Bay Area Book Festival Podcast

Joan Baez in conversation with Greg Sarris

Ground-breaking Mexican-American musician, artist, and activist Joan Baez joins accomplished writer, professor, and tribal leader Chairman Greg Sarris in a conversation about writing, creating, and legacy. Sarris is co-executive producer of Joan Baez: I Am A Noise, a deeply personal, profound, and haunting documentary that follows Baez on her 2018 Fare Thee Well goodbye tour and explores memory and abuse through home videos, journal entries, photographs, and therapy tapes. In a continued pursuit of an “honest legacy,” Baez’s debut poetry collection, When You See My Mother, Ask Her to Dance, is an intimate and inspiring meditation on her most life-changing moments as an artist. Through never-before-seen poems, Baez reminisces on family, childhood, nature, art, as well as her contemporaries such as Bob Dylan, Judy Collins, and Jimi Hendrix. Greg Sarris is an author, producer, and playwright, and he is serving his sixteenth term as Chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria. His most recent play, Citizen, debuted at San Francisco’s Word for Word theater, and his new book, The Forgetters, remembers shared histories and caring for the world. Come listen to these two legendary artists as they discuss creating across genres and forms, the power of vulnerability and detail, and writing into memory, family, finding connection and hope, and moving on.

Christina Gerhardt, Manjula Martin, Rosanna Xia, Jade S. Sasser, moderated by Maddie Oatman

Join this essential and urgent conversation that examines the changing physical and cultural landscapes of the climate crisis. This panel centers one of the most pressing issues of our times and brings together in conversation four panelists who have written in depth aboutclimate change and its impacts on both the natural environment and human communities. Manjula Martin, Rosanna Xia, Jade Sasser, and Christina Gerhardt approach this topic from different angles, whether it’s through the lens of wildfires in Northern California (Martin), sea level rise along the West Coast (Xia), reproductive anxiety in the face of an uncertain future (Sasser), or the plight of low-lying island nations in the face of rising oceans (Gerhardt). They all shed light on the disproportionate burden of environmental degradation borne by marginalized communities and advocate for approaches to climate action that prioritize equity and justice. Moderated by Maddie Oatman, a senior editor and writer at Mother Jones, this conversation promises to be an urgent call to action that includes equitable climate solutions and addresses how all of us can foster dialogue for a better way forward.

Steve Phillips, Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson, Maurice Mitchell, moderated by Lateefah Simon

In 2024, the threat of authoritarianism is greater than ever before. Yet our nation also has the potential to become a genuine multiracial democracy. How can we help tip the scale? Steve Phillips is a national political leader, bestselling author, and columnist. He is the author of The New York Times bestseller Brown Is the New White. His latest book, How We Win the Civil War, charts the way forward for those who wish to build a multiracial democracy and rid our nation of white supremacy once and for all. . He will be in conversation with two veteran political organizers, Ash-Lee Henderson, Co-Executive Director of The Highlander Center, which serves as a catalyst for grassroots organizing and movement building in Appalachia and the South, with a background in fighting for workers, reproductive justice, LGBTQUIA+ folks, environmental justice, and more, and Maurice Mitchell, a visionary leader in the Movement for Black Lives, and National Director of the Working Families Party. Moderated by Lateefah Simon, this urgent conversation is the reframe that many of us have been hungering for, to move us from anxiety to action. These big-picture thinkers can help us leverage our ostensibly limited voting options into a visionary electoral strategy that can change the game.

Ramona Ausubel, Mary Otis, and Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, moderated by Jasmin Darznik Relationships between mothers and daughters can be fraught or fruitful—especially for fiction writers. Bring your mom, or your daughter—you might find common ground through some fabulous new fiction in this session.

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With the support of California College of the Arts MFA Writing program

Anthony Cody and Paisley Rekdal, moderated by Tess Taylor Many of us, when faced by stacks of dusty old documents, might leave the work to the archivists—or consign the mess to the recycling bin of history. In this session, we'll hear from those who instead look at archives and envision poetry. Poet Paisley Rekdal vividly documents how the heroic narrative of the transcontinental railroad is intertwined with the history of Chinese exclusion. Anthony Cody centers on the ongoing legacy of trauma along the US–Mexico border after the end of the Mexican–American War.

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Katy Hays, Marcie R. Rendon, and Brendan Slocumb, moderated by Laurie R. King Not even the rarified realms of art are safe in the imaginations of these writers, where intrigue lurks even in the concert hall or the museum.

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With support from the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria

Chenxing Han, interviewed by Faith Adiele

We instantly fell in love with Chenxing Han’s "one long listening: a memoir of grief, friendship, and spiritual care." A hospital chaplain and caregiver in the making, Han journeys from a mountaintop monastery in Taiwan to oncology wards in San Francisco, from oceanside Ireland to riverfront Phnom Penh. The book's short chapters alternate among narrative, reflections, letters to a dying friend, memories of a migratory childhood, and wry twists and hilarious footnotes everywhere.

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Jonathan Escoffery, Tsering Yangzom Lama, and Jens Liljestrand, moderated by Leslie Carol Roberts

Here's your chance to meet three astonishingly talented young authors, from around the world, at the beginning of their careers—you'll be able to boast that you saw them when! In addition to learning about their new works, we'll hear about these debut authors' paths to publication and heed their advice to aspiring authors.

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Forrest Gander and Olivia E. Sears, moderated by CJ Evans

Voltaire once claimed, "It is impossible to translate poetry. Can you translate music?" If that's true, these talented translators have certainly achieved the impossible—in this session, they'll share insights into how they did so. Olivia Sears and Forrest Gander will read from their translations and also engage in conversation—moderated by CJ Evans, poet and editorial director of Two Lines Press—about the unique (if not impossible) challenges and rewards that poetry grants the translator.

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Cory Doctorow, interviewed by Glynn Washington

In cyber-security, the red team plays attack; the blue team plays defense. Martin Hench, the protagonist of Cory Doctorow’s latest too close to home for comfort thriller, Red Team Blues, was born to play attack. Doctorow’s novels are always feasts for the imagination, and this one is no different. It's jam-packed with cutting-edge ideas, twists and turns, and characters you won’t be able to not care about. In conversation with Doctorow will be Glynn Washington, creator and host of NPR’s Snap Judgment.

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