Bay Area Book Festival Podcast

Narrating the Mother Aug 21, 2025

Join the Bay Area Book Festival and Litquake for an intimate (virtual) conversation with Iman Mersal and Kate Briggs, two writers who reshape our understanding of motherhood and the art of living. Mersal, acclaimed Egyptian-Canadian poet and essayist who most recently authored Motherhood and Its Ghosts, excavates the invisible labor and haunting absences of motherhood, blending irony, empathy, and unsparing honesty as she searches for lost women and lost selves. Her work is a bridge between personal memory and cultural critique, always aware of what remains unsaid. Briggs, Rotterdam-based author of The Long Form, reinvents “mom-lit” with philosophical, fragmentary prose, capturing the daily improvisations of new parenthood and the shifting architectures of care. Together, they invite us to witness the fragile, ever-changing forms of family and friendship, and the radical potential of the everyday. This conversation promises to be as nuanced and expansive as their writing, and will be moderated by beloved Sri Lankan American author Nayomi Munaweera.

So Many Stars: A Celebration of Trans, Nonbinary, Genderqueer, and Two-Spirit People of Color Aug 20, 2025

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, nonbinary, genderqueer, and two-spirit elders of color, offering an intimate look into their personal stories, struggles, and triumphs. This event will include an introductory conversation between De Robertis and acclaimed author Nayomi Munaweera, followed by conversation with narrators from the book—iconic artists and activists Crystal Mason, Tina Aguirre, and Chino Lee Chung—on the past, present, and future of trans BIPOC movements. Don't miss this moving, thought-provoking exploration of gender, culture, resistance, and the transformative power of storytelling.

A Memoir for Remembrance Aug 20, 2025

A shape is composed of its outline and the space inside, meaning that the people around us play an integral role in forming who we are. In navigating the questions left behind following tragic loss, the authors of this poignant memoir panel honor their loved ones through writing, and, in doing so, redefine their own selves along the way. After grieving in silence for years, Susan Lieu, the daughter of refugees from the Vietnam War, finally tells her family’s story in The Manicurist’s Daughter, which details Lieu’s twenty-year journey of piecing together her mother’s life in Vietnam and the truth behind her botched tummy tuck by a surgeon who continued to operate after her death. Abby Reyes, author of Truth Demands: A Memoir of Murder, Oil Wars, and the Rise of Climate Justice, also takes aim at justice when Colombia invites her twenty years too late into Case 001 of their truth and recognition tribunal about the 1999 murder of her partner Terence Unity Freitas near Indigenous land then coveted by a US oil company. For Eirinie Carson, her book The Dead are Gods is a letter to her best friend Larissa and an attempt to make sense of the events leading up to her sudden death. Moderated by librarian and public historian Dorothy Lazard, this discussion will explore the process of documenting long-buried truths that shape us in our grief.

Wound is the Portal: Healing into the Future and Incantation for Future: Closing Headliner & Portal Closing Aug 19, 2025

This poetry portal explores the wound not as an end, but as a powerful beginning. Join us for a journey where language becomes a site of transformation—where grief, memory, and survival are not just revisited, but reimagined. Mimi Tempestt breaks open conventions with a voice that insists on reclamation and the sacredness of Black queer futurity. Her work spirals through personal and collective histories, creating a radical space for becoming. Salvadoran poet Marian Urquilla mines personal and political terrain, forging poems that speak to displacement, resilience, and empowerment. With precision and heart, her language gives shape to survival. James Cagney, PEN Oakland award-winner and recipient of the Academy of American Poets' James Laughlin Award, delivers poems that honor vulnerability and rage in equal measure. His work reverberates with ancestral echoes and present-day urgency. Together, these poets wield poetry as a technology of resilience and a tool for new world-building. In their hands, the wound becomes a map—leading us toward a future where we do more than survive. We thrive. We bloom.

As the poetry stage draws to a close, we will gather for one final invocation—a moment to honor what has been conjured, created, and carried forward. Incantation for Future is both a celebration and a spell for what comes next. Legendary writer and cultural icon joins us as our closing headliner, offering a rare reading that reaches across generations, geographies, and genres. Her work, rooted in the mythic, the historical, and the personal, has long opened portals for those navigating identity, exile, and transformation.

In this culminating moment, Maxine Hong Kingston offers not just a reading, but a blessing—an incantation for futures rooted in justice, storytelling, and radical interconnectedness. Her presence reminds us that language shapes the world, that memory is a map, and that poetry is a path toward liberation. Together, we will close the portal not with finality, but with intention—carrying the words, visions, and reverberations of the festival into the world beyond. Let this be our collective offering to the future.

Seeking Justice in Historical Fiction Aug 19, 2025

What lengths would you go to to prove your innocence? For Anglo-Indian nurse Sona, it’s following a cryptic note and four paintings that lead her around Europe to uncover details about the complicated personal life of the renowned painter she is suspected of killing in Six Days in Bombay by Alka Joshi. The story of a wrongly accused Irish maid in San Quentin Prison garners the attention of an aspiring photographer grappling with infidelity and gentrification in Meredith Jaeger’s The Incorrigibles, a novel exploring the different ways in which we are imprisoned and how we can break free. Starting anew is no simple task, as Miyoung from Rosa Kwon Easton’s White Mulberry finds out when she faces prejudice after relocating from her impoverished village in northern Korea to Kyoto, Japan in search of a better future as a nurse. From Korea to India to our very own Bay Area, this dynamic discussion moderated by memoirist and travel writer Janis Cooke Newman will transport audiences to the pockets of history around the world that are just waiting to be uncovered.

Women, Cyborgs, Revolutionary Petunias, and Other Creatures Aug 18, 2025

This reading celebrates the wild, wired, and the wondrous. Inspired, and the fierce multiplicity of the natural world, this portal brings together five poets whose work transgresses borders—of body, genre, and possibility. These poets will open portals that invite us into places of resistance and rage, that when honored transform into generative and sacred places. Rachel Richardson’s work bends time and language, drawing from historical fragments and embodied memory to question whose stories survive and how. Her poems illuminate what’s hidden beneath the surface of the everyday. Language and spirit commingle in Georgina Marie, Lake County Poet Laureate emeritus’s lyrical activism. She writes poems rooted in place, grief, and renewal—pulling language from the earth and the divine alike. Oakland’s Yaffaz AS words dismantle binaries and build new grammars for queer, trans, and brown becoming. Their poetics are glitchy, expansive, and defiant. Lynne Thompson, former Los Angeles Poet Laureate, explores diasporic identity, lineage, and the many selves we carry through history and into the future. As a conduit of worlds she create poetry that transports and brings communities together. Cinematic and visceral—Shabnam Piryaei’s work shapeshifts across borders and forms. Her work is a philosophical inquiry and a healing journey, and luminous defiance. This is a celebration of what refuses to be defined. Join us where the petals have teeth and language mutates into power.

