Bay Area Book Festival Podcast

Latest Episodes:

A(lexandra) P(etri's) US History Nov 09, 2023

Show notes

Alexandra Petri, interviewed by Joe Garofoli

Alexandra Petri is no stranger to making history—she became the youngest-ever columnist for the Washington Post. Now she casts her withering glance backward, compiling "historical fan fiction" that includes essential chronicles such as John and Abigail Adams's experiments in sexting. If you're a student of history, you emphatically won't want to use Petri's book as a primary source—but this conversation with Alexandra Petri will give you a brand-new way to look (and laugh) at our nation's complicated past.

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With the support of SACHI

Love on the Run Nov 02, 2023

Show notes

Marie Lu in conversation with Alisha Rai

Falling in love is always a rush—even more so when if you and your sexy sidekick are being chased by mobsters . . . or chasing them down yourselves. Talented authors Marie Lu and Alisha Rai really ramp up the adrenaline and the attraction—one way or another, this session will have your heart racing!.

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With the support of SACHI

Adam Hochschild on American Midnight and Democracy's Crises Oct 26, 2023

Show notes

Adam Hochschild, introduced by Monika Bauerlein

In American Midnight: The Great War, A Violent Peace, and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis, award-winning historian and journalist Adam Hochschild brings alive the horrifying yet inspiring four years following the U.S. entry into the First World War, spotlighting forgotten repression while celebrating an unforgettable set of Americans who strove to fix their fractured country—and showing how their struggles still guide us today.

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We Were Once a Family: Journalists Investigating Child Welfare Oct 19, 2023

Show notes

Roxanna Asgarian and Garrett Therolf, moderated by David Barstow

Roxanna Asgarian is joined by Garrett Therolf of the Investigative Reporting Program at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism to discuss, among other factors, the racial biases and corruption that placed children in positions of profound peril. Their conversation will be moderated by David Barstow, the Reva and David Logan Distinguished Chair in Investigative Journalism at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.

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We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies: In Exile from Tibet Oct 12, 2023

Show notes

Tsering Yangzom Lama, interviewed by Cherilyn Parsons

Very few novels by Tibetans have been translated into English and published in the United States. So we're fortunate that award-winning writer Tsering Yangzom Lama, who lives in Canada, is joining us to discuss her gorgeous, fascinating debut novel, We Measure the Earth with our Bodies.

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With the support of the Consulate General of Canada San Francisco/Silicon Valley

Bridging the Distance: Nicole Chung and A Living Remedy Oct 05, 2023

Show notes

Nicole Chung, interviewed by Brooke Warner

Nicole Chung follows up her exquisite debut with a wrenching new memoir, written in the wake of her mother's death from cancer in the midst of the COVID pandemic. Readers will find both sorrow and solace in her open-hearted new book.

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Sponsored by She Writes Press

Even If Everything Ends: A Searing, Beautiful Novel on Life, Loss, and Today's Climate Moment Sep 28, 2023

Show notes

Jens Liljestrand, interviewed by John Freeman

Be one of the first readers in the U.S. to meet the author of a novel that's sweeping the globe: Jens Liljestrand with his debut Even If Everything Ends, one the fiercest and most profoundly human of the climate novels we've ever read.

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Sponsored by the Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation

Horror: History That Goes Bump in the Night Sep 21, 2023

Show notes

Jessica Johns, Nick Medina, and Francesca Maria, moderated by Ben Monroe

History—both personal and otherwise—comes back to haunt the living in these chilling tales of psychological and mythological horror.

With support from the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria and the Consulate General of Canada San Francisco/Silicon Valley

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Bay Curious Sep 14, 2023

Show notes

Olivia Allen-Price, interviewed by Peter Hartlaub and Heather Knight, introduced by Emilio Garcia-Ruiz

From Grace Cathedral to the Marin Headlands, why are there so many labyrinths in the Bay Area? Why did the state capitol almost move to Berkeley? These are just a few of the endlessly fascinating questions Olivia Allen-Price and the team at KQED's Bay Curious podcast set out to answer each week. Allen-Price will chat with two fellow journalists whose curiosity about and love for the Bay Area rivals Allen-Price's own: Peter Hartlaub and Heather Knight of the San Francisco Chronicle's Total SFpodcast.

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A Life in Books Sep 07, 2023

Show notes

Joan Frank, Dorothy Lazard, and Jane Smiley, moderated by John Freeman

Each of us has a different relationship with the books we read…and write. That is no less true if you've just published your first, as legendary librarian Dorothy Lazard has, than it is for Joan Frank, with a dozen publications under her belt. It's also true, of course, for Pulitzer Prize winners like Jane Smiley. Each of these authors has had a decades-long love affair with books; in this session, they'll tell you not only what they were reading, but how it affected them and their work.

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