Authors Dinner 2024

Emcee

  • Brian Watt

    Many of us start our day with Brian Watt, KQED’s morning radio news anchor. He joined KQED in 2016 after working as a reporter for KPCC in Los Angeles and as a producer at Marketplace. He has won awards from the Society of Professional Journalists NorCal, the San Francisco Press Club, and the Los Angeles Press Club. He anchored KQED newscasts that won the Edward R. Murrow Award from the Radio Television Digital News Association. He also won two Golden Mike Awards from the Radio and TV News Association of Southern California. He holds degrees in theater from Yale University and the Sorbonne and has worked as an actor abroad and in Hollywood, appearing on The West Wing, Judging Amy, and other TV shows.

Emcee

  • Brian Watt

    Many of us start our day with Brian Watt, KQED’s morning radio news anchor. He joined KQED in 2016 after working as a reporter for KPCC in Los Angeles and as a producer at Marketplace. He has won awards from the Society of Professional Journalists NorCal, the San Francisco Press Club, and the Los Angeles Press Club. He anchored KQED newscasts that won the Edward R. Murrow Award from the Radio Television Digital News Association. He also won two Golden Mike Awards from the Radio and TV News Association of Southern California. He holds degrees in theater from Yale University and the Sorbonne and has worked as an actor abroad and in Hollywood, appearing on The West Wing, Judging Amy, and other TV shows.

Celebrity Hosts

  • Patrick Dooley

    In 1992, in the basement of a pizza parlor, Patrick Dooley started Shotgun Players with a few friends and a desire to make great and affordable theater. He is a graduate in English from James Madison University in Virginia, where he cut his theater teeth as a founding member of the American Shakespeare Center. He has directed nearly 50 plays and overseen the production of more than 100 others. In 2007 he led an effort to make Shotgun’s Ashby Stage the first 100% solar-powered theater in America. He says that he and his family are grateful to live in Berkeley.

  • Grant Faulkner

    Grant Faulkner is the executive director of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), the co-founder of 100 Word Story, and co-host of the Write-minded podcast. His engaging perspective on creativity encourages us to embrace our vulnerability, believe in ourselves, read, and write, write, write. “A story you love will love you back in so many ways,” he says. His recent book, The Art of Brevity: Crafting the Very Short Story, joins two others on writing: Pep Talks for Writers: 52 Insights and Actions to Boost Your Creative Mojo and Brave the Page. His stories and essays on creativity have been published widely.

  • Maxine Hong Kingston

    Maxine Hong Kingston is the author of The Woman Warrior, China Men, and The Fifth Book of Peace, among other works. She received the National Humanities Medal from President Clinton and the National Medal of Arts from President Obama. Among her many other honors are the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation, the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award, and the Emerson-Thoreau Medal from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is a Living Treasure of Hawai’i and professor emerita of English at UC Berkeley.

  • Earll Kingston

    Earll Kingston is a fourth-generation Californian. When his great-grandfather, William Cleir, arrived in the Bay Area, he was advised to buy property in Berkeley. Since much of Berkeley was known as “Ocean View” in the early 1870s, he didn’t know where “Berkeley” was, so he bought property and settled in Oakland. Earll has enjoyed a long acting career in theater, appearing with the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, the Aurora Theatre Company, the Magic Theatre, Golden Thread, and others. While living in Hawai'i, he filmed many Hawaii 5-O and Magnum P.I. episodes.

  • Michael Kwende

    Michael Kwende, an innovator in library services, enrichment, and programming for children, has been the much-loved “Mr. Michael” for a decade at the Berkeley Public Library. His librarianship focuses on offering insightful reading advice for children, reaching out to local schools and community centers, and forming community partnerships with the Berkeley Unified School District, Freight & Salvage, and other organizations to spearhead arts and educational initiatives for Berkeley’s young minds. He is the creator of the Benvenue Beats Music Festival; co-founder, lead singer, and story-reader of the Berkeley Public Library Story Time Band; and architect of other programs that nurture a love of learning and creativity.

Honored Authors

  • Reem Assil

    Reem Assil is a Palestinian-Syrian chef and activist who works at the intersection of food, community, and social justice. The author of Arabiyya: Recipes from the Life of an Arab in Diaspora, she is founder of Reem’s California, an Arab bakery and restaurant that builds community through the warmth of Arab bread and hospitality. She was a James Beard finalist for Outstanding Chef in 2022 and back-to-back semifinalist for Best Chef: West in 2018 and 2019. Assil spent more than a decade as a community and labor organizer, building leadership to give people a voice in their jobs and neighborhoods.