In Search of Sanctuary: Stories of Migration, Hardships and Hope Aug 18, 2025

Shining a light on the often invisible and incredibly complex experience of migration, the established scholars of this panel examine migration through human-centered lenses by documenting the difficult reasons people move away from an old home and the realities they must face upon arrival in their new one. Sin Padres, Ni Papeles details Stephanie L. Canizales’ academic study about how undocumented Central American and Mexican teens in LA navigate unthinkable material and emotional hardship, find the agency and hope that is required to survive, and discover what it means to be successful as they come of age in the United States. Shifting the focus to Northern California, Cruz Medina’s Sanctuary is a case study following the community of Indigenous Guatemalan Maya people in a Spanish-speaking church in the East Bay, many of whom sought refuge in the United States but were instead met with the dehumanizing and exclusionary rhetoric of US political leaders, militarized immigration enforcement, false promises of empowerment through literacy, and further displacement from gentrification. Journalist Jeanne Carstensen turns an investigative eye to the devastating 2015 shipwreck that resulted in the loss of hundreds of refugee lives during the biggest refugee crisis since World War II in A Greek Tragedy, which includes recollections of the refugees’ lives prior to leaving their home as well as the courageous rescue efforts of the Greek islanders and volunteers who rushed to help, even as their government and the EU failed to act. Moderated by award-winning author and journalist Frances Dinkelspiel.

Living Legacies: Native Authors on Memoir and Memory Aug 15, 2025

From the very first contact, Indigenous people have been spoken about more than they have been heard. Early "autobiographies" of Native individuals were often penned by outsiders, distorting the essence of the genre by denying autonomy to the very subjects for whom autobiography—by definition—should uplift. In recent years, seminal works of First Nations storytelling have come to the forefront, and this panel features three recent additions to the Native voices now taking center stage to tell their own stories. Métis storyteller and Montana Poet Laureate Chris LaTray combines diligent research and compelling conversations in Becoming Little Shell, his story of discovery and embracing his Indigenous identity by joining the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians in their 158-year-long struggle for federal recognition. Essayist Terra Trevor turns to memoir in We Who Walk the Seven Ways, which recounts how a circle of Native women elders embraced and guided her through the seven cycles of life, lifting her from grief and instructing her in living following a difficult loss. Published poet and Mvskoke citizen Jennifer Foerster is one of the editors of This Music, a memoir written by—but not finished by—the late Janice Gould, who was a Koyunkowi poet and educator. Former Kansas poet laureate and founding board member of Indigenous Nations Poet Denise Low will moderate this insightful discussion featuring contemporary Indigenous perspectives on the importance of having your story told in your own voice.

Essay as Form Aug 15, 2025

The essay’s subjective and fragmented nature enables writers to grapple with complexities without the restrictions of systematic, traditional approaches to writing (Theodor W. Adorno, “The Essay as Form”). It liberates the essayist to take a nuanced look at the world, as cultural essayist and social critic Steve Wasserman does in Tell Me Something, Tell Me Anything, Even If It’s a Lie: A Memoir in Essays, an exhilarating account of the awakening of an empathetic sensibility and a lively mind, featuring personal reflections on politics, literature, influential figures, and the tumults of a world in upheaval. Award-winning author and “ethnographer on a skateboard” José Vadi turns to skateboarding as a lens to document the world in his latest memoir-in-essays, Chipped, which contemplates how skateboarding redefines space, curates culture, confronts mortality, and affords new perspectives on and off the board. Chi Boy: Native Sons and Chicago Reckonings by Keenan Norris employs the essay form to meld memoir, cultural criticism, and literary biography in a masterful and emotional depiction of the city of Chicago as both a cradle of Black intellect, art, and politics and a distillation of America’s deepest tragedies. These essayists will be in conversation with Chino Lee Chung, who is currently working on a collection of essays that integrate his social activism with his intersectional identities as a recipient of the 2024–2025 San Jose State Steinbeck Fellowship. This enriching panel, moderated by writer and professor Faith Adiele, will explore the essay-writing process with authors who have published essays in diverse contexts.

Chimera Space: Monstrous, Lovely, and Liminal Aug 14, 2025

Enter the liminal. In this portal, hybridity is power, and contradiction is poetry. Chimera Space brings together a group of poets whose work inhabits the monstrous, the beautiful, and the in-between—bodies, identities, and voices that resist categorization and embrace complexity. Cindy Juyoung Ok writes into multiplicity, turning silence into disruption and fragmentation into form. Her poems invite readers into nonlinear truths. Grayson Thompson conjures the poetic tenderness and fire, exploring queer embodiment and psychic rupture. Adela Najarro brings the force of nature and cultural inheritance to the page, her poetry fusing eco-consciousness with the surreal. Amanda Hawkins explores desire, disorientation, and liminality with language that glows from within. Her work vibrates with strange beauty and invites us into the sensual space of the unknowable. Mia Ayumi Malhotra writes from the rich interstices of lineage and displacement. Her lyric inquiries unfold slowly, like memory, threading together multiple inheritances and the ghosts that come with them. Join us as these poetic guides read us into the borderlands—offering a space where transformation is not only possible, but inevitable. A panel discussion will follow the reading.

Creators’ Collective Action Aug 14, 2025

Amidst current challenges like book bans in schools and libraries across the country, record numbers of legal restrictions on the human rights of immigrants and trans people, especially trans youth, in our community, creators play a crucial role when they come together in a unified voice of resistance. We have many models of people who resisted under the most repressive circumstances, including Maria van Lieshout’s Song of a Blackbird, a historical graphic novel based on a true story about a collective of artists in the Dutch Resistance during WWII who used their creativity to save children and to support community resistance in heavily oppressive times.There are also many organizations pushing back now, today, demonstrating the pivotal role of the creative spirit in highlighting problems, providing possible solutions, and bringing us together to lift us up. Hear from Maggie Tokuda-Hall of Authors Against Book Bans, Rhonda Roumani of Story Sunbirds, and Robert Liu-Trujillo of the Social Justice Children’s Book Fair on how they are pushing back against book bans, fighting for children in the face of war, and uplifting social justice children’s books in their community. For everyone and anyone who cares about young humans, this panel, moderated by author and professor Tomas Moniz, will invite creatives and organizers to share what gives them hope, what they do, and how we can all get involved.

Homeland to Home Aug 13, 2025

A sense of place is something we all deserve. For children whose roots lie in lands and cultures that are often under- or even mis-represented, the concept of home can be complex. When the politics of war propaganda and media stereotypes permeate our lives, children’s books offer insight, better understanding, and for some a path home. From Iraq, Palestine, and Iran, three authors share their homeland journeys. Mona Damluji (I Want You to Know) and Maysa Odeh (A Map For Falasteen). Moderated by Khalil Bendib, host of Voices of the Middle East and North Africa on KPFA (94.1 FM).

Murder in Mysterious Places Aug 13, 2025

The talented woman sleuths of this panel have once again found themselves in unexpected conundrums that hit close to home. Join Parisian PI Aimée Leduc on her quest for innocence after being framed for the murder of her daughter’s father in Murder at la Villette, the 21st installment of Cara Black’s New York Times bestselling mystery series. Alternatively, travel from France back to California with The Serial Killer Guide to San Francisco by Michelle Chouinard, in which the granddaughter of a suspected serial killer suddenly finds herself as the prime suspect for murder. Peaceful seaside town Haven, California is the setting for Rachel Howzell Hall’s latest thriller, Fog and Fury, a town hiding more secrets than LAPD cop Sonny had anticipated when she first relocated there with her elderly mother. Family businesses take the stage in The Library Game, Book 4 of the Secret Staircase Mysteries by Gigi Pandian, which follows Tempest Raj and her family construction business’s newest project to transform a home into a public library that celebrates history's greatest fictional detectives, but the mood quickly sours when their celebratory event, a murder mystery dinner and a literary-themed escape room, ends in murder and a vanished body. Speaking of libraries and detectives, this thrilling discussion will be moderated by the Curator of the California Detective Fiction Collection at the UC Berkeley Bancroft Library, Randal Brandt.

