Naturally, the scribes in attendance at Alameda Book Con 2026 will discuss their most recently published works as well as their paths to literary success.
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“They’ll be focusing on their life story, their journey to becoming an author, and then they’ll be probably reading, especially the children’s” authors, says the Alameda Free Library’s Fernanda Nuñez Gutierrez, a Children’s Department librarian who played a key role in developing the convention program.
Afterward, all authors will be available to sell and sign their books. In addition to the writer talks, the library will host two workshops: one on how to make perzines — small, stapled-together personal magazines popular in the 1990s — as well as one on penning “friendship poems.”
Authors on tap for Saturday include animator, illustrator and author Alan Barillaro and new young adult author Abbie Harlow as well as Vincent Chu, Jerrold Connors, Meg Elison, Briana Loewinsohn, Edna Cabcabin Moran and Thien Pham.
A previously scheduled presentation with Brian Copeland and Janet Dawson has been canceled. Copeland, a longtime comedian and talk show host from San Leandro who’s penned two crime novels as well as writing and performing several one-man plays, recently had emergency open heart surgery and is still recovering.
Author and Alameda resident Barillaro won an Oscar for directing the animated short “Piper” for Pixar — a saga featuring the lovable Sandpiper, a shorebird that is very prominent on Alameda’s beaches.
“My talk will be about being an author and an animator. As an artist, I would love to share that with kids and anyone who is interested in a career that is this fun,” says Barillaro, who eventually left the Emeryville-based and Disney-owned Pixar on good terms to pursue his own projects.
“I love them,” Barillaro said of Pixar. “It’s like home, I started there when I was 21, but you want to do your own thing. You’ve got to step away from Disney and try to make your own books. I pick up film work, and that could even be Pixar (again) one day. It’s just more like they are really close friends. But I had to step away from the studio to focus on my own writing, to be honest.”
On Saturday, Barillaro plans to discuss his latest picture book, “Today We’ll Be Eaten,” the story of a ladybug and dragonfly floating upside-down on a river and “certain that they’ll be eaten.” That is until “something vastly different happens,” promises the pre-book hype. In the end the two bugs make some “surprising new friends” and learn a lot about living in the moment.
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“I’ll read them my new book and show them a little behind-the-scenes process of how I make books. So I’ll bring some examples of sketchbooks,” says Barillaro. He also promises to embellish his presentation with some old-school drawing with “just an easel and some paper because that’s always fun.”
Another Alameda author with a new book to talk about is Abbie Harlow, author of the young adult novel about a female teen boxer engrossed in the underground boxing scene called “The Butterfly Stings.”
Despite the subject matter, Harlow is not a pugilist.
“‘People ask me a lot, ‘Do you box?’ I don’t. I came to the idea in a really roundabout way,” says Harlow, who works as an Oakland school administrator by day. She also has deep Island roots as a fifth-generation Alamedan who grew up and still lives south of the Oakland Estuary in Alameda.
“I wasn’t drawing from personal experience or an Alameda boxing scene, but I had the idea first of this character who is fighting, and I was kind of thinking about her motivation because I had that as a concept,” said Harlow. “And I had the thought of ‘what if it was her job to fight?’ So I followed that and brainstormed on it, and that led me to the idea of this kind of underground boxing tournament and scene that she’s part of and participating in.”
As to whether the novel is inspired by Brad Pitt and Ed Norton’s 1990s film “Fight Club,” Harlow says “It’s definitely got some ‘Fight Club’ inspiration behind it, yeah.”
Remember the first rule of Fight Club — “you do not talk about Fight Club.” Except this weekend.
The inaugural Alameda Book Con will happen from 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday in the library’s main branch at 1416 Oak St. on the corner of Lincoln Avenue, across from Alameda’s Police Department. Admission is free. For more information online, visit alamedafree.org/alameda-book-con-2026.
Paul Kilduff is a San Francisco-based writer who also draws cartoons. He can be reached at [email protected].
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