Oakland Review of Books calendar of (not just) literary events, April 6–12: BONUS MONDAY EXISTS EDITION
ORB in the second week of our senses-of-Oakland subscription drive—last week was SIGHT, this week is SOUND—but you're getting this email because you've subscribed already, so pat yourself on the back for making Mondays Exist as a concept. All week the events are piled approximately "yea high," for which we blame our local university having too good a time on spring break and coming back all bouncy. Even Moe’s had a book event—possibly the first one since the lockdown—which we missed because they only posted it on Facebook two days ahead of time. (If you are putting something on, send it to us: orb@oaklandreviewofbooks.org.)
Elsewhere, Bather’s Reading Groups are starting again, and Beast Crawl is back. Sinners is STILL in theaters, or at least at Grand Lake Theatre, while the New Parkway is only programming movies that start with P this week. Black Hole Cinematheque will be at Bathers every week until June for a special series focused on the militant filmmaking collective/network of collectives, Newsreel. The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre is in town and the silver medalists of the Litquake Literary Pub Trivia, "Pondering Your ORB," will become dance appreciators Saturday night since that was what we won as our prize. Alameda has an events calendar even if they don’t have a BART stop, and back on the continental East Bay, there’s a bunch of classes about being a better plant parent now that it’s spring (scroll down). Assassins, a musical done as a ONE-MAN SHOW, is extended at the Oakland Theater Project until the 19th, Fever at Clio’s is continuing too (the ORB review must have driven them to it), and Berkeley Rep has a play going too. In news of the future, the Bay Area Book Festival schedule is up and Stephen Graham Jones and Alexis Pauline Gumbs are coming, among many other exciting authors! And if you haven't done it yet, join a community cleanup and work with your neighbors to make the earth a little better, there’s lots of options, Oakland could always use a little elbow grease. —MS and AB
Monday, April 6
Word and Symbol in Andrei Bely’s Petersburg: Mystico-Philosophical Theory and Literary Praxis, 4pm, Dwinelle (Cal). A grad student talks about a Russian novel, everyone's idea of a good time. [UCB]
Farmworker Justice Week Film Screening and Panel Discussion, 4:30pm, Senate Chambers (Eshleman 5th floor) (Cal). Watch the short documentary Without Shade Without Rest, about the fight to protect farmworkers in Florida from our ever-hotter climate, and listen afterward to an organizer featured in the film, co-founder Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), Lucas Benitez. [UCB]
The Struggle for “Justice in Palestine” as Global Intellectual History from the Ottoman era to the Present, 5pm, Dwinelle Hall (Cal). Dr. Cemil Aydin both historicizes the struggle over Palestine and explores how "Free Palestine" has become a shibboleth for the left and right, Global South and Global West. [UCB]
"Poetics and Plant Medicine" Reading Group, 7pm, Bathers Library (Cool Part of Telegraph). So you got all fired up by thinking about how plants fuck with our minds last week and are ready to do it again, but with reading. [insta]
The Memory Picture, 7pm, Clio’s Books (The Lake). Poems and memoirs as diaries of the ordinary, the pieces we would otherwise forget as they're scattered by the pounding waves of politics. Yet the laundry is done, the child's hair is combed, and the writing of it all down will outlast the ghouls of terror and upheaval. Olga Zilberbourg, Maggie Levantovskaya, Natalya Sukhonos, and Miryam (Bela) Sas, all Ukrainian Jewish women writers making their home in the Bay Area, speak to memory, art-making, and the stories that linger. [Clio's Books]
Tuesday, April 7
The Insatiable Machine: How Capitalism Conquered the World, noon, Social Sciences Building (Cal). The UC Berkeley Departments of Economics, History, and Sociology all meet up to say, oh grandmother, what big eyes you have, what big hands you have, what big teeth you have, and yes Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index 333 is always a metaphor for rape, but in this case, it's also one for capitalism. [UCB]