Follow Your Heart to Graphic Novels Aug 12, 2025

Whether in a comic panel or at a panel discussion, these earnest graphic novel stories are here to remind us to stay true to ourselves, our beliefs, and our passions! Follow Huda Fahmy’s exhilarating and chaotic family vacation to Disney World, where self-conscious Huda quickly realizes that her family’s public prayers make them stand out; and while she is proud of her religion and who she is, she sure wishes she could just think: Huda F Cares? Like the people Huda encounters in Florida, the students and teachers at Hassan’s middle school are also particularly uninformed about the traditions of Ramadan in Wahab Algarmi’s Almost Sunset, and Hassan must learn to balance it all during this hectic holy month of fasting, prayer, reflection, and community. Time plays a mischievous role in You and Me On Repeat by Mary Shyne, a swoony and hilarious rom-com graphic novel about two former friends who are trapped in a time loop that repeats their high school graduation day over and over and over. Written by high school teacher and award-winning graphic novelist Gene Luen Yang, Dragon Hoops recounts his life-changing journey following the men’s varsity basketball team as they shoot for their ultimate goal: the California State Championships. Celebrating both the comical and meaningful moments in life, this compelling panel, moderated by librarian and children’s author Elaine Tai, offers an endearing and intimate look into the multidimensional lives of graphic novel protagonists.

Healing, Activism and Collective Liberation: Strategies for Building a New World Aug 12, 2025

This panel unites four transformative leaders pioneering the incorporation of healing into activism, demonstrating how personal transformation fuels collective liberation. Their work bridges social justice and healing, emphasizing the need for community care in the fight for a just future. Dr. Ayodele Nzinga, poet laureate of Oakland and founder of Lower Bottom Playaz and BAMBD CDC, uses poetry as a tool for Black liberation. In Sorrowland Oracle, she redefines healing and justice through a Black gaze, centering Black space as essential for universal liberation. Myisha T. Hill, writer, social entrepreneur, and healer, leads a revolution of heart, mind, and soul. Her book, Heal Your Way Forward, challenges us to envision an antiracist future for the next seven generations, offering practical guidance on healing and meaningful change. Kazu Haga, nonviolence and restorative justice educator, argues that activism and healing must be inseparable. His book, Fierce Vulnerability, calls for centering relationships and addressing trauma, reminding us that we cannot “shut down” injustice any more than we can “shut down” pain. Malaika Parker, Executive Director of Black Organizing Project, has worked toward a racially just SF Bay Area for 25 years, addressing police accountability, racial justice in education, and race-based inequities in the child welfare system. She is the founder of Hummingbirds Urban Farming Collective, which promotes food sovereignty and ecological justice for Black children and their communities. Moderated by Renata Moreira, trauma-informed social impact consultant and Reiki Master Teacher, this conversation will explore how embracing vulnerability, addressing trauma, and incorporating healing into activism can create lasting social change.

All Bodies All Selves Aug 11, 2025

As we face increasing attacks on our bodily autonomy from our federal and state governments, these books provide essential resources and narratives that approach the topic with acuity and compassion. Award-winning author Zetta Elliott reflects the voices of Black women and girls for whom body policing has long been an issue in Say Her Name, a collection of poems that pays tribute to victims of police brutality as well as the activists championing the Black Lives Matter cause, revealing the beauty, danger, and magic found at the intersection of race and gender. In Seema Yasmin’s Unbecoming, a near-speculative novel that has predicted our anti-abortion world with terrifying accuracy, two Muslim teens in Texas create an illegal guide to abortion that includes how to secure safe medications and navigate underground networks of clinics that sprung up in response to unfair laws that prohibit the right to choose. Breathe: Journeys to Healthy Binding by bestselling author Maia Kobabe and Public Health Assistant Professor Sarah Peitzmeier, offers a real-life a graphic novel guide to chest binding as gender-affirming care not only for trans and nonbinary folks but also for anyone interested in what it means to be on a journey of expressing one’s gender in ways that are joyful, healthy, and affirming. Screenwriter, poet, and educator Shia Shabazz Smith will moderate this panel, building from the crucial book Our Bodies, Ourselves, that advocates for bodily autonomy for all bodies, all selves.

Storming the Gatekeepers: Past, Present, & Future Publishing Alternatives Aug 11, 2025

Long before politicians weaponized book bans across the country, mainstream publishers have controlled which books get published, carrying out “soft book bans” through gatekeeping. For as long as books have been published (and censored), indie and alternative publishers have challenged these gatekeepers, who have often excluded and marginalized diverse voices. As these same institutions preemptively buckle to pressures from above, we must uplift true grassroots, community-based publishers that bring out books by and for their communities. Hear from Zetta Elliott (The Oracle’s Door) of Rosetta Press, a self-publisher of children’s books that reveal, explore and foster a Black feminist vision of the world; Robert Liu-Trujillo (Fresh Juice) of the Social Justice Children’s Book Fair; and Maya Gonzalez (When a Bully Is President) and Matthew Smith of Reflection Press, a POC, queer, and trans-owned independent children’s book publisher. This candid conversation, moderated by Laura Atkins of the Social Justice Children’s Book Fair, will focus on envisioning and creating alternate pathways in order to bring underrepresented stories to life. With expertise in self-publishing, hybrid models, and micropresses, the creative minds of this panel will share about their work, the books they produce, the challenges they face, and how they find ways to thrive as they create important and meaningful books.

Poetry stage: Incantations to Open Portals + Garden of Possibilities Aug 08, 2025

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 becomes spell, speech becomes spellwork, and presence becomes protest.

This opening event features incantatory offerings by Aya de León, Berkeley Poet Laureate, celebrated poet, activist, and author, who will bring her fierce, truth-telling lyricism to this moment of collective gathering. Her work bridges the personal and political, and her incantation sets the stage for a festival rooted in justice, joy, and imagination. MK Chavez, Co-director of the Berkeley Poetry Festival, will introduce the legacy of amplifying the voices of writers who change the world. Together, they will open the portal—with words, intention, and fierce love.

In a world contending with violence and erasure, what does it mean to plant a future? Garden of Possibilities gathers six poets who write toward abundance, resistance, and reimagined ways of being. Through language rooted in care, complexity, and radical imagination, this reading and panel invites us to collectively cultivate what is possible. Audrey T. Williams, a visionary voice in Afrofuturist and Black speculative poetics, crafts worlds where Black liberation blooms beyond the limits of the present. Her work is a call to remember, to dream, and imagine. Gabriel Cortez fuses poetry with movement-building, creating work that uplifts diasporic joy, ecological kinship, and community resilience. Cintia Santana writes into the intersections of language, translation, and exile. Her poetry navigates linguistic borders and personal geographies, tracing beauty through dislocation and cultural memory. Kinsale Drake, a Diné poet and storyteller, brings forth visions rooted in Native sovereignty and survival. Her work speaks of land, lineage, and a future held in Indigenous hands. Maw Shein Win tends the surreal and the sublime, her poetry offering quiet revelations from the edges of reality. Drawing from Burmese heritage and Buddhist philosophy, she brings a meditative force to the page. Bryan Byrdlong blends history, speculation, and Afrosurrealism with craft and fire. His poetry opens portals—honoring memory while daring new futures into being. Together, these poets offer a garden where justice grows, language blooms, and imagination becomes practice.