  • Annie Barrows

    Annie Barrows spent most of her childhood at the library; when she wouldn’t leave, they hired her to shelve books at the age of 12. She is the New York Times-bestselling author of books for both children and adults, including the Ivy and Bean series and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, both of which became feature films by Netflix. Other works for kids include the recent series The Best of Iggy; mid-grade novel The Magic Half; young-adult novel Nothing; and her newest experiment, a picture book entitled Like. Her second novel for adults, The Truth According to Us, was also a national bestseller.

  • W. Kamau Bell

    W. Kamau Bell is a stand-up comedian, television host, director, and producer. He won three Emmys for his CNN series United Shades of America and a Peabody Award for his docuseries We Need To Talk About Cosby. His newest project is the HBO documentary 1000% Me: Growing Up Mixed. His first book was The Awkward Thoughts of W. Kamau Bell: Tales of a 6'4", African American, Heterosexual, Cisgender, Left-Leaning, Asthmatic, Black and Proud Blerd, Mama's Boy, Dad, and Stand-Up Comedian; his second was the New York Times bestseller Do The Work: An Antiracism Activity Book. He is on the board of DonorsChoose and is the ACLU’s celebrity ambassador for racial justice.

  • Janet Byron

    When Janet L. Byron moved to Berkeley in 1989, she bought a copy of Malcolm Margolin’s The East Bay Out: A Personal Guide to the East Bay Regional Parks, a walking guide that introduced her to the joys of exploring nature on foot. Today she is co-author (with Robert E. Johnson) of Berkeley Walks, now in an expanded and updated version. She has led walks and served on the boards for organizations including the Greenbelt Alliance, Berkeley Path Wanderers Association, and El Cerrito/Richmond Annex Walk & Roll, which she co-founded. Her previous book is The Country Music Lover’s Guide to the U.S.A.

  • Dave “Davey D” Cook

    Dave “Davey D” Cook is a pioneer in the fields of social media, independent radio, and hip-hop journalism. As a syndicated radio personality on Hard Knock Radio, he is known for courageous inquiry on issues facing oppressed peoples within and outside the United States. He is the co-author (with Jeff Chang) of Can't Stop Won't Stop, a history of hip hop. He teaches courses on African American music and Black creative arts and history in Africana Studies at San Francisco State University. He has published extensively in peer-reviewed, news, and community publications and has appeared in more than 35 documentaries.

  • Aya de León

    Aya de León is an award-winning author, activist, and speaker. She is the author of ten novels, including four climate fiction novels for adults and a YA novel, The Mystery Woman in Room Three. She recently founded Fighting Chance Books, a climate fiction imprint, in partnership with She Writes Press. A teacher of creative writing and climate justice at UC Berkeley, her work has appeared in various venues, including Harper’s Bazaar, Ebony, and Def Poetry, and she was recently interviewed in The New York Times. In spring 2022, she organized an online conference entitled Black Literature vs. the Climate Emergency (available on YouTube). Since 2021, she has been organizing with the Black Hive, the climate justice formation at the Movement for Black Lives.

  • Peter Gleick

    Peter Gleick is a leading scientist, innovator, and communicator on water and climate issues. He co-founded the Pacific Institute in Oakland in 1987. His work has redefined water, once a topic exclusively of interest to engineers, to being a focus of social justice, sustainability, human rights, and integrated thinking. He is a MacArthur “genius” Fellow, and an elected member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the author or editor of many scientific papers and 13 books, including his most recent, The Three Ages of Water: Prehistoric Past, Imperiled Present, and a Hope for the Future.

  • Jasmine Guillory

    Jasmine Guillory is a New York Times bestselling author whose most recent book is Drunk on Love. Her previous novels include The Wedding Date, the Reese's Book Club selection The Proposal, and By the Book. Her work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Cosmopolitan, Bon Appétit, and Time, and she is a frequent book contributor on The Today Show. A native of Oakland, she began her career as an attorney, then made the leap to writing, with a focus on romance fiction. Asked how to become a writer, she said, “Read read read! … And then dive in and start writing and see how you feel.”

