J.K. Fowler, the new executive director of the Bay Area Book Festival, brings years of experience in literary circles to the annual Berkeley event. (Courtesy J.K. Fowler)
Held in downtown Berkeley on Saturday, May 31 and Sunday, June 1, the event offers not just 120 exhibitors but mutual aid and healthcare resources. Political prisoner support group CurbFest will host a conversation about the country’s carceral system. Festival-goers can pen poetic postcards and exchange poems for plant seeds. Two new affinity groups, a Mixed-Race Lit collective and an LGBTQIA+ Lit collective, will join the previously established Women Lit collective.
This is the festival’s 11th year, and the first time it’s led by J.K. Fowler. Founder of the community-based publishing house Nomadic Press and a former member of Oakland’s Cultural Affairs Commission, Fowler takes the reins of the Bay Area Book Festival at a turbulent time.
“It’s a challenging environment to do this in,” says Fowler, acknowledging that many of the individuals and groups working in the literary world have been impacted by cuts to the National Endowment for the Arts. That’s on top of federal book bans, the rewriting of history and efforts to diminish the cultural contributions of those from diverse backgrounds. “It’s shaking the ecosystem in many ways,” he adds.
The Bay Area Books Festival is an indoor and outdoor event that takes over downtown Berkeley. (Michael Hitchner)
Instead of responding to the news from Washington D.C., Fowler and company are proactively relying on resources that have existed in literary circles before the “authoritarian regime of the day,” he says.
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Over the weekend, nine stages throughout Berkeley will host the likes of Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Viet Thanh Nguyen, Bad Feminist author Roxane Gay and renowned philosopher Judith Butler, as well as a Saturday evening conversation about “the embodiment of care” between titan authors Prentis Hemphill and Mia Birdsong.
This year’s event will include a “small press alley,” an area designated for independent publishers from all over the country.
“We also have a health and community row,” Fowler mentions during a phone call. Sponsored by the Black Arts Movement Business District Community Development Corporation and the Anti-Police Terror Project, the area will feature four booths offering direct and indirect health services. “There’s a direct link,” says Fowler, “between art and the health of an individual, or the health of a community.”
A panel discussion with Takis Würger, Lauren Wilkinson, Christian Kiefer and Frances Dinkelspiel at the 2019 Bay Area Book Festival. (Barbara Munker/Getty Images)
He mentions other elements, including an author pavilion where independent writers and illustrators can sell their work — part of a goal to make the festival accessible to people of all income levels.
Reflecting on when he took this job in October of 2024, Fowler says he didn’t know what was to come of the following month’s election, but he and his team were clear: they needed to find a way to be responsive, not reactive.
Although this country’s political landscape is racing closer and closer to resembling 1984, Fowler knows the work of creating space to have tough conversations is all for naught if we forget to have fun.
“What’s the future that we’re trying to build?” he asks rhetorically, looking beyond the current political climate. “It’s okay to have fun and find joy in books,” Fowler says. “Hopefully that comes through too.”
The Bay Area Book Festival takes place on Saturday, May 31, and Sunday, June 1, at various venues in Berkeley. Details here.
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