Our Beautiful, Burning World Aug 08, 2025

In the face of climate catastrophe, it’s natural to react with grief, sorrow, and hopelessness to the constant reminders of how fragile and impermanent our world is. Lauren Markham reckons with her grief in Immemorial, a speculative synthesis of reporting, memoir, and essay describing her desire to memorialize something in the process of being lost and mourn the abstracted casualties of what’s to come. The climate crisis affects all areas of our lives, especially motherhood for Rachel Richardson, who questions how best to raise her young daughters amidst a string of record-breaking fires across the California landscape in Smother, a collection of poems that weaves environmental and physical predation—both on the earth and on the female body. Obi Kaufmann offers a solution in The State of Fire, presenting fire as a force of regeneration rather than apocalypse, essential for a healthy and biodiverse Golden State, and sharing a refreshingly hopeful vision of California’s future in which we learn from the teachings of our surroundings. A future of regeneration is precarious but reassuringly within reach, and this panel, moderated by Environmental Studies Associate Professor Vijaya Nagarajan, will be both a validation of our sorrow for the burning world and a beacon of hope as we work to revitalize it.

Co-presented with Litquake, San Francisco's literary festival. Litquake’s diverse live programs aim to inspire critical engagement with the key issues of the day, bring people together around the common humanity encapsulated in literature, and perpetuate a sense of literary community by providing a vibrant forum for Bay Area writing

Coming of Age in an Unsteady World Aug 07, 2025

In a country that tries to erase our troubled history of the oppressive treatment of certain groups, today’s youth are forced to find their footing in an increasingly unsteady world that rejects their exploration of different identities and experiences. Join Oakland writers Carolina Ixta (Shut Up, This is Serious) and J.R. Rice (Broken Pencils) for an impactful panel discussion focused on teen mental health and the difficult choices that young people face as they come of age. Cognizant of the unique struggles that come with growing up in diverse Bay Area communities, these novels present adolescence in a brutally honest and heart-wrenching light, touching on topics like teen pregnancy, drugs, and sexual harassment, while treating readers with both tenderness and tough love in a way that teaches us to demand respect for ourselves, no matter our origins. Joining them will be Rhonda Roumani (Tagging Freedom) whose book follows Kareem Haddad, a young graffiti artist from war-torn Damascus, is inspired to use his art to protest the violence around him, while his cousin Samira in the United States grapples with fitting in and standing up for what’s right. As Kareem’s secret messages spark a movement, both teens must confront the power of activism and the personal choices they must make in the face of war and societal pressure. Moderated by social justice advocate and community leader Xochtil Larios, whose social reform work has earned her the California Endowment 2018 Youth Award and a Soros Youth Justice Fellowship, this discussion will resonate with both teens and adults, offering insight into the universal experience of finding one's way through the maze of mental health, difficult choices, family, and identity.

Bridging the Gaps: Redefining Healthcare Through a Justice Lens Aug 07, 2025

The for-profit American healthcare model has left gaps in the system that harm everyone by stripping away the human element and emboldening shifty ethical and legal practices. The authors of this panel draw on their medical expertise to propose new frameworks for healing by targeting specific areas of today’s complex healthcare system. In My Brother's Keeper, UCSF psychiatrist Dr. Nicholas Rosenlicht introduces a paradigm shift toward real and lasting solutions in mental health care built on a deep understanding of larger social and economic forces, while clinical psychologist Dr. Yamonte Cooper centers the Black male experience and addresses racial trauma from a clinical lens in Black Men and Racial Trauma: Impacts, Disparities, and Interventions, which equips mental health professionals across all disciplines to be culturally responsive when serving Black men. In All This Safety is Killing Us, a comprehensive, multimedia guide to abolition through the lens of healthcare and medicine, health justice advocate Dr. Carlos Martinez combines political strategy with evidence-based medical and social science research to envision a post-carceral society co-created by the voices our justice systems should be protecting. Those working within public health and medical fields have a critical role to play in ensuring inclusive care, and the advocates of this panel, along with moderator Dr. Vanessa Grubbs, are paving the way toward a truly safe and flourishing society.

Pages and Pictures from Early Reader to Middle Grade Aug 06, 2025

The only thing better than an awesome story? An awesome story with pictures, perfect for early readers and middle graders! Follow along with Stella & Marigold as they explore secrets involving blankets, a terrible storm, and two brave children in Annie Barrows’ bright new series about a pair of sisters adventuring through their imaginary worlds. Nine-year-old Ella from Nina LaCour’s Ella Josephine: Resident in Charge also knows what it’s like to have secrets in her perfect apartment house on Poppy Hill, which is inhabited by residents who are as much family as they are neighbors. The beloved Batcat graphic novel series returns to cook up something special in Batcat: Cooking Contest by Meggie Ramm, a story celebrating food, friends, found family, and festivities. Author Lisa Moore Ramée and Laila of Cinnamongirl Inc. will moderate the joyful discussion between these authors, whose stories help us figure out the world and our place in it—and who we want by our side.

Problematic Reports from the Frontlines of Tech Aug 06, 2025

While the tightrope of technological advancement is proving quite difficult to navigate, experts from the frontlines of the tech industry are here to offer insights on how we can move forward as a society. First, we must look critically to the scars etched by generations of systemic segregation, as journalist Alexis Madrigal does in The Pacific Circuit, using vibrant and untold stories from the city of Oakland as a backdrop to reveal how our markets and our world really function. Vulnerable communities are hurt most by big tech, and former Facebook lead attorney Bärí Williams recounts balancing on glass cliffs while battling the burnout that so often forces out Black women in her book Seen Yet Unseen, which demonstrates how the industry’s lack of Black women not only harms the businesses themselves but has troubling ramifications for their products. The mental health community is also particularly at risk, and science writer Daniel Oberhaus’ The Silicon Shrink tells the inside story of how the quest to use AI in psychiatry has created the conditions to turn the world into an asylum by applying deeply flawed psychiatric models of mental disorder at unprecedented scale. The cost of moving quickly in tech is falling victim to its deception. In Terms of Servitude, Omar Zahzah examines the paradox whereby Big Tech companies and prominent digital platforms that initially facilitated the expression of activism and advocacy for Palestinian liberation have come to fortify Zionist settler-colonialism through censorship and erasure often justified by so-called “terms of service” violations. Join us in this panel, moderated by CalMatters tech reporter Khari Johnson, amplifying counter-narratives in tech.

Drawn to Justice: Graphic Novels and the Power of Social Action Aug 05, 2025

Fight hate, make art, and build community with these graphic novels, based on true stories, that depict the importance of fighting for justice in whatever ways we can. For Eddie Ahn, author of Advocate, becoming an environmental justice lawyer for non-profits defies his Korean immigrant family’s notions of economic success but allows him to confront the most immediate issues the country is facing today, from the devastating effects of California wildfires to economic inequality, all while combating burnout and racial prejudice. Maria van Lieshout, inspired by documents written by her grandparents about their experiences during the Nazi occupation, created Song of a Blackbird, which follows a group of artists who helped pull off the greatest bank heist in European history to fund the Dutch Resistance. Also based on a family story, Josh Tuininga’s We Are Not Strangers follows a Jewish immigrant’s efforts to help his Japanese neighbors, whose lives were upended by Executive Order 9066 that authorized the incarceration of nearly all Japanese Americans during World War II. Timely and rousing, this panel portraying the value of a life of service and civic responsibility will be moderated by Breena Nuñez, a cartoonist and educator whose diary comics help BIPOC folks give themselves permission to express their personal stories through the language of comics.

