300 Authors and a 50,000-Book Public Art Installation at Inaugural Bay Area Book Festival at Berkeley in Partnership with the San Francisco Chronicle
BERKELEY, Calif., May 22, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- An evening with popular children's author Judy Blume and a keynote by Google's Laszlo Bock are just two of the headliners at the Bay Area Book Festival, June 6-7, 2015 in Berkeley, California. The two-day, free festival will welcome 300 local, national and international authors in 145 keynotes, interviews, panels and performances on indoor and outdoor stages throughout a 10-block radius of downtown Berkeley. The festival also features 160 literary exhibitors.
"The Bay Area Book Festival will have something for all kinds of readers," said Cherilyn Parsons, executive director of the festival. Highlights include Paolo Bacigalupi, Michael Chabon, W. Kamau Bell, Daniel Handler, Pico Iyer, Andrew Keen, Kim Stanley Robinson, Rebecca Solnit, and the Icelandic novelist Sjón; Lauren Oliver on the Teen Stage; 2015 Caldecott Medal winner Dan Santat on the Children's Stage—and Cal Peternell, head chef at Chez Panisse, on a panel on writing cookbooks.
Indoor sessions will take place in venues throughout downtown Berkeley (see festival map). While the sessions are free, the festival recommends that people secure tickets in advance.
Outdoors, the Teen Stage offers 18 presentations. The large Children's Arena will host a Stage with 24 presentations and nearly 40 exhibitors. Half Price Books and the East Bay Children's Book Project are giving a free book to every child and teen.
Festivalgoers also will participate in an unforgettable outdoor public art installation called Lacuna, made entirely of 50,000 books donated by the Internet Archive. People are free to take books from this "library-temple," emptying Lacuna over the weekend.
The San Francisco Chronicle is the festival's title media sponsor. Another key partner is the University of California at Berkeley, which is lending its intellectual firepower to the festival's programming. The university provided a Chancellor's Community Partnership Fund grant for the event. The City of Berkeley is a further partner, providing support as well as services involved in devoting a generous portion of downtown to the festival.
The Bay Area Book Festival is actively partnering with literacy organizations and schools representing diverse communities from across the Bay Area. The Bay Area Book Festival is a project of Community Partners®, a nonprofit charity with federal 501(c)(3) designation. The festival is supported by corporate sponsors, foundations and individuals.
For a complete list of festival authors and schedule visit: www.BayBookFest.org.
Follow the hashtag #BayBookFest at Facebook.com/BayBookfest and @BayBookfest on Twitter.
Media Contact: Helena Brantley, Red Pencil Publicity + Marketing
[email protected] or 510.316.3545
SOURCE Bay Area Book Festival
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