Bay Area Book Festival Podcast

The election will be disrupted by COVID-19. There's a secure solution: voting by mail, which would protect public health and our democracy's integrity. What are the pathways to making vote-by-mail widely available? Jesse Wegman, author of Let the People Pick the President, is joined by Amber McReynolds, coauthor of When Women Vote. Moderated by Ian Haney Lopez. Supported by the Federated Indians o...

We're thrilled to welcome novelist Chelsea Bieker in conversation with Brooke Warner. Bieker's literary debut Godshot is a hymn to the salvation found in hard-won personal rebirth. Stricken with drought, the community of Peaches, California clings to a cult leader for salvation, and 14-year-old Lacey is left to reap a revelatory harvest of her own. Godshot has won Bieker comparisons to Margaret At...

Homelessness, income inequality, mass incarceration, wage stagnation, housing shortages: Experts on the front lines will discuss what we need to do to create a fairer future. Zach Norris, Executive Director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, makes a strong case for the importance of collective accountability with We Keep Us Safe. He's joined by New York Times reporter Conor Doughtery. We a...

In this transcendent conversation, Pulitzer Prize winner Jericho Brown and National Book Award winner Nikky Finney—two of the most prominent poets in America today—share their own responses to the murders of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd, address the protests against police brutality and white supremacy, and describe the revolutionary power of poetry to capture human experience. They offer us the...

Parents all over the world are facing a dilemma: what do we tell children about threatening truths, from COVID to climate change? Christine Carter, Ph. D. draws on her own parenting experiences, as well as scientific research, to give advice for living and parenting with greater joy and meaning. In her recent book, Ready or Not, Madeline Levine seems to have anticipated the struggles of families d...

These novelist-teachers from the University of San Francisco MFA in Writing program dig into the challenges of writing characters haunted by their pasts. They share the narrative tools they use to push their characters to the very edge and keep the reader turning the page. Sponsored by the University of San Francisco MFA in Writing program.

These historical novels transport us to worlds full of surprising connections that cross divisions of class, race and more. These authors explore power dynamics and tricky relationships from 1930s colonial Malaysia, to pre-Civil War Ohio, to the streets of Paris and the vineyards of Midi in the Victorian era.

These writers are as fierce as their female crime fighters. Their protagonists confront corrupt cops, solve mysterious deaths while juggling personal woes, quash terrorism and try to stay alive while doling out justice. With support from the Norway House Foundation, NORLA, the Consulate General of Sweden in San Francisco, SWEA San Francisco and the Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation.

One New York Times reviewer called journalist David Wallace Wells' "The Uninhabitable Earth" "the most terrifying book I have ever read." It also is one of the most important. Both literary and science-based, the book is a chilling account of the ticking clock looming over humanity as climate change threatens to render the earth unfit for human life.

One of the "Angola 3," Albert Woodfox endured four decades of solitary confinement for a crime he did not commit. In our closing keynote session, Woodfox will be interviewed by Mother Jones reporter Shane Bauer, author of "American Prison" and himself a survivor of solitary confinement.

Tayari Jones can "touch us soul to soul with her words," said Oprah, who dubbed Jones' newest novel a Book Club pick for 2018. In her work, Jones takes the scars of the American South, including traumas around wrongful incarceration, and rubs them raw. She is interviewed by Brooke Warner of She Writes Press. Sponsored by She Writes Press; also with the support of Women Lit members.

To write race and ethnicity well, we need the right tools and the right reading list. Join four writer-teachers of color as they unpack the questions of identity that drive their writing, mark the pitfalls of self-exotification and weigh the rewards of penning richer, riskier work.

These masterful storytellers tackle the mysterious, the wild,the terrifying and the magical in their speculative fiction. With enthralling work that defies convention, they are creating a cultural shift in the literary landscape. Presented by the UC Berkeley English Department and the Peripheral Futures Working Group; also with the support of Women Lit members.

Let's talk about power: who has it, how it flows and how it shapes the stories we write in overt and hidden ways. Novelists from the San Francisco State University MFA program investigate how power shows up in their work and in their own writing practices. Sponsored by the San Francisco State University MFA Program.

New biomedical technologies — from prenatal testing to gene editing techniques — raise questions about how far we should go in retooling the human genome. Two leading thinkers, George Estreich ("Fables and Futures: Biotechnology, Disability, and the Stories We Tell Ourselves,") and Jamie Metzl ("Hacking Darwin: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity") explore these new frontiers — and thei...

Franny Choi ("Soft Science"), Tommy Pico ("Junk"), Brenda Shaughnessy ("The Octopus Museum") and Sam Sax ("Bury It") bring us genre-bending work as playful as it is subversive. Bursting with questions and contradictions that resist hegemony at every turn, these poets are queering the canon one poem at a time.

Join David Blight, 2019 Pulitzer Prize winner, American history scholar and author of the new, definitive biography "Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom," a Top Ten Book of 2018 by the New York Times. San Francisco Chronicle columnist Otis R. Taylor Jr. interviews Blight and helps uncover this towering figure that Blight calls "thoroughly and beautifully human."

Known for promoting new talent alongside established voices, The Paris Review publishes fiction, nonfiction, poetry, graphic literature, interviews and more in its bound quarterly issues and online Paris Review Daily. We're joined by its new editor in a roundtable led by the magazine's West Coast editor along with contributors. Co-presented with The Paris Review.

Often regarded with pity or disdain, women who don't mother are made to feel like failures. But what possibilities are opened by a child-free life? Brazen in their vulnerability, these authors break the silence on not mothering, addressing the assumptions, stigmas and rewards. With the support of the Consulate General of Canada, San Francisco/Silicon Valley; Culture Ireland; and Women Lit members.

Award-winning Canadian writers converge on one stage to recount their adventures in literary risk-taking and rule-breaking. Hear from Esi Edugyan ("Washington Black"), Sheila Heti ("Motherhood") and André Alexis ("Days By Moonlight"). With the support of the Consulate General of Canada, San Francisco/Silicon Valley.

One of the Festival's most popular sessions is back, featuring some of Scandinavia's most scintillating mystery writers. With the support of Iceland Naturally, the Icelandic Literature Center, the Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation, the Consulate General of Sweden in San Francisco, SWEA San Francisco, the Norway House Foundation and NORLA. With ASL interpreter.

How do we reckon with what haunts us most? These writers pick apart trauma to understand its source, pushing past reductive conclusions and condemnations in pursuit of a fuller truth. Moderated by associate professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) and a facilitator of restorative justice. Sponsored by the California Institute of Integral Studies.

Eliot Pattison's work, which uses the lens of mystery fiction to illuminate the harsh treatment of Tibetans under Chinese rule, has earned him both literary and humanitarian honors. Pattison joins us upon the publication of the final book in the bestselling Inspector Shan Tao Yun series.

Large-scale, far-in-the-future stories tend to get most the glory in the sci-fi canon. But what happens when reality already feels like science fiction? Like George Orwell's '1984,' near-future narratives exploit current technology, politics, and fears to explore what life could be like in 10 years, one year, or even a hour. Our panelists consider how to predict the tantalizing possibility of what...

Through history and philosophy, Kwame Anthony Appiah, weekly columnist for The New York Times, explores the compulsion to define and gather around identity. How do groups struggling for justice use, or misuse, identity? Can a more nuanced understanding bring us together? Carlos Lozada, 2019 Pulitzer Prize winner and nonfiction book critic for The Washington Post, will interview.