Paths to Publishing: From the Big Five to DIY Aug 05, 2025

These days, there are so many ways to get your book out into the world, choosing the best option can be daunting.

Join us as a published author from each pathway — the Big 5 (Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, and Hachette Book Group), other traditional publishers, small presses, university presses, hybrid presses, and self publishing - shares their own experience, both good and bad.

Janis Cooke Newman, Saeeda Hafiz, Janine Kovac, Tania Malik, Joan Steinau Lester, Bridget Quinn

Portable Intersectionality: Roxane Gay in conversation with Alicia Garza Aug 04, 2025

As critical works and perspectives are being increasingly censored by the federal government’s hypocritical campaign for its distorted vision of “free speech,” our strategies for organizing and mobilizing communities must adapt to most effectively resist these attacks on justice. Here with an urgent reminder that feminism is expansive rather than definitive is Haitian-American writer and self-proclaimed “bad feminist” Roxane Gay, whose latest collection, The Portable Feminist Reader, depicts the feminist canon as one that represents a long history of feminist scholarship, embraces skepticism, and invites robust discussion and debate. According to the Starred Library Journal, she “provides accessible entry points into feminism and offers even advanced scholars new ways of viewing the complex, intersectional histories of feminist thought, literature, and action” by presenting multicultural perspectives, ecofeminism, feminism and disability, feminist labor, gender perspectives, and Black feminism. Intersectionality and having diverse voices is crucial in the fight for justice, and in conversation with Gay is another powerful voice in media and co-creator of #BlackLivesMatter and the Black Lives Matter Global Network, Alicia Garza, who will be the first to say that “hashtags don’t start movements. People do.” Thus, the first step forward is to equip oneself with knowledge from experts like Gay and Garza, who encourage people to carry their power within, allowing them to adapt and transform, but never conform, in their intersectionality.

Bringing our Youth Back to the Land Aug 04, 2025

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, projects in rematriation and revitalization of land have emerged to restore this lost connection through research, art, and storytelling. Queer Chamoru writer and interdisciplinary artist Lehua Taitano strengthens her communities as the co-founder of Art 25: Art in the Twenty-fifth Century, current Program and Community Manager at Kearny Street Workshop, and author of several award-winning works that investigate modern indigeneity, decolonization, and cultural identity in the context of diaspora. As an educator, Tongan poet, community organizer, and farmer, Loa Niumeitolu uplifts vulnerable groups in many ways through her work within programs that support Tongan writers, Pacific Islander prisoners and ex-prisoners, and the LGBTQ indigenous community. The talented and inspirational writers of this panel will speak about their contributions toward connecting people across generations, addressing some of the cultural damage that has been done, and re-establishing collective and interconnected communities.

Mystery writers Unmasking Larger Issues Aug 01, 2025

Fiction is often a vehicle for confronting political issues, and the mystery genre is no exception. Former newspaper reporter Jennifer K. Morita’s debut mystery, Ghosts of Waikīkī, features an out-of-work journalist looking into the murder of a controversial land developer and explores timely issues in Hawai’i, including locals getting priced out of paradise. If, as Morita claims, “a good story is like mochi—slightly sweet with a nice chew,” then Leslie Karst takes the phrase quite literally in the second book of the Orchid Isle series, Waters of Destruction, a cozy culinary mystery featuring a feisty queer couple who swap surfing lessons for sleuthing sessions in tropical Hilo, Hawai’i. Follow Mud Sawpole from D. M. Rowell’s Silent Are the Dead as she investigates a murder while also pursuing evidence to permanently stop frackers from destroying the Kiowas’ ancestral homeland, water, and livelihoods. Large institutions also play a big role in Not Long Ago Persons Found by J. Richard Osborn, a debut novel about a biological anthropologist tasked with explaining (in a way that satisfies multiple political regimes) why the body of a young boy is found floating in a river with little to identify him other than pollen in his lungs from what has to be some warm green valley distant from the city in which he has turned up dead. Moderated by the decorated and beloved detective fiction writer Laurie R. King, this panel will explore mystery stories of the modern day as a voice against corruption, land grabs, and other forms of injustice.

Panel: We Will Not Disappear: Queer/Trans Voices in a Time of Backlash Aug 01, 2025

Nefertiti Asanti, Natasha Dennerstein, Edward Gunawan, Miah Jeffra, Baruch Porras-Hernandez, Grayson Thompson

Community members of the Bay Area's beloved LGBTQ+ collaborative, Foglifter Journal and Press, discuss the role of queer and trans publishing in a time when the nation has further precluded being a place of support and comfort, and shape a vision for queer/trans writing both as celebration and resistance. Panelists will share tips and exercises to cultivate writing in this time of duress.

Nightmares Revealed: The Rise of Latinx Horror Fiction Jul 31, 2025

Join us for an invigorating discussion on the rising influence of Latinx voices in horror fiction. Panelists Daniel A. Olivas, Cynthia Gómez, and M. M. Olivas will delve into how Latinx authors are using the genre to blend culture, resistance, horror, and social commentary, confronting both real and imagined monsters. Daniel A. Olivas, author of Chicano Frankenstein, reimagines the literary classic in a near-future—yet very present—United States, where 12 million “reanimated” people are exploited as a cheap workforce and face pervasive bigotry. This modern retelling of Frankenstein tackles themes of racism, isolation, belonging, and identity, challenging a society that erases the past while exploring the ‘horrors’ of what it means to be human in a dehumanizing world. Cynthia Gómez’s powerful, debut collection, The Nightmare Box, is a magic-infused love letter to Oakland, where Latine, queer, and working-class characters wield supernatural powers against oppression, loneliness, and fear. With feminist rage and dark themes, her stories push back against power structures while offering hope and showcasing the resilience of the human spirit. M. M. Olivas’ Sundown in San Ojuela immerses readers in a supernatural horror world inspired by Mesoamerican mythology. Olivias brings queer and diasporic experiences to the forefront, exploring the duality of monsters and the people who fear them. The novel offers a blueprint for confronting both internal and external darkness, highlighting the strength in resistance. Moderated by Kristina Canales, author of Pull Me from the Deep and founder of Queerthology, this conversation promises to be dynamic as Canales brings her own perspective, blending horror and romance to explore identity, culture, and terror. Join us for an insightful exploration of Latinx horror fiction, where culture, fear, and resilience collide in unexpected and powerful ways.

Becoming an Authorpreneur Jul 30, 2025

Do you have an idea for a reading series, literary podcast, website, or game? Maybe you've imagined starting your own literary nonprofit, magazine, bookstore, or (gasp) book festival. Chances are, if you've dreamed it up, Brooke Warner and Grant Faulkner have insights to help make it happen—and can inspire you to turn your literary visions into reality. Brooke, publisher of She Writes Press, memoir coach, author of several books on writing and memoir, and a dedicated member of many literary boards, brings her expertise in publishing and storytelling to the table. Grant, co-host of the podcast Write-minded, former executive director of NaNoWriMo, co-founder of 100-Word Story and the Flash Fiction Collective, and Executive Producer on the upcoming TV series America's Next Great Author, combines practical advice with encouragement. Together, they’ll guide you through the steps to bring your literary dreams to life.