  • L. John Harris

    Writer, classical guitar collector, and documentary filmmaker L. John Harris began his writing career in the 1970s, while working in some of Berkeley’s most popular food businesses (including Chez Panisse and the Cheese Board). He wrote The Book of Garlic, which launched Aris Books, a specialty cookbook publisher. His cartoons in Bay Area magazines led to his book, Foodoodles: From the Museum of Culinary History. His Café French: A Flaneur’s Guide to the Language, Lore and Food of the Paris Café followed in 2019. His next book, Portrait In Red: A Paris Mystery, will be published by Heyday Books in 2024.

  • Robert Johnson

    A St. Louis native, Bob Johnson spent 13 years in Japan before moving to Berkeley in 1985. He and Janet L. Byron are co-authors of Berkeley Walks, published in 2015 with the updated third edition issued in 2023, featuring 21 self-guided walking tours of the city. Since the 1990s he has led group walking tours for the Greenbelt Alliance (where he was a board member for almost 30 years), Berkeley Path Wanderers Association (a board member since 2022), and the Berkeley Historical Society. He has a strong interest in architecture and was a commissioner on the Berkeley Landmarks Preservation Commission from 2003-11.

  • Dorothy Lazard

    In 1983 Dorothy Lazard earned her MLIS degree at UC Berkeley, where she began her library career. She joined the staff of the Oakland Public Library in 2000, managing the Oakland History Center and becoming a noted and honored public historian. She is celebrated for encouraging people of all ages, cultures, and educational levels to explore local history. A committed writer for decades, she holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Goucher College. Her writing has appeared in many local and national publications, and her memoir, What You Don’t Know Will Make A Whole New World, was published in 2023.

  • Grace Li

    A native of Texas and a current medical student at Stanford University, Grace D. Li began medical school just before the COVID pandemic hit — she learned to put in an IV over Zoom. But the pandemic also gave her the time to finish her debut novel, which she had begun in 2018. Portrait of a Thief was an instant New York Times and USA Today bestseller and rose to No. 1 on international bestseller lists. The San Francisco Chronicle said her art-heist novel “wrestles with some weighty questions about cultural repatriation and the legacy of colonial crimes. Do museums primarily preserve history, or all too often rewrite it?”

  • Adam Mansbach

    Adam Mansbach is author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Go the Fuck to Sleep, and his new novel is The Golem of Brooklyn. He has written other novels (including The End of the Jews, winner of the California Book Award), books for young readers, a memoir-in-verse, and work for NPR, The New Yorker, and other major publications. With Dave Barry and Alan Zweibel, he co-authored For This We Left Egypt? and A Field Guide to the Jewish People. He has been a Rutgers professor, a drum tech for jazz drummer Elvin Jones, a screenwriter, founder of a hip-hop journal, and an award-winning video and ad producer for the Obama and Biden campaigns.

  • Jennifer Pahlka

    Jennifer Pahlka is the author of Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better. She founded Code for America in 2010 and led it for ten years. In 2013, she served as U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer under President Obama and helped found the United States Digital Service. She was on the Defense Innovation Board under Presidents Obama and Trump. At the start of the pandemic, she co-founded United States Digital Response. She received the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, and was named by Wired as one of the 25 people who has most shaped the past 25 years.

  • Cathy Park Hong

    Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning is Cathy Park Hong’s New York Times bestselling book of creative nonfiction. It was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography, and earned her recognition on Time’s list of “100 Most Influential People of 2021.” She is the author of poetry collections Engine Empire, chosen by Adrienne Rich for the Barnard Women Poets Prize, and Translating Mo'um. A professor of English at UC Berkeley, she has received Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, among other honors. Her work has been published in the New York Times, New Republic, Guardian, Paris Review, Poetry, and elsewhere.

  • Mary Roach

    Mary Roach is the author of Stiff, Spook, Bonk, Gulp, Grunt, and Packing for Mars — each a New York Times bestseller. Her new book is Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law, a look at the intersection of humans and wildlife. She has written for National Geographic, Wired, and the New York Times Magazine, among others, and her TED talk made the TED 20 Most-Watched list. She was a guest editor for The Best American Science and Nature Writing anthology (2011) and a winner of the American Association of Engineering Societies’ journalism award, in a category for which, to be honest, she was the sole entrant.

