in to help their families and communities. Celebrate the joys and challenges of toddlerhood and independence at this funny and charming read-aloud, emceed by Cinnamongirls Élan and Grace! This event took place in Downtown Berkeley, at the Bay Area Book Festival, May 29-31 2026. Support our work and help to keep the Bay Area Book Festival 96% free! Check out our upcoming events Follow us on instagram:
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Maker, Mentor, Muse: The Spirit of the Work
07/22/2026
Maker, Mentor, Muse: The Spirit of the Work
Maker, Mentor, Muse is an online teaching platform founded in 2022 by Dawn Angelicca Barcelona, Mary Volmer, and Maw Shein Win. Hailing from three distinct backgrounds, generations, and spiritual traditions we believe community is essential to building a satisfying and sustainable literary life and that true success requires balancing all three artistic roles: maker, mentor, muse. In this free one-hour workshop, we offer guided writing experiments for poetry and prose that invites participants to explore how their sacred traditions, rituals, and belief systems inform and inspire their writing processes. Join us! This event took place in Downtown Berkeley, at the Bay Area Book Festival, May 29-31 2026. Support our work and help to keep the Bay Area Book Festival 96% free! Check out our upcoming events Follow us on instagram:
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Fighting for Our Right to Read
07/21/2026
Fighting for Our Right to Read
Featuring critically-acclaimed authors who frequently experience censorship of their books, this rousing panel will highlight the escalation of book bans around the country and how we can fight back against them. While promoting The Day the Books Disappeared, National Leader of Authors Against Book Bans Joanna Ho was forced to leave a school after refusing to comply with the school’s demands forbidding them from mentioning book bans or gay books, sparking discourse about the deeply unconstitutional movement to limit the freedom to read. Palestinian American author and publisher Hannah Moushabeck also faced censorship during a university event, which initially barred Homeland: My Father Dreams of Palestine, a Palestinian picture book. With support from the campus community, she read her book anyway and inspired a university-wide resolution that affirms the freedom of expression. Also continuing the fight at the legislative level is Dashka Slater, whose book The 57 Bus: A True Story of Two Teenagers and the Crime That Changed Their Lives is one of the most banned books in the United States. In 2025, Slater joined the Big 5 Publishers and other authors to sue the State of Idaho over a bill that censored which books youth could read. The scope of today’s bans is much wider than before, but the authors of this panel moderated by activist and organizer Alejandra Domenzain are proof that fighting for our most basic freedom to think, to read, and to arrive at our own opinions is necessary for effective change. This event took place in Downtown Berkeley, at the Bay Area Book Festival, May 29-31 2026. Support our work and help to keep the Bay Area Book Festival 96% free! Check out our upcoming events Follow us on instagram:
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Maps for Worlds Still Becoming: Experiments in Genre, Language, and Form
07/21/2026
Maps for Worlds Still Becoming: Experiments in Genre, Language, and Form
How do we write futures that don’t yet exist? How do we map territories we’re still dreaming and discovering? In this hands-on, generative workshop, participants will create new work across three experimental approaches—speculative memoir, multilingual poetry, and hybrid forms. Designed as a space for exploration rather than mastery, the workshop invites writers to take creative risks, work across boundaries, and imagine new literary possibilities together. Through guided exercises and creative constraints, writers will produce fresh pieces that break conventional forms and chart unknown terrain. Led by three writers whose practices are rooted in experimentation, collaboration, and cross-disciplinary thinking, the session offers prompts, models, and frameworks for writing into the unknown. Opening Conversation (20 minutes) A brief panel discussion exploring how experimentation in form, language, and genre can open pathways to futures that traditional narratives cannot reach. Faculty will share generative techniques from their own work before participants choose a breakout workshop. Three Breakout Mini-Workshops (40 minutes each) Speculative Memoir: Writing Your Alternative Futures Led by Aimee Phan Participants will write new memoir pieces that blend memory with speculation—generating parallel narratives, alternative outcomes, or projected futures from lived experience. Through prompts that ask “what if?” alongside “what happened?”, writers will explore how speculation can deepen truth rather than abandon it. Leave with a draft that reimagines a pivotal moment from your life through multiple possible timelines. Tongues of the Future: Multilingual & Diasporic PoetryLed by Zeina Hashem Beck Writers will create poems that incorporate multiple languages, experiment with code-switching, or use linguistic hybridity as a generative constraint. Drawing on models from contemporary translingual poets and adapted traditional forms, participants will write pieces that reflect how we actually speak, think, and imagine across cultures. Generate new work that envisions futures where such mixing is not marginal but central. Hybrid Forms for a Digital AgeLed by Eric Olson Participants will produce experimental pieces using constraints, collage, and unconventional structures that respond to our fragmented, multimedia contemporary moment. Through timed writing exercises and formal experiments influenced by visual art and digital culture, writers will generate work that resists traditional narrative expectations and invents new shapes for new realities. What You’ll Take Away All participants will leave with new drafts, fresh techniques, and concrete generative methods to continue experimenting in their own practice. This session is especially well-suited for writers drawn to risk-taking, cross-genre work, and expansive notions of voice, form, and belonging. This event took place in Downtown Berkeley, at the Bay Area Book Festival, May 29-31 2026. Support our work and help to keep the Bay Area Book Festival 96% free! Check out our upcoming events Follow us on instagram:
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From the Frontlines of the Culture War: Advocates for Youth Share Their Stories
07/20/2026
From the Frontlines of the Culture War: Advocates for Youth Share Their Stories
Given California’s reputation as a haven of liberal thinking and the pinnacle of tolerance, many people would be surprised to hear about the stories of educators, librarians, and storytime performers who have been harassed and threatened for teaching honestly about race, gender, immigration, religion, and sexuality. District Teacher Librarian for the Oakland Unified School District Debbie Gibbons will moderate this timely conversation featuring the people at the frontlines of today’s escalating culture wars. Veteran California public school teacher Sue Granzella’s Pushed to the Edge: Teachers’ Stories From the Culture Wars is a collection of first-person accounts of resilience in the face of growing bigotry stoked by the far right. She was inspired to write her book when she heard about the Proud Boys storming a local library to disrupt a Drag Story Hour, which was hosted by Kyle Casey Chu, drag queen and author of The Queen Bees of Tybee County Queen. They will be joined by high school librarian and media specialist Betsy Sergeant as well as former English teacher and program director for the Davis Phoenix Coalition Anoosh Jorjorian to offer a sobering view of what’s at stake in our schools, libraries, and for young people today. Their firsthand experiences offer unique perspectives about the impact of California’s culture wars on its youth and provide a hopeful testament to those who refuse to back down. This event took place in Downtown Berkeley, at the Bay Area Book Festival, May 29-31 2026. Support our work and help to keep the Bay Area Book Festival 96% free! Check out our upcoming events Follow us on instagram:
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Catastrophic Catalysis: Women Taking Risks for Humanity
07/20/2026
Catastrophic Catalysis: Women Taking Risks for Humanity
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. This event took place in Downtown Berkeley, at the Bay Area Book Festival, May 29-31 2026. Support our work and help to keep the Bay Area Book Festival 96% free! https://givebutter.com/writingthefuture Check out our upcoming events www.baybookfest.org Follow us on instagram: https://www.instagram.com/baybookfest/
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