Saturday, June 4 and Sunday, June 5: The Second Annual Bay Area Book Festival, Berkeley
This year’s Bay Area Book Festival should be epic. The list of authors making appearances is a veritable who’s who in contemporary U.S. literature today: William Finnegan, Yaa Gyasi, Juan Felipe Herrera, Jensen Beach, Adam Johnson, Dana Spiotta, Sunil Yapa – and that’s only the start. (Check out the full weekend lineup here.) Along with the standard thought-provoking panels and presentations and dozens of diverse exhibitors, the festival includes family-friendly activities, art installations, and a film festival. Book people, BABF is our literary version of Coachella, only with less drugs and ’90s throwback fashion. You don’t want to miss this. Plus, it’s mostly free! Details here.
Tuesday, June 7: Yaa Gyasi book launch at Green Apple Books on the Park, SF
Yaa Gyasi, the 26-year-old Berkeley-based author of Homegoing, has been getting mad props from literary stars and national publications on the release of her first novel. National Book Award winner Ta-Nehisi Coates live-tweeted his three-day process of reading the novel from start to finish: “I’m not the most well-read person in the world but this is the book I’d give my kid if he asked about the trans-atlantic slave trade,” he wrote.