Bay Area Book Festival Podcast

About Bay Area Book Festival Podcast

Between audio books? Curious about the writers themselves? Listen to full-length sessions from the Bay Area Book Festival, where readers and writers meet each year in Berkeley, CA, to engage with their favorite authors, including Pulitzer Prize winners, chefs, and activists, to discuss writing, race, love, mystery, and more.

Publisher

Bay Area Book Festival

Category

arts · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

19 Oct 2017

Latest episode

14 Aug 2026

Latest episodes

419 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   14 Aug 2026

   Preserving Ancestral Knowledge as BIPOC Writers

   Our workshop will start with a panel discussion, comprised of BIPOC writers who are part of the Rooted & Written program, on how we integrate our histories into our work. This session will blend conversation and craft on how we listen to, record, and honor ancestral knowledge on the page, without flattening it for mainstream expectations. Then we'll talk about writing. Using guided prompts, participants will draft ideas for new work that gathers memory, place, language, and family stories into poems, micro-essays, or short scenes. This event took place in Downtown Berkeley, at the Bay Area Book Festival, May 29-31 2026. Support our work and help to keep the Bay Area Book Festival 96% free! https://givebutter.com/writingthefuture Check out our upcoming events www.baybookfest.org Follow us on instagram: https://www.instagram.com/baybookfest/

2. 

   13 Aug 2026

   Kaleidoscopic Convergence with 2025 NCBA Fiction Finalists

   It can take just one brief touchpoint to forever bend the directions of our diverging paths, as the 2025 NCBA Fiction Finalists reveal. In R.O. Kwon's Exhibit, young photographer Jin Han meets an alluring, injured world-class ballerina at a party in San Francisco, which unleashes a complex exploration of ambition, desire, and a familial curse spoken aloud. Sometimes, convergence occurs in the form of multiple lives meeting at a single path, creating reflections, distortions, and unexpected revelations. Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel features the lives of eight teenage girl boxers, each with their own sacrifices and reasons for competing, in their fight for the prize. Nina Schuyler's short story collection, In This Ravishing World, bridges nine stories of dreamers, escapists, activists, and artists who reckon with the climate crisis, urging all inhabitants of Nature to resist and fight to preserve its exquisite beauty in the face of destruction. The future is uncertain, but so is the past— the speculative stories in How We Know Our Time Travelers by Anita Felicelli reimagine time traveling as an everyday occurrence, given the fragility and unreliability of our memories that warp our understanding of the future. What, then, is the value of preservation? For the two crow sisters in Greg Sarris' The Forgetters, who recall stories in the classic style of Southern Pomo and Coast Miwok creation stories from dawn to dusk, these shared histories hold the key for voyagers to repair the rifts in their own lives and the world. Moderated by author, editor, and critic Jane Ciabattari, this panel will peer closer into those translucent moments that hold the power to change the course of our past, present, and future. This event took place in Downtown Berkeley, at the Bay Area Book Festival, May 29-31 2026. Support our work and help to keep the Bay Area Book Festival 96% free! https://givebutter.com/writingthefuture Check out our upcoming events www.baybookfest.org Follow us on instagram: https://www.instagram.com/baybookfest/

3. 

   13 Aug 2026

   Indicator Lights: Fine Tuning the Past to Drive Your Story into the Future

   The past and the future are linked, nowhere more so than in story. In this session, we will play on the tightrope between past and present, exploring how nailing the details of the past in a story builds a foundation for future worlds, allowing you to believably take the reader anywhere. We will also investigate the empowering role of the narrator, who often speaks from the future of the story. Through four sets of dynamic, generative exercises, attendees will leave the hour with a bevy of new tricks/tips and insights for their writing tool belts. This event took place in Downtown Berkeley, at the Bay Area Book Festival, May 29-31 2026. Support our work and help to keep the Bay Area Book Festival 96% free! https://givebutter.com/writingthefuture Check out our upcoming events www.baybookfest.org Follow us on instagram: https://www.instagram.com/baybookfest/

Who has been a guest on Bay Area Book Festival Podcast

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Carolina Ixta
• Naomi Klein
• John King
• Eric Porter

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

YouTube views

276,869

Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025

Apple Podcasts (US)

4.7 / 5

13 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 55 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

42

Social presence

0

YouTube

86

Engagement

85