Boston Book Festival

If you’ve ever been curious about what inspires writers, turns out it’s the same stuff that inspires all of us. Namely, our obsessions! In this fast-paced, irreverent session, New York Times bestselling author Steve Almond, whose latest book on the craft of writing is Truth Is the Arrow, Mercy Is the Bow, will speak about how obsessions power our stories, and give everyone in the room a chance to plug into that power source. Expect to have some creative fun, tap into a literary frame of mind, and leave with a slice of inspiration all your own.

Both the internet and AI are in many ways a boon to society, and yet the threats they pose are undeniable. This session looks at both the benefits and perils and offers a nuanced approach to managing these powerful technologies. Internet maven Jeff Jarvis defends the internet in The Web We Weave: Why We Must Reclaim the Internet from Moguls, Misanthropes, and Moral Panic. The internet is only as good as the people who use it, he argues, and the regulations that have been proposed will fail to fix hate speech, but may imperil freedom. AI researcher and computer scientist Daniella L. Rus, co-author of The Mind’s Mirror: Risk and Reward in the Age of AI, highlights the enormous benefits to society of AI, while also addressing how to mitigate the potential dangers. Andrew Smith explores how algorithmic code works by learning how to write it. In Devil in the Stack: Searching for the Soul of the New Machine, he explores the fascinating history of coding and the threats to privacy and human autonomy that fuel this ultimately anti-social technology. Join us for a provocative discussion led by Dan Lothian, Editor-in-Chief of GBH News and The World.

Stories of hope, courage, faith, and determination to rise above difficult and fraught beginnings are the subject of this memoir session. Tom Seeman’s Animals I Want to See: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Projects and Defying the Odds, chronicles his childhood as one of fourteen kids and tracks his journey from teenage delinquent to student at Yale and Harvard. Nikkya Hargrove’s Mama: A Queer Black Women’s Story of a Family Lost and Found, reveals the power of faith and community in overcoming generational trauma, difficulties posed by the court system, and her personal journey as a black, queer woman taking on the responsibility of caring for her half-brother. Wonderland: A Tale of Hustling Hard and Breaking Even, by Nicole Treska, is a story of growing up in a family of mobsters in the Winter Hill gang and how Treska reconciles with her past and its impact. This inspiring session will be moderated by Tina Cassidy, Chief Marketing Officer at GBH and author of Mr. President, How Long Must We Wait?

As a teenage supermodel, Cameron Russell learned how to please the fashion industry gatekeepers and power brokers to gain lucrative modeling gigs by compartmentalizing her own feelings about the exploitation she experienced and observed. In How to Make Herself Agreeable to Everyone, Russell describes the journey from acquiescence to opposition as she became an advocate for collective action and worker protections. With a clear-eyed view of her own complicity in an industry where the highest praise is “she’ll do anything,” Russell pulls no punches in this captivating look at fashion, power, and fighting back. Comedian, The Moth host, and former model Bethany Van Delft will host.

It is impossible to ignore the increasingly bitter polarization of our society. In If We Are Brave: Essays from Black America, Washington Post opinion columnist Theodore Johnson examines the rift that race exposes in our national identity and the ways it hinders our ability to connect with one another. Darrin McMahon, in Equality: The History of an Elusive Idea, points out that across time, the movement towards equality is seldom linear: greater equality within one group is often premised on the exclusion of those outside the group. There is no easy fix for our nation’s  deep fissures, but Nick Troiano, in The Primary Solution: Rescuing Our Democracy from the Fringes, argues for abolishing partisan political primaries, which favor extremists of both parties. The result would be more democratic elections and less polarization. This thought-provoking discussion will be led by Jeremy Siegel, co-host of Morning Edition on GBH.