Redefining Home Jul 30, 2025

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 and personal struggles. Old School Indian by Aaron John Curtis follows an Ahkwesáhsne man’s reluctant return to his reservation after receiving a diagnosis for a rare disease, where he undergoes a healing at the hands of his wry Great Uncle Budge and finds hope in confronting the parts of himself he’s hidden ever since he left home. In Jon Hickey’s Big Chief, a young law school graduate and aspiring political fixer fights a nationally known politician for control over his tribe’s casino and hotel in an unforgettable story about the search for belonging—to an ancestral and spiritual home, to a family, and to a sovereign people at a moment of great historical importance. Greg Sarris, Chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, will moderate this well-deserved celebration of Native debuts.

Ghosts of Justice: Exposing the Failures and Reimagining the Future of the American Legal System Jul 29, 2025

Having witnessed and experienced the American justice system’s unreasonable treatment of incarcerated people, the activists of this panel shed light on the shrouded reality of the ghosts currently being unduly punished. In his polemic Ghost in the Criminal Justice Machine: Reform, White Supremacy, and an Abolitionist Future, Emile Suotonye DeWeaver combines personal narrative with social commentary to critique the entrenched white supremacy that influences reform efforts, spotlighting the tools we need to address it both within and outside the carceral setting. Dorsey E. Nunn also reflects on lessons he learned in prison, namely that the criminal legal system increasingly targets poor Black and Brown communities with offenses, real or contrived. His memoir What Kind of Bird Can’t Fly: A Memoir of Resilience and Resurrection details his efforts to liberate those he left behind, exemplifying the importance of centering voices of experience in the fight for freedom and dignified flight. Scott Dozier, the subject of Emmy award-winning investigative reporter Gianna Toboni’s The Volunteer: The Failure of the Death Penalty in America and One Inmate's Quest to Die with Dignity, sought dignity through expedited death but was met with a death penalty system rife with black market dealings, supply chain labyrinths, disputed drugs, and botched executions. Moderated by Piper Kerman, justice reform activist, author of Orange is the New Black, and Chair of the Bay Area Book Festival Board, this panel will take a critical look at a system that has failed the public it claims to serve and discuss the necessary next steps toward justice.

Strength and Solace in Numbers Jul 29, 2025

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 with complications from HIV, as Keiko Lane recalls in Blood Loss: A Love Story of AIDS, Activism, and Art, a memoir exploring survival after our loved ones have died and a chronicle of the powerful lives they led in solidarity. Difficult times remind us that All Friends Are Necessary, Tomas Moniz’s novel about a recently divorced middle school teacher who leans on his network of platonic and romantic relationships to put himself back out into the world. Mei, a Dartmouth dropout-turned-limousine driver for questionable clientele from Off the Books by Soma Mei Sheng Frazier, also finds herself navigating transition in the form of a cross-country road trip that showcases the resilience of the human spirit and the power of doing the right thing. Moderated by poet, educator, and organizer Gabriel Cortez, this heartfelt and uplifting panel will highlight the power to be found in community as we go through life’s hardships together.

Who’s Afraid of Gender? Jul 28, 2025

During the 2024 presidential race, the Trump campaign released an anti-trans ad blitz across swing states. Once in power, he wasted no time issuing an executive order proclaiming there are only two biological sexes. Accordingly, trans protections, gender affirming care, and DEI initiatives are being dismantled nationwide. Philosopher and human rights activist Judith Butler has long been a lightning rod for society’s fears, myths, and projections about the idea of gender. Now, when we need them most, Butler is back with what critics are calling their most mainstream and urgent book yet, Who’s Afraid of Gender? It’s both an intervention and an example of rising to meet the moment. At our Sunday headliner event, Butler will be in conversation with micha cárdenas, a novelist and scholar known for her work on “transreal” identities and digital media, whose latest sci-fi novel, Atoms Never Touch, tackles themes of neurodivergence and trans identity. Moderated by Afro-Latinx educator and writer MK Chavez, Butler and cárdenas will discuss their complementary yet distinct approaches to gender theory and identity: putting Butler’s foundational concepts in conversation with cárdenas’s cutting-edge explorations of biotechnological realities.

Telling Our Futures: Speculative Fiction and Social Change Jul 28, 2025

This visionary, multi-generational panel brings together Bay Area authors who weave speculative fiction with powerful messages of resistance, transformation, and justice. Through creative storytelling, these authors tackle the pressing issues of our time—exploring the legacies of the past and imagining a future where change is possible. Angela Dalton’s To Boldly Go celebrates the life of Nichelle Nichols, whose work on Star Trek helped to diversify the space program, inspiring generations of astronauts and STEM professionals. Dalton’s work underscores the vital role of representation in storytelling and its potential to spark real-world change. Tamika Thompson’s Unshod, Cackling, and Naked presents an eclectic collection of stories that range from supernatural encounters to the harrowing realities of the human psyche. With vivid, often haunting tales, Thompson challenges readers to confront what’s real, what’s imagined, and what we choose to accept as truth. Jewelle Gomez, a radical poet, playwright, and “foremother of Afrofuturism,” brings decades of experience as a writer of speculative fiction. Her landmark work The Gilda Stories continues to resonate as a powerful example of fiction as a tool for political and social transformation. Moderated by Isis Asare, CEO and Founder of Sistah Scifi—America’s first Black-owned bookstore dedicated to science fiction and fantasy—this panel invites attendees to engage with these visionary authors and explore the role of speculative fiction in activism, representation, and shaping a more just world.

Organized Resistance From the Ground Up Jul 25, 2025

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 their stories from the front lines in the context of current social unrest and shows us how we too can organize our workplaces in Get on the Job and Organize: The Making of a New Labor Movement. Shaping strong organizers requires shaping strong individuals, and James Tracy draws on his book A Southern Panther: Conversations With Malik Rahim to highlight Rahim's unique approach to organizing—updating the politics of intercommunalism, rainbow coalitions, and municipalism—offer vital lessons for today's social movements. Certain identities are unjustly disadvantaged by the “game” of the complex modern world, especially women of color as Vanessa Priya Daniel points out in Unrig the Game: What Women of Color Can Teach Everyone About Winning, a playbook based on interviews with 45 of the most powerful women of color movement leaders of our time. This inspiring discussion, moderated by Christina Heatherton (author of Arise! Global Radicalism in the Era of the Mexican Revolution), will lean on our panelists’ valuable experiences to discuss the best strategies for organization—so we can all win.

“Writing as an Other” Jul 25, 2025

“What is the relationship between the role of the outsider and literary writing?” Pulitzer Prize-winning Viet Thanh Nguyen poses this question in his new book To Save and To Destroy, which is based on a series of six lectures at Harvard. Having escaped from the Vietnam War to a refugee camp in Pennsylvania when he was four, Nguyen is no stranger to being an outsider who carries both the burdens and pleasures of being the “minor” writer. In this event, he’ll be joined by two other brilliant literary outsiders: Greg Sarris, Chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria and celebrated author of fiction and memoir that delve into complexities of belonging and identity as a Native American, and award-winning novelist and filmmaker Tara Dorabji, the daughter of Parsi-Indian and German-Italian migrants, whose Call Her Freedom won the Simon & Schuster BOOKS LIKE US Grand Prize. In an era of constant “othering” within nations entrenched in colonialism and violence, it is natural for victims to feel their pain is unique. The challenge for “other”-American writers, then, is to practice what Nguyen calls “capacious grief” and to connect our sorrows in an act of radical hope. At our Saturday headliner event moderated by artist, writer, and Professor of African American literature Ajuan Mance, whose work explores the intersection of race, gender, and power, these authors will explore how they use storytelling and cultural sovereignty in the face of dominant ideologies, simultaneously embracing and overcoming their identities as “outsiders".

