Message from Cherilyn Parsons, founder and executive director of the Bay Area Book Festival

Dear book lover:

Do you realize how bold you are every time you open a book? And what that action means for the betterment of the world? And how all of us coming together at this literary festival means hope amidst these challenging times?

At only three years old, the Bay Area Book Festival has become one of the country’s leading literary events, bringing together tens of thousands of readers with hundreds of the world’s most respected writers for in-person literary exploration and celebration.

We have always emphasized writers and books concerned with social justice, diversity and the environment. This year, the festival team was well underway with those usual plans when the Presidential election happened.

I’m sure we all remember where we were that night. I was at a friend’s house in the Berkeley hills.

Stunned, I asked myself, How can a literary festival be most relevant in these very challenging times?

My immediate response was a conviction that we would focus our programming around current events and books that help promote a better world. Over the ensuing months, the entire festival team joined me in embracing a radical commitment to an event that sought to respond to what was happening in the world and foster social justice, sustainability and hope.

There’s no better place for such an event than Berkeley, of course, renowned for both its intellectual life and its activism.

I also began to understand more deeply how the literary form itself — the very nature of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry in taking us into each others’ minds and hearts — holds profound power for social change. Coming together around books further activates that power.

I wrote a formal statement that not only expressed the festival’s mission but explored why literature is one of the most powerful forces that exists — deeply, existentially — for progress toward the greater good. A short essay drawn from it appears on page 24 in this Program Guide.

The festival itself demonstrates that power. Come experience the event, and talk with your fellow festivalgoers about why literature matters to you, which books have changed you, and to what effect.

Share what happens to you in the private space of the page as you transgress your own boundaries of identity and ideas.

Through books we can travel out of ourselves. We can dare. We can experiment with ourselves. Then we start to experiment with society. Read, become, and do. Together.