At a time when daily news headlines read like science fiction novels, when books are banned, the arts are defunded and citizens are openly persecuted for their identity, the Bay Area Book Festival offers a balm.

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 publi

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