Fox Oakland Tour: Inside and Out, 1:30pm, Fox Theater (Downtown). Reserve your spot in advance to hang out with Scooter the Tour Guide and walk a mile around the inside of Oakland's palace of gilt and velveteen. [humanitix]
Mayan Stories + Art with MOCHA, 3:30pm, 81st Ave Branch BPL (Deep East). How many languages does Oakland speak? Today, a Mayan story is read aloud in Mam, Spanish, and English to honor and include the Guatemalan Mayan people who call Oakland home in the thousands. [OPL]
City, State, and Nation: A Conversation with Mayor Barbara Lee, 4pm, Banatao Auditorium Sutardja Dai Hall (Cal). The Mayor of Oakland has things to say! I liked her speech about creeks; I wonder what she'll say about cities, states, and nations? Maybe that we're devolving back toward feudal city states in the absence of a coherent, working nation? [UCB]
[West Bay Bonus Event] Jiyoung Han with Soleil Ho: Honey in the Wound, 5:30pm, Book Passage Ferry Building Store (The Embarcadero). Magic is resistance in this multigenerational novel of Korean history reimagined through food, spies, and dreams.... Soleil Ho will coyote howl at either the opening or closing, we hope, dream, imagine, expect. [Book Passage]
Dishcourse Social: The Cost Of Disruption, 6:30pm, Night Heron (Downtown). Dishcourse Social is a conversational gathering, organized and facilitated by Jonathan Pierre. Tonight's topic is change and disruption, and the cost of personal change. $30 to be part of the chattering class for an evening. [luma]
Leigh Lucas’s poetry collection, SPLASHED THINGS! Launch Event, 7pm, Green Apple Books (The Sunset). East Bay poet Leigh Lucas’ poetry collection, Splashed Things is launched into the world by the poet herself and the lovely literary advocate Alisha Gorder. Great, raw poems; I like the one that starts: "I take the long, dumb walk to work / Bring my bad attitude and forget my keys and wallet" because who hasn't. [insta]
The Husbands by Holly Gramazio—Rom Com Book Club Discussion, 7pm, A Great Good Place for Books (The Hills). You know those friends with excellent taste who read more than is physically or temporally possible for most people—my grad school friend Kasia is one of those. Professor, translator, writer, book blogger, mother, occasional artist and potter. She says this genuinely funny novel about an infinitely changing supply of husbands in an attic is "very easy to read, like, feels like guilty pleasure kind of vibe, but it’s also so smart. Like, philosophical smart," and I believe her. Talk about it together. [A Great Good Place for Books]
Transaction Denied with Rainey Reitman, 7pm, Mrs. Dalloway's (Elmwood). Hear how Visa, Chase, Paypal, and Bank of America do what the first amendment was supposed to stop the government from doing, and thus, does not: punish and censor wrongtalk. Rainey Reitman presents her new book, Transaction Denied: Big Finance's Power to Punish Speech in conversation with Cyrus Farivar. [Mrs. Dalloway's]
Tribute to Hani Jawharieh, 7:30pm, Bathers Library (Telegraph). A film showing by Black Hole Cinematheque honoring Jerusalem-born cinematographer Hani Jawharieh fifty years after his murder in Lebanon. Screening: Palestine in the Eye (1977), Jerusalem, Flower of All Cities (1969), The Key (1976). [insta]
Also: What is the American Jewish Novel? Sam Sussman's Thoughts on Jewish American Literature in the 21st Century at Dwinelle Hall (Cal) / To The Moon & Back Sci-Fi/Fantasy Book Club reads Brave New World by Aldous Huxley at Books Inc. (Alameda) / Johanna Hoffman on Speculative Futures at Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation (Cal) / One Village, One Book reads Moonglow by Michael Chabon (2nd rate Berkeley Michael) at Montclair Branch Library (The Hills) / Daniel Poppick: "The Copywriter," with Hannah Zeavin at Pegasus Books (Downtown Berkeley)
Wednesday, April 8
Félicien Faury | Why Do Voters Support the Far Right in France? A Sociological Perspective, 11am, Library of French Thought, Dwinelle Hall (Cal). Hm, could it be the colonies have started to flow back toward the metropole and Frenchies don't like it, they just wanted raw labor and raw resources and not to have to see actual people. Also racism? [UCB]