Decolonizing Wealth: Confronting Systemic Barriers, Creating Lasting Change Jul 24, 2025

Income inequality in the U.S. has reached its highest level in over 50 years, making the American Dream increasingly unattainable—especially for Black Americans. One major factor is “predatory governance,” the racist policies that have systematically undermined Black homeownership and generational wealth. Property law scholar Bernadette Atuahene explores this in Plundered, which illustrates how race influences the ability to pass down wealth. The financial industry also plays a key role; journalist Emily Flitter’s The White Wall exposes corruption and discriminatory policies in banking and insurance that continue to harm Black communities. How can we break this cycle? Edgar Villanueva’s Decolonizing Wealth offers Indigenous wisdom to address inequality in philanthropy and finance. Moderated by Cheryl Fabio, Executive Director of The Sarah Webster Fabio Center For Justice, this panel presents compelling, evidence-based narratives on structural injustice while challenging the harmful myths of personal irresponsibility projected onto disadvantaged communities

The Embodiment of Care Jul 24, 2025

As we emerge from the past few years of collective upheaval, how do we face the complexities of our time with joy, authenticity, and connection? Therapist, somatics teacher, activist, and writer Prentis Hemphill shows us how in What It Takes to Heal, a life-affirming framework toward a future in which healing is done in community. In Hemphill’s revolutionary framework, we don’t have to carry our emotional burdens alone. Healing our bodies, minds, and souls starts with the principles of embodiment—the recognition of our body’s sensations and habits, and the beliefs that inform them— and developing the interpersonal skills necessary to break down the doors of disconnection. What currently separates us isn’t only the ever-present injustices built around race, class, gender, values, and beliefs, but also our denial of our interdependence and need for belonging, as researcher and writer Mia Birdsong demonstrates in How We Show Up. Through research, interviews, and stories of lived experience, Birdsong reminds us of our inherent connectedness and provides a blueprint for showing up, both literally and figuratively. Join us to hear from experts and leaders in this enriching conversation that will challenge mainstream models of self-reliance and instead infuse healing with the rigor of justice, vulnerability, repair, and accountability.

In Dialogue: Building Communities that Thrive Jul 23, 2025

In a moment of global crises and heightened polarization, how do we foster belonging and minimize othering? How and where do we build bridges when so many communities and institutions are fracturing and re-constellating? Drawing on the panelists’ four books and their unique experiences and perspectives, we will speak into a future where generative relationships across boundaries thrive. Leading asexuality and relationship expert David Jay tackles breeding grounds of isolation—from schools to tech to social media—in Relationality, which provides a scientifically-grounded framework for investing in the power of relational work and expands upon the fundamental idea that all entities in the universe are connected. From one point to the next, we can bridge the spaces between us into a network of communication and coexistence toward a shared future where we all belong, as civil rights scholar and Director of the Othering and Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley john a. powell demonstrates through his book The Power of Bridging: How to Build a World Where We All Belong. Bridging Indigenous wisdom, traditions, and practices with Western knowledge and ways, Flourishing Kin by Indigenous scholar Yuria Celidwen details our aspirations for sustainable, collective flourishing that goes beyond optimism or resilience and instead leans into the power of community to cultivate happiness. Author, organizer, and designer Aida Mariam Davis envisions better worlds rooted in African lifeways in Kindred Creation, exploring the impacts of intentional colonial acts of violence and dispossession and providing a blueprint to intergenerational Black joy and dignity centered on the concept of creation: a re-membering of interconnectedness and kinship. This hopeful and informative panel, moderated by Tim McKee, publisher of North Atlantic Books, is a much-needed reminder to tap into our innate capabilities to be in dialogue with each other as we co-create a thriving future.

Indigenous Poetry: Words that Map the Natural World Jul 23, 2025

Celebrate indigenous poetry with these intergenerational poets from different parts of Indian Country, who will share their powerful words that navigate land, memory, music, and more. Diné poet, editor, and playwright Kinsale Drake explores the intricate relationships between Native peoples and the natural world, and her debut collection The Sky Was Once a Dark Blanket oscillates between musical influences and time. Poet Laureate Emerita of Lake County and President of the Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference Georgina Marie Guardado’s poetry chapbooks, Finding the Roots of Water and Tree Speak, draw inspiration from the natural world and how it witnesses our most emotional and introspective periods of life. Former Kansas Poet Laureate and founding board member of Indigenous Nations Poets Denise Low centers Indigenous peoples’ experience and the intergenerational impacts of the 1782 Gnadenhutten Massacre in House of Grace, House of Blood, a haunting and lyrical reconstruction of an important historical event that challenges the attempted erasure of Indigenous voices. Diné poet and zinester Amber McCrary perceives the enduring bonds between people and place in her debut poetry collection Blue Corn Tongue: Poems in the Mouth of the Desert, which remaps the deserts of Arizona through the blue corn story of a young Diné woman figuring out love and life with an O’odham man. Poet Laureate of El Dorado Stephen Meadows also analyzes place and the natural world in his poetry, and Winter Work paints a beautiful geography of emotions through the lens of natural elements, the damage we inflict upon the land, and our history. Visual artist and Poet Laureate Emerita of San Francisco Kim Shuck will emcee this inspiring poetry reading grounded in understanding, admiration, and deep respect for our natural world.

Art as Radical Practice: Black Women’s Creative Expression as Social Change Jul 23, 2025

This powerful panel showcases three Black women artists, authors, and activists who use their creative practices to challenge oppressive systems and fight for social, cultural, and environmental justice. Through their intersectional approaches, they address race, gender, inequality, and healing. Berkeley Poet Laureate, organizer, activist and author of Undisclosed, Aya de León, explores race, gender, social and climate justice in her writings. As Director of Poetry for the People at UC Berkeley, she empowers marginalized voices through poetry and spoken word. Ashara Ekundayo, Black feminist artist and curator, creates healing spaces rooted in African Diaspora traditions. Through photography, public installations, and altar-making, she amplifies Black womxn’s voices and explores art’s power to heal and resist oppression. Cat Brooks, award-winning playwright, actress, and activist, confronts police violence, racial injustice, and incarceration through theater. As a resident playwright with The Lower Bottom Playaz and host of Law & Disorder on KPFA, she uses storytelling to inspire change. Moderated by Pecolia Manigo.

Mutual Aid and Community Care in California Jul 22, 2025

Join us for a conversation on the vital role of different forms of community care and mutual aid across California’s diverse communities. Red Flag Warning, a collection of essays and interviews by survivors Dani Burlison and Margaret Elysia Garcia, highlights how grassroots organizing, community care, and resilience help navigate ecological and social challenges. Adéniké Amin, Storytelling Lead at BLACspace Cooperative, will share insights into the power of storytelling and cultural preservation. Through her work with BLACspace, she champions thriving local community arts as a form of mutual aid, fostering cultural permanence, economic opportunity, and collective resilience. Jocelyn Jackson, award-winning chef, artist, teacher, activist, Chef-in-Residence at the Museum of the African Diaspora, and co-founder of People’s Kitchen Collective, will discuss her work at the intersection of food justice, environmental education, and radical hospitality. This panel will explore how mutual aid networks across California are reshaping survival, support, and recovery—particularly in the wake of disasters, both natural and human-made. Featuring perspectives from environmentalists, cultural workers, mental health workers and journalists, we’ll examine how communities provide resources, share knowledge, and offer emotional support in times of need. Moderated by Brian Edwards-Tiekert, founder and co-host of UpFront on KPFA radio, this discussion will highlight how mutual aid fosters resilience and solidarity, demonstrating how communities build collective strength and power, and recognize each other as essential resources.

