Bay Area Book Festival Podcast

BABF Short Cuts is a Podcast of the Bay Area Book Festival where we introduce some of the authors and partners who will join us for the 2026 Festival in Berkeley from May 29–May 31.  In this episode, you get to meet Rob Liu-Trujillo who talks to us about what it's like being an author/illustrator for kids, and about organizing for Social Justice Children's Book Fair (SJCBF). SJCBF and BABF have co...

BABF Short Cuts is a Podcast of the Bay Area Book Festival where we introduce some of the authors and partners who will join us for the 2026 Festival in Berkeley from May 29–May 31.  In this episode, you get to meet Tamika Thompson who talks to us about her new novel The Curse of Hester Gardens https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/804756/the-curse-of-hester-gardens-by-tamika-thompson/ You can...

BABF Short Cuts is a Podcast of the Bay Area Book Festival where we introduce some of the authors and partners who will join us for the 2026 Festival in Berkeley from May 29–May 31.  In this episode you get to hang out with our hosts Dora and Sam, who break down how the schedule came about, what the Festival weekend will hold, and walk you through some of the many ways to enjoy the upcoming weeken...

BABF Short Cuts is a Podcast of the Bay Area Book Festival where we introduce some of the authors and partners who will join us for the 2026 Festival in Berkeley from May 29–May 31.  Bushwick Book Club Oakland (BBCO) is a community event series co-produced by Claire Calderón, Nikki Bonsol, and Mia Pixley where Bay Area musicians from a wide range of genres compose and debut brand new original song...

BABF Short Cuts is a Podcast of the Bay Area Book Festival where we introduce some of the authors and partners who will join us for the 2026 Festival in Berkeley from May 29–May 31.  In this episode, you get to meet Tiina and Lauren who talks to us about the renaissance in romance fandom and how they came to help us curate some romance panels for the forthcoming festival. https://www.instagram.com...

BABF Short Cuts is a Podcast of the Bay Area Book Festival where we introduce some of the authors and partners who will join us for the 2026 Festival in Berkeley from May 29–May 31.  In this episode, you get to meet MK Chavez who talks to us about her process of curating programs for bith of our poetry stages for the Festival. She is also the leader of the Mixed race Affinity lit Group for the Bay...

BABF Short Cuts is a Podcast of the Bay Area Book Festival where we introduce some of the authors and partners who will join us for the 2026 Festival in Berkeley from May 29–May 31.  In this episode, you get to meet Terria Smith who talks to us about her forthcoming memoir I Love You So Many, which will be on early sale at the Bay Area Book Festival!  https://www.heydaybooks.com/catalog/i-love-you...

BABF Short Cuts is a Podcast of the Bay Area Book Festival where we introduce some of the authors and partners who will join us for the 2026 Festival in Berkeley from May 29–May 31.  In this episode, you get to meet Jeremy Engels who is talking to us about his book On Mindful Democracy: A Declaration of Interdependence to Mend a Fractured World https://www.parallax.org/product/on-mindful-democracy...

BABF Short Cuts is a Podcast of the Bay Area Book Festival where we introduce some of the authors and partners who will join us for the 2026 Festival in Berkeley from May 29–May 31.  In this episode, you get to meet Renee Swindle who is talking to us about her book Francine's Spectacular Crash and Burn .  You can find more 2026 festival authors and upcoming events at www.baybookfest.org .  Please...

BABF Short Cuts is a Podcast of the Bay Area Book Festival where we introduce some of the authors and partners who will join us for the 2026 Festival in Berkeley from May 29–May 31.  In this first episode, you get to meet our new podcast hosts, hear about some of the authors booked for the 2026 festival, find out more about what we do year around and how you can support all of this work! Upcoming...

Nico Lang is joining us for an event at Kepler's books on September 9th, 2025. Get your tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/trans-narratives-of-america-tickets-1485118843439 Join us for a timely evening at Kepler's Books as acclaimed authors Carolina De Robertis (So Many Stars: An Oral History of Trans, Nonbinary, Genderqueer, and Two-Spirit People of Color) and Nico Lang (American Teenager...

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, an...

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 i...

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 daught...

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 hi...

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 asp...

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 t...

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 undocument...

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, an...

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...

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 invi...

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 Ma...

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 home...

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 w...

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, sh...