Lecture by Hannes Bajohr: “The Latent Space of Meaning and the Novel,” 3:10pm, Hearst Memorial Mining Building 390 (Cal). Pantsers and LLMs might be doing the same thing, just riffing as they move from one thing to the next, building books of assemblage and inference. [UCB]
Frank Lloyd Wright at the Movies @ Central, 3:30pm, Central Library (Berkeley). Last showing of movies featuring Wright's buildings! Soon you'll get to hear about them from the author! Do your homework, watch Rush Hour. [BPL]
Bashu, the Little Stranger, 3:30pm, BAMPFA (Downtown Berkeley). If you didn't see it the other day, you can see it now. "Many people who know things about movies say this is the greatest Iranian film of all time" is what we said when we listed it in the calendar then, and we stand by that. [BAMPFA]
Forest Stearns: The Intention to DRAWEVERYWHERE, 5pm, UC Botanical Garden (Strawberry Canyon). A year of painting in community and in the botanical garden culminates in this exhibition of Bay Area artist Forest Stearns's work and his active painting from observation of nature [UCB]
SISTER CIRCLE SOUL SALON: SUZETTE CHAUMETTE, 5:30pm, Books Inc. (Alameda, Once a Peninsula). April is not only poetry month but earth month! And food grows in the earth (unless you're really into hydroponics). Public health storyteller Suzette Chaumette talks with everyone about eating together to heal what ails us all. [eventbrite]
[Bonus West Bay Event!] Tyehimba Jess and Tongo Eisen-Martin, 6pm, Minnesota Street Project, 1275 Minnesota St (Gentrified Dogpatch). A whole bunch of different institutions are collaborating to put this on, but honestly, who cares, Tyehimba Jess and Tongo Eisen-Martin is all you need to know. [MSP]
Birthright Citizenship, Reconstruction, and Immigrant Rights Today, 6pm, Albany Library (Albany). A law professor and a history professor walk into the Edith Stone room at Albany library and they explain birthright citizenship. Not a joke, that's what's going to happen. Get it before the Supreme Court rules it illegal. [Path to Belonging]
Faya dayi, 7pm, BAMPFA (Downtown Berkeley). A hypnotic, elliptical black-and-white documentary "tone poem" about chewing khat ("the flesh is here, but the soul is gone") in Ethiopia, as both Sufi practice and a means of coping with despair and hardship. Take a look at the trailer and see why it already has a Criterion release. [BAMPFA]
Rebecca Solnit on her new book, but only if you already bought a ticket, 7pm, Clio’s Books (The Lake). SOLD OUT. Rebecca Solnit in conversation with Mitch Jeserich on The Beginning Comes After the End (AKA Hope in the Dark 2: Two Much Hope Two Quit). [Clio's Books]
[Bonus West Bay Event!] On Beat: Hip Hop from Paris to the Bay, 10:30pm, SFPL (West Bay). Part of the "Night of Ideas," apparently the one night a year people in the West Bay are allowed to have ideas? Anyway, their website is so goddamned confusing that the only place we could get details on this was from SF Has [No] Culture (you might say that, we couldn't possibly comment); but we have to include "a conversation with KQED journalist and Hip Hop historian Pendarvis Hardshaw and producer Eric Blaze, a Villa Albertine resident, who came up in the Parisian Hip Hop scene in the 1980s." [WestBayHasNoCulture]
Also: Painting Ourselves into Society - Documentary Screening at Central Library (Berkeley) / On Campus Free Speech and Academic Freedom: Erwin Chemerinsky in Conversation with Professor Daniel Sargent at Berkeley Law (Cal) / Judicial Territory: Law, Capital, and the Expansion of American Empire at McCone Hall (Cal) / Chef Nikki of Asúcar -- Palestinian-Cuban Fusion. at Martin Luther King Jr. Branch OPL (Deep East) / Repair Advice with Fixit Clinic at Temescal Branch OPL (Temescal) / SOLD OUT Bay Curious: Bay Area Trivia at KQED (West Bay) / Avian-Human Worlds of Picuris Pueblo, NM at Archaeological Research Facility (Cal)
Thursday, April 9
Poetry in the Commons: Brian Ang, Kyle Booten, Alex Saum-Pascual, and graduate students to be named later, 4:30pm, Berkeley Center for New Media (Cal). Poetry reading celebrating Kyle Booten's Gyms, with graduate students who work in digital poetry invited to read in a lightning round. (Booten will also be on campus talking about "Writing With and Beyond AI: Fieldnotes from Computer-Mediated Poetry" on Friday) [Berkeley Center for New Media]
