Welcome to the 11th Annual Bay Area Book Festival!
Saturday May 31 & Sunday June 1, 2025
Presented by the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria
In association with the San Francisco Chronicle
Four headliner events, eight Writers’ Workshops, a lively outdoor fair/block party, and six indoor stages packed with top-notch programming in Downtown Berkeley.
Saturday, May 31: Family Day, Writers’ Workshops, Democracy Dialogues, Two Evening Headliners
Sunday, June 1: Bookworm Block Party, Six Indoor Stages, Two Evening Headliners
The festival’s ever-popular Family Day returns on Saturday, May 31, at the downtown branch of the Berkeley Public Library Central branch. Family Day will again be filled with readings, panels, discussions, and interactive fun featuring the most exciting and engaging names in young people’s literature.
New this year: Family Day is being co-presented in partnership with the Social Justice Children’s Book Fair!
Ticketed Events
Saturday, May 31, 2025
5:30 pm & 7:30 pm
Venue: Freight & Salvage
Address:
2020 Addison Street, Berkeley
May 31, 5:30 PM:
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.
Prentis Hemphill, Mia Birdsong
May 31, 7:30 PM:
“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.
Viet Thanh Nguyen, Greg Sarris & Tara Dorajbi
Free but RSVP required.
Click here to reserve your spot
Saturday, May 31, 2025
11:00 am – 4:00 pm
Venue: The Marsh Berkeley
Address:
2120 Allston Way, Berkeley
Aspiring and practicing writers!
Join us at eight writing workshops to write and learn about writing (in) community. This is one of our most popular and quickly booked offerings. RSVP is done through the schedule.
Click on the workshop you are interested in for the RSVP link.
Free Event
Saturday, May 31, 2025
10:30 am – 5:00 pm
Venue: Berkeley Public Library Central Branch
We are incredibly grateful to the Berkeley Public Library Central Branch for hosting our annual Family Day!
Address:
2090 Kittredge Street, Berkeley
Visit the Berkeley Public Library website
Exhibitors:
Family Day will host 20+ exhibitors of children’s books, as well as literary groups, book artists, and more! Find them on the 3rd floor of the library.
Free Events
Saturday, May 31, 2025
11:00 am – 5:00 pm
Venue: Freight & Salvage
Address:
2020 Addison Street,Berkeley
We have carefully curated a rich program for you to showcase important subjects and amazing authors.
• Panels, Interviews, Readings
• Critical Conversations with Top Authors, Thought Leaders
• Author Q&A and Book Signings
You will find these events in our schedule
Brower Center (Two Stages)
Goldman Theater and Tamalpais Room
11:00am – 5:00pm
Address:
2150 Allston Way, Berkeley
Hotel Shattuck Ballroom
Crystal Ballroom and Courtyard
11:00am – 5:00pm
Address:
2086 Allston Way, Berkeley
The Marsh Berkeley (Two Stages)
11:00am – 5:00pm
Address:
2120 Allston Way, Berkeley
BART Plaza Stage
11:00am – 5:00pm
Address:
2170 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley
Music, community workshops, and the exciting announcement of our three Bay Area Book Festival Affinity Collectives
Poetry Stage
11:00am – 5:00pm
Address:
Kittredge St & Harold Way, Berkeley
25+ poets in readings, panel presentations, interactive poetic portals, and incantations
Family Stage
11:00am – 5:00pm
Address:
Allston Way & Milvia Street,Berkeley
Family-oriented author presentations, demos and performances. Hosted by The Collective Book Studio. https://thecollectivebook.studio/
Health in Community Row
11:00am – 5:00pm
Address:
Allston Way, Berkeley
Sponsored by the Black Arts Movement District Community Development Corporation (BAMBD CDC), direct and indirect health services will be offered to community members throughout the day free of charge.
Small Press Alley
11:00am – 5:00pm
Address:
Allston Way, Berkeley
Peruse booths from a number of some of the nation’s best small presses in our brand-new Small Press Alley. Show some love to indie presses and stock up on books!
Ticketed Events
Sunday, June 1, 2025
5:30 pm & 7:30 pm
Venue: Freight & Salvage
Address:
2020 Addison Street,Berkeley
June 1, 5:30 PM:
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.
You will find these events and ticket links in our schedule
Judith Butler & micha cárdenas
June 1, 7:30 PM:
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.
You will find these events and ticket links in our schedule
Roxane Gay & Alicia Garza
A Friends membership allows you to join a priority access line at all the indoor venues, making it easier for you to see your favorite authors. Plus, if there are tickets left, you’ll get one for an evening keynote.
You can join the Friends on our website at baybookfest.org/donate, or by visiting the Friends of the Festival table at the Berkeley Public Library on Sunday
With your donor card, you can get into the Friends priority line, which will enter the venue first when doors open (20 minutes before the program’s start time).
Why “Friend” Us? All daytime programs are now FREE! – that is, free to the public, and free for you reading this page. But this giant event isn’t free to produce, to say the least.
The Friends of the Festival do what all friends do, which is lend a hand, in this case financially, with a donation starting at $250*. That very real generosity benefits everyone: it allows the organizers to bring this nonprofit festival to you for FREE.
Can you say, “With my help, everyone can attend”? Yes you CAN! Go to baybookfest.org/donate right now (easiest).
*It’s tax-deductible, of course. We’ll send you a receipt.