Bay Area Book Festival
The inaugural Bay Area Book Festival is a free world-class international celebration of the past, present, and future of the book and taking place indoors and outdoors in Berkeley.
300 diverse authors from the Bay Area, California, the nation, and world, from prize-winners to stellar emerging voices will take part in inspiring keynotes, provocative interviews, dynamic panels, and other presentations.
All genres will be represented including fiction (literary masters along with popular genre writers); memoir; non-fiction; poetry; and new forms of digital storytelling. All topics will be covered including current events, social justice, international affairs, environment, gender, business, spirituality, sports, and, of course, digital innovation.
2014 Bay Area Book Festival
Saturday-Sunday, June 6-7, 2015
All Over Berkeley
FREE, but ticket reservations are recommended to avoid lines.> 2015 Participating Authors & Speakers including Judy Blume
The festival is free, including the keynotes, interviews and panels on various downtown stages during the day. They expect many of the indoor sessions to be full with long lines to get in. You can reserve tickets that will guarantee you admission into some of the events.
Adjacent to Civic Center Park on Allston Way are fun food options including the festival’s own organic beer and wine garden hosted by The Organic Brewers Guild.
Major outdoor street fair (a literary cornucopia)
- Street closures in a half-mile quadrant in downtown Berkeley
- 150 exhibitors: the Bay Area’s beloved indie bookstores, publishers, literary magazines, nonprofits, writing programs, authors… and more, all literary
- Themed blocks so you can delve into what interests you most: Children’s Arena, Teen Street, Eco Alley, Radical Row….
- A most festive festival: Book art filling the streets everywhere you look
Children’s Arena filling Berkeley’s Civic Center Park
- Storytelling stage, live story characters, interactive art and science activities, children’s book sales, exhibitions (digital and print) to promote reading
- Every child under 12 receives a free book courtesy of Half Price Books
Teen Street and Teen Stage
- Some of the top authors for teens in the country to appear on stage—along with local hip hop groups, a local theatre performance, high school writing stars and others
- Exhibitors and bookstores with stuff teens want
Digital discoveries
- Revolutionize your reading – Discover new opportunities for writing stories, finding books you love, accessing them, and sharing them
- Presentations featuring digital storytellers because word-based storytelling is no longer linear
- Online chats, games and more
Public Art Installations
- Welcome to a magic castle of books: “Lacuna,” a major installation designed by the art collective FLUX Foundation, featuring a structure made of 50,000 donated books (thanks to the Internet Archive)—with all books free to take home by you and other festivalgoers
- Local artists surprise you with book art installations in trees, on sidewalks, in windows, and in the indoor stages
