The romance genre is staggeringly diverse; in this session, we’ll take a deep dive into the variety just within the “contemporary romance” subcategory, with four stunningly talented masters of the genre. K. M. Jackson’s How to Marry Keanu Reeves in 90 Days effectively leavens heavy topics with a light rom-com feel, as a grieving Keanu super-fan sets off on a road trip accompanied by her long-time best friend in this friends-to-lovers heartwarmer. In The Dating Playbook, Farrah Rochon’s follow-up to The Boyfriend Project, a personal trainer has to weigh her professional ambitions against her growing attraction to her NFL-player client. Alyssa Cole’s latest installment in her Runaway Royals series recasts the story of Anastasia Romanov in the fictional African monarchy of Ibarania in “an effervescent queer romance,” according to Kirkus. Lana Harper adds a witchy twist to her queer rom-com, Payback’s a Witch, which blends mysticism, revenge, and attraction into what Publishers Weekly calls a “magical joyride” in a starred review. You’ll have plenty to add to your TBR list after this session, hosted by Andrea Martucci of the Shelf Love podcast.

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Whether you identify as a city kid or an avid naturalist, fascinating birds can be found everywhere! In this session, we’ll hear from Rosemary Mosco, who’s been connecting people to the natural world with her funny (but scientifically accurate!) cartoons for years. In A Pocket Guide to Pigeon Watching she demystifies these ubiquitous but often misunderstood birds. Ornithologist Stephen W. Kress and photographer Derrick Z. Jackson team up for The Puffin Plan, a beautifully photographed account of reintroducing these gorgeous birds to rocky islands off the coast of Maine. We’ll hear from all these creators and get their ideas for incorporating the natural world into young people’s lives in this session hosted by Jeremy Spool of the Massachusetts Young Birders Club.

Donations made during registration or during the session will go to support the Boston Book Festival’s Shelf Help Partnership, providing brand-new books and an author/illustrator visit to Boston-area public schools. This year’s recipient schools are Josiah Quincy Elementary School in Chinatown and Chelsea High School in Chelsea. Thank you for your support!

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We love the t-shirts Raúl the Third designed for BBF 2020, and we’re thrilled to welcome him back as a presenter for BBF 2021! In this Story Time session, Raúl will introduce viewers to Little Lobo and his friends, who, in ¡Vamos! Let’s Cross the Bridge!, are delivering party supplies, only to get stuck in an epic traffic jam turned fiesta on the Mexico–United States border. Like Richard Scarry with a Mexican American spin, Raul’s latest book takes readers on a road trip to remember! Don’t miss our East Boston Story Walk featuring ¡Vamos! Let’s Cross the Bridge!, too! See our website for details. Sponsored by Simmons University.

Donations made during registration or during the session itself will go to support the Boston Globe‘s Globe Santa program, gifting new books and toys to children in need this holiday season!

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Award-winning German writer Ulla Lenze makes her American debut with The Radio Operator, a taut and engrossing historical novel that draws on a forgotten, but contemporarily relevant, chapter from the past: pro-fascist activity among German immigrants in the U.S. in the years leading up to World War II. Based largely on the true story of Lenze’s great-uncle, the deft narrative—translated by Marshall Yarbrough—bookends the war years as Josef Klein, a German immigrant who arrived in New York in the 1920s, is reluctantly conscripted as an operative for a spy ring of American Nazi sympathizers.
Ulla Lenze has written a highly personal and meditative novel that unfolds against a seemingly familiar backdrop while offering a fresh point-of-view. The Radio Operator is a keenly observed work of fiction that introduces an accomplished literary voice to American readers.

Ulla Lenze was born in Germany in 1973. She studied music and philosophy at the University of Cologne. In 2016, she was awarded the Literature Prize of the Kulturkreis der deutschen Wirtschaft for her work. She currently resides in Berlin, where she works as a freelance writer and writing workshop instructor. The Radio Operator is her first novel available in English.

Marshall Yarbrough is a writer, translator, and musician. His most recent translations include The Radio Operator by Ulla Lenze, Self-Portrait with Russian Piano by Wolf Wondratschek, and It’s the World’s Birthday Today by Flake. He lives in New York City.

Co-presented with the Boston Book Festival and the Center for German and European Studies, Brandeis University.

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American Ancestors/NEHGS and Boston Public Library in partnership with the Boston Book Festival present author and Columbia University Professor Mae Ngai and her latest work. “The Chinese Question” looks at how the Chinese diaspora, particularly migration to the world’s goldfields, reshaped the nineteenth-century world.

In roughly five decades, between 1848 and 1899, more gold was removed from the earth than had been mined in the 3,000 preceding years, bringing untold wealth to individuals and nations. But friction between Chinese and white settlers on the goldfields of California, Australia, and South Africa catalyzed a global battle over “the Chinese Question”: would the United States and the British Empire outlaw Chinese immigration? Join us for a discussion of these definitive cultural and political movements which impact us to this day, featuring two remarkable authors and experts on the topics of Chinese-American history and immigration.

Mae Ngai is Lung Family Professor of Asian American Studies and a professor of history at Columbia University. Professor Ngai will be joined by Jia Lynn Yang, author of One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle Over American Immigration, 1924-1965, and national editor at The New York Times. She was previously deputy national security editor at The Washington Post, where she was part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team.

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Ada is not one, but many women: She revolves in orbits between Ghana and London before eventually landing in Berlin. But she is also all women—because these loops transport her from one century to the next. And so, she experiences the misery but also the joy of womanhood: she is a victim, she offers resistance, and she fights for her independence. With vivid language and infinite imagination—with empathy and humor—Sharon Dodua Otoo’s novel Ada’s Realm paints an astonishing picture of what it means to be a woman.

Since winning the Bachmann Prize in 2016, Sharon Dodua Otoo has become a fixture in German-language media, and the charismatic voice of a new generation: Black, self-confident, feminist. Her opening address for the 2020 Ingeborg Bachmann Prize was a sensation. Born in London in 1972, she now lives with both the English and German languages in Berlin. Her first novellas, the things I am thinking while smiling politely and Synchronicity, were written in English; since the publication of her Bachmann Prize-winning short story Herr Gröttrup setzt sich hin, she writes primarily in German.

Jon Cho-Polizzi is an educator and freelance literary translator. He studied Literature, History, and Translation Studies in Santa Cruz and Heidelberg, before receiving his PhD in German and Medieval Studies at UC Berkeley with a dissertation titled A Different (German) Village: Writing Place through Migration. Jon was managing editor for Berkeley’s TRANSIT Journal, and is currently guest editing a second special issue of the journal with the English-language translation of the 2019 collection Eure Heimat is unser Albtraum (the first half of this collection was published in English translation in Spring 2020). In addition to his forthcoming translation of Sharon Dodua Otoo’s Adas Raum, Jon’s translations have appeared in the Jewish Museum Berlin, the Maxim Gorki Theater, taz, Jewish Currents, renk Magazin, Versopolis Poetry, and Der Spiegel, as well as in numerous anthologies. He lives and works between Northern California and Berlin.

Co-presented with the Boston Book Festival and the Center for German and European Studies, Brandeis University.

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