Bay Area Book Festival Podcast

Drawing upon his 32 years as a writer and his 44 years as a traveler, Iyer will close the festival with a keynote illuminating the power of literature to create a world beyond walls. Iyer will then be interviewed by renowned literary critic John Freeman.

Together these writers, who have plumbed the topic of sexual assault deeply (and personally), will deconstruct the movement and explore its future. Sponsored by Zoetic Press.

A call for authenticity in life and literature: The author of the award-winning speculative feminist novel “The Book of Joan” and the hypnotic memoir “The Chronology of Water” and selfproclaimed “misfit” has penned a book, enhanced by interviews, called “The Misfit’s Manifesto.”

Pulitzer Prize winning poet Snyder and renowned science fiction writer and environmentalist Robinson climbed a mountain in the Sierras to christen it Mt. Thoreau. With their editor and publisher, they talk about civil disobedience, nature writing, the environmental movement, poetry and naming the unnameable. Sponsored by the Journal of Alta California.

This Pulitzer Prize winner and MacArthur awardee talks about the role of the writer in society, the importance of art to politics and the power of the written word. Sponsored by UC Berkeley Arts + Design.

Border-crossers and novelists Lesley Nneka Arimah (“What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky”), Laleh Khadivi (“A Good Country”) and Pajtim Statovci (“My Cat Yugoslavia”) contemplate a life between the lines. Sponsored by the Center for the Art of Translation, the Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation, FILI - Finnish Literature Exchange, and Finlandia Foundation National.

Susan Griffin celebrates the 40th anniversary reissue of her feminist classic “Woman and Nature.”

Jakobson Ramin (“Carved in Sand”) took a look at the reality of spine medicine. The results were not pretty. She explains what works, what doesn’t and how to get on the road to recovery.

In 1941, young Fred Korematsu refused to be forced into the United States’ Japanese internment camps. Atkins and Yogi share Fred’s courageous story, how he made the United States a fairer place for all and how you too can speak up for what matters. 

Marijuana expert Beau Kilmer and author Emily Brady will divulge the latest in pot policy and explore whether California’s hopes for a smooth transition should remain, well, high. Moderated by David Downs, Cannabis editor of the San Francisco Chronicle.