Romantasy — Not for the Faint of Heart Jul 22, 2025

A competition to find the king’s lost heir. A war fought by a woman soldier in disguise. A quest to escape a desolate land of sickness and unnatural beasts. The fiery protagonists of this romantasy panel adventure far and wide, questioning their judgments and learning to trust along the way. In Our Deadly Designs, the epic conclusion to Kalyn Josephson’s This Dark Descent duology, spellbinding fantasy meets Jewish mythology in a cut-throat race for the throne ― and humanity's survival. The Night Ends with Fire by K. X. Song is another mythology-inspired novel based on the legend of Mulan, which follows a young woman’s journey fighting a war between the Three Kingdoms and her conflicting feelings between two handsome princes and a sea dragon spirit. In The Last One, a romantasy debut from Rachel Howzell Hall, Kai wakes up in the woods with no memory and must accept the help of the village blacksmith to journey through the kingdom of Vinevridth in search of answers. Danielle DeVeaux will moderate this panel of best-selling authors whose enthralling novels prove time and time again that romantasy is not for the faint of heart.

Stories of Tomorrow: Speculative Fiction Jul 21, 2025

Buckle up for a disorienting launch into the vast unknown with these works of speculative fiction that transcend time and space. How We Know Our Time Travelers is Anita Felicelli’s collection of dark, intellectual, and surreal stories that examine our post-pandemic reality and future, introducing characters such as a bickering couple who use an app to track their fights, a woman who discovers an unseen lodger in her home, and a group of creepy friends who sell jars of fog. The colorful cast of characters continues in Marguerite Sheffer’s The Man in the Banana Trees, with ghosts, aliens, an ice cream consultant who predicts a devastating new flavor trend, and a disgruntled New England waiter who investigates a mysterious tanker crash, diverse characters from the American Gulf South to the orbit around Jupiter who question whether what lurks at the edge of their perception is sinister or miraculous. For the young researcher protagonist resisting insidious pressure from her community in Mending Bodies, written by Hon Lai Chu and translated by Jacqueline Leung, her undoubtedly sinister world is governed by absurd socio-bureaucratic powers, and a new law that forces men and women to be surgically sewn together once they come of age leaves her desperate for ways to resist. Along with moderator Jane Ciabattari, the speculative authors of this panel will just skim the surface of the elusive atmospheric disturbances that fascinate and inspire them.

Unyielding Resistance: Perspectives on Political Prisoners and the Lifelong Pursuit of Freedom Jul 21, 2025

The fight for justice and freedom for political prisoners in the US has long been rooted in revolutionary struggle against state violence and political repression. Since the 1960s, resistance to politically motivated incarceration has taken many forms, both inside and outside prison walls. Garrett Felber, author of A Continuous Struggle: The Revolutionary Life of Martin Sostre, highlights Sostre’s legacy as a political prisoner who used his time behind bars to fight against multiple forms of oppression. As a jailhouse lawyer, bookseller, anti-rape organizer, and housing justice activist, Sostre’s work in the 1960s-70s helped shape Black Power movements and redefine resistance, underscoring the need for diverse strategies to challenge injustice. Russell “Maroon” Shoatz’s children, Russell Shoatz III and Sharon Shoatz, join the panel to discuss their late father’s legacy and their advocacy for political prisoners. Russell Shoatz III, who fought for his father’s release after five decades of imprisonment, brings deep experience in restorative justice, anti-racism, and youth development. Sharon Shoatz, a retired NYC educator and civil rights advocate, reflects on her work with the Panther Cubs and the broader liberation movement. Their late father’s memoir, I Am Maroon: The True Story of an American Political Prisoner, co-written with Kanya D’Almeida, provides a firsthand account of resistance and redemption. Moderated by Claude Marks, Director of the Freedom Archives and a former political prisoner, this panel will also highlight the crucial work of The Freedom Archives, which preserves archives of radical movements and political prisoner narratives from the 1960s-1990s, ensuring their legacies endure. This conversation bridges past and present struggles against politically motivated incarceration in the US, and will be a powerful reminder that the fight for freedom is continuous, ever-evolving, and necessary to the transformation of a just and free society.

Voices Against the Tide: Independent Media and the Struggle for American Democracy Jul 18, 2025

In an era of rising authoritarianism, media polarization, and attacks on voting rights, independent journalism plays a critical role in safeguarding democracy. This panel brings together two of the most incisive voices in political reporting—Zack Beauchamp and Ari Berman—to examine the challenges facing American democracy and the essential role of independent media in holding power to account. Zack Beauchamp, senior correspondent at Vox, covers threats to democracy in the US and abroad, right-wing populism, and the ideological battles shaping our political landscape. His work, funded by the Pulitzer Center, has taken him to Israel and Hungary to report on democratic decline. His book, The Reactionary Spirit, explores the global rise of reactionary politics. Ari Berman, national voting rights correspondent for Mother Jones and reporting fellow at Type Media Center, has spent years documenting voter suppression and the right-wing effort to undermine democratic representation. His latest book, Minority Rule, exposes the coordinated attacks on the will of the people and the ongoing fight to protect voting rights. Together, these journalists will discuss how independent media can counter disinformation, expose threats to democracy, and empower citizens to fight back.

Moderated by Shereen Marisol Meraji, this conversation will explore the intersection of journalism, activism, and the urgent struggle for a more just and representative democracy. Join us for a vital discussion on the power of truth in an era of democratic crisis.

Fiction Debuts Navigating Historical Memory Jul 18, 2025

Making their literary entrance in insightful fiction debuts, the protagonists of this panel reckon with pasts that stretch beyond their own lifetimes. The Devil Three Times by Rickey Fayne spans eight generations of a Black family in West Tennessee, beginning with the story of Yetunde, who makes a deal with the Devil upon awakening aboard a slave ship en route to the United States. Yefim Shulman, a Ukrainian Jewish WWII veteran from Sasha Vasilyuk’s Your Presence Is Mandatory, also hides a dangerous lifelong secret from his family, which is revealed in a confession letter to the KGB discovered after his death, leaving his family to deal with the repercussions and attempt to find grace in the course of their survival. Too Soon, another generational novel, is Betty Shamieh’s snarky and heart-wrenching homage to Palestinian-American culture that analyzes the lasting impacts of arranged marriage on the lives of theatre director Arabella, her secret-hiding mother, and her matchmaking grandmother. How does our historical memory shape our political and emotional present? Sam Sax explores this question in Yr Dead, a queer, Jewish, diasporic coming of age story which unfolds in fragments of memory that flash in between the space of time when Ezra lights themself on fire and when Ezra dies, a poignant and lyrical look at their experiences that culminated in this final act of protest. Award-winning novelist Sylvia Brownrigg will moderate this evocative panel about generational stories, historical trauma, and the memories we leave behind.

Short Cuts: Carolina Ixta Jun 20, 2025

Welcome to the Bay Area Book Festival Short Cuts. This is a podcast meant to showcase some of our featured authors of the 2025 festival.

Meet Carolina Ixta, who was part of our our Family Day programming on May 31st.

For more information, go to our website. baybookfest.org

Short Cuts - Social justice Children's Book Fair May 08, 2025