  • Ingrid Rojas Contreras

    Ingrid Rojas Contreras was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia. Her memoir, The Man Who Could Move Clouds, was a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist and won a medal in Nonfiction from the California Book Awards. It was named a Best Book of the Year by  Time, People, NPR, Vanity Fair, and the Boston Globe, among others. Her first novel, Fruit of the Drunken Tree, was the silver medal winner in First Fiction from the California Book Awards, and a New York Times Editors’ Choice. Her essays and short stories have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, The Cut, Zyzzyva, and elsewhere.

  • Kate Schatz

    Kate Schatz is an author, activist, educator, consultant, and “queer feminist mama” who's been talking, writing, and teaching about race, gender, social justice, and equity for many years. She's the New York Times bestselling author of the Rad Women book series, which includes Rad American Women A-Z, Rad Women Worldwide, Rad Girls Can, Rad American History A-Z, and the illustrated journal My Rad Life. She is the co-author of Do the Work: An Anti-Racist Activity Book, with W. Kamau Bell. She speaks and consults on radical histories, anti-racism, parenting, politics, and more, and appears frequently on national media outlets and podcasts.

  • Amy Schneider

    In 2021, Amy Schneider made her first appearance on the TV show Jeopardy!, going on to win 40 consecutive games, the second most in the show’s history, trailing only Ken Jennings. She is the most successful woman ever to compete on the show, as well as the only out trans person to compete in, and win, the show’s prestigious Tournament of Champions. Since then, she has become a writer and LGBTQ advocate; her recent book is In the Form of a Question: The Joys and Rewards of a Curious Life. She has also spoken at the White House, has been covered in publications from People to the New York Times, and has attended the White House Correspondents Dinner — where she saw Drew Barrymore in the women’s bathroom but didn’t introduce herself.

  • Rebecca Solnit

    Writer, historian, and activist Rebecca Solnit is the author of 25 books on feminism, environmental and urban history, social change and insurrection, wandering and walking, hope, and catastrophe. She co-edited the 2023 anthology Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility. Her other books include Orwell’s Roses, Recollections of My Nonexistence, Hope in the Dark, Men Explain Things to Me, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster, and A Field Guide to Getting Lost. A product of the California public schools from kindergarten to graduate school, she writes regularly for the Guardian and in 2022 launched the climate project Not Too Late.

  • Tess Taylor

    Tess Taylor’s work deals with place, ecology, memory, and cultural reckoning. She has published five poetry collections: The Misremembered World, The Forage House, Last West: Roadsongs for Dorothea Lange, Work & Days, and Rift Zone. She was the on-air poetry reviewer for NPR’s All Things Considered for more than a decade. Her work as a cultural critic appears widely. This fall, she published her first full-length poetry anthology: Leaning Toward Light: Poems for Gardens and the Hands that Tend Them, a collection of gardening poems for an era of climate crisis. A proud graduate of Berkeley High School, she wrote many term papers at the Berkeley Public Library.

Author Presenters

  • Robin Claire

    Robin Claire is the author of Ink for the Beloved and Ink for the Damned. These young-adult paranormal titles, written under the pen name R. C. Barnes, are part of her “Tattoo Teller” series, set in the Bay Area. As a child, she relocated with her family from Connecticut to Berkeley. She spent hours at the Central Library, creating treasure hunts by randomly pulling cards from the catalog and seeking the titles in the stacks. She acted with the American Conservatory Theater, is a nationally awarded playwright and produced screenwriter, and spent years as a movie executive at Walt Disney Studios. She coaches young female writers through the Cinnamongirl organization.

  • Vanessa Hua

    As a child, Vanessa Hua felt like she’d “won the jackpot” when she came home from the library with a stack of books. She is the author of the national bestseller A River of Stars and of Deceit and Other Possibilities, a New York Times “Editors’ Choice” selection and winner of the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature. Her book, Forbidden City, was on the Washington Post list of best books of 2022 and was a finalist for the Northern California Book Award. A National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow, her work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, and elsewhere. Previously, she was an award-winning columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. Her new novel, El Nido, is forthcoming.

  • Linda Schacht Gage

    A two-time Emmy-award-winning reporter, Linda Schacht Gage says she’s lucky to have been born and raised in Berkeley. First on KQED TV’s nightly news show, Newsroom, and then at KPIX in San Francisco, she reported on major stories, including national political campaigns and conventions, the 1984 Mexico City earthquake, the Patty Hearst trial, the assassinations of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, and the opening of the Berlin Wall. Her reporting was featured in the films Milk and The Life and Times of Harvey Milk. For many years, she taught at the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley. She continues to write scripts for television and documentary films.

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