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Bay Area Book Festival Podcast

Dec 10, 2020

Pulitzer Prize winner Jane Smiley was determined to release her latest novel in 2020. Why? She knew we all could use an escape. And Perestroika in Paris is just that, as praised by Publishers Weekly: “the perfect book for those for whom the real world, wracked with pandemic and politics, has become something to...


Nov 24, 2020

After a tumultuous year of protest, Hong Kong’s streets are quiet again following the adoption of the national security law. Join four experts for this indispensable analysis of the protest movement and its significance for freedom globally: Hong Kong-based lawyer and writer Antony Dapiran; Jeffrey Wasserstrom, one...


Nov 10, 2020

Two-time Grammy winner and Oakland native Fantastic Negrito (blues and Black roots music) meets multiracial, eight-time Swedish Grammy-winning rapper and debut author Timbuktu — and each discovers a brother. In a highly personal conversation, these two extraordinary artists, each with a huge fan base, share...


Nov 5, 2020

Helen Macdonald is setting our imaginations soaring again with Vesper Flights, a collection of her best-loved essays, illuminating everything from mushroom-hunting to the poignant particulars of birds’ nests. As Helen wrote, “animals don’t exist in order to teach us things,” but her live conversation with...


Nov 3, 2020

It’s not an exaggeration to say that the future of the American republic hangs in the balance. There are few levers as powerful in tipping that balance as interpretations of the U.S. Constitution by the Supreme Court. One of the nation’s preeminent constitutional law scholars, Erwin Cherminsky, asserts that there...