Carlin Wing, “Hitting Walls: Bounce and the Performance of Limits”, 5pm, Stephens Hall (Cal). From ping to pong and boink to bonk, bouncing is at the center of play. To bounce is to be repetitious and predictable, but add an unexpected spin or bump and get sproing in a new direction. In other words, it's FUN, so media scholar Carlin Wing talks about all the balls and their bouncing in a whole book from MIT Press (forever fave press). In this talk, Wing will situate her book in relation to historical and contemporary representations of ball games, or you can read her essay in the fabulous Cabinet Magazine if you're short on time. [UCB]
Christen Smith on The Black Radical Thought of Beatriz Nascimento, 5pm, Social Sciences Building (Cal). Black radicalism has often advocated separatism instead of the rainbow coalition; learn about Black Brazilian intellectual Beatriz Nascimento's theorization of quilombo (the equivalent of maroon communities), and get out of the American context a little; there are so many other possibilities. [UCB]
The History of Your Oakland Home, 6pm, Local Economy (Rockridge). Underneath the skin of Oakland's stucco, there's probably half a redwood forest, holding roofs up and families together. Learn about this place one house at a time with a local architectural historian. Where do you live, who built it, when, and what does California Craftsman mean anyway? [luma]
BIMBO Book Club!, 6:30pm, Tamarack (Downtown). Twice monthly lightweight reading group—come talk about a few snippets of David Graeber's ouvre, The Shock of Victory and A Practical Utopian's Guide to the Coming Collapse. Printed copies available free at Tamarack ahead of time. [insta]
The Holy Girl, 7pm, BAMPFA (Downtown Berkeley). “Poca moral y mucha curiosidad.” Some real Catholic shit, this: coming-of-age sexuality and spirituality all mixed up, a miraculous and devilish movie by a director who wanted to make no value judgements at all. [BAMPFA]
Jewish Appropriation of Greek Epic and Mythology, 7pm, Clio’s Books (The Lake). One last time on ancient epics, this time through a Jewish lens on Greek stories, as opposed to the New Testament, which was more vice versa. [eventbrite]
[West Bay Bonus Event] Evening with Prelinger Library Artists in Residence, 7:30pm, Prelinger Library (SoMa). First thirty lucky people get to have the coolest library hang. BYOB, the library is bringing the books and whatnot. Listen to residents who have used the library's archives while writing, namely: Hanan Mahbouba—a South Bay third culture kid and her project Memory of a Day I Wasn’t There For, and Danielle Shi—her reading from her WIP The Shelter, which has cults, homelessness, and ani-Chinese racism—ie, totally Californian. [insta]
Also: From “Grand Remplacement” to Great Replacement: Transnational Rhetorics and Intersectional Politics at Stephens Hall (Cal) / Beautiful Destruction: The Tar Sands, the Post-Modern Sublime, and the Subsumption of the Earth at Philosophy Hall (Cal) / The U.S. and the Fate of World Order -- Rupture #3: Trade at Philosophy Hall (Cal) / From Dragomans to Fixers with Noah Arjomand at Center for Middle Eastern Studies (Cal) / Japanese Media 1970s and Beyond:Television and Media Theory at Dwinelle Hall (Cal) / The Minjung Art Movement: Decolonization and Democracy in South Korea at Banway Building (Cal) / The Loft Hour: Shiben Banerji + Alexandra Lossada at Arts Research Center (Cal) [see what I mean? Fucking spring breakers]
Friday, April 10
Fieldnotes from Computer-Mediated Poetry (with Kyle Booten), 12:30pm, South Hall (Berkeley). Kyle Booten describes writing with AI as a way of straining the writer’s mind, drawing from his own experience writing literary texts with algorithmic feedback in his book Gyms, and declares war against slop. We're officially down as "skeptical," but we'll hear him out. [School of Information, UC Berkeley]
Composition Colloquium: Simone Browne · Cathy Park Hong · Robin D. G. Kelley, 3pm, Wu Performance Hall (Cal). There's a reason the fascist state defunded the arts and art-as-activism, as world-inventing and imagination-extending is exactly why. That’s the talk, but with music. [UCB]
2026 Wildavsky Lecture: Jens Ludwig, 4pm, Sutardja Dai Hall (Cal). Jens Ludwig, author of Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence, points out what we all know, which is that like suicide being more likely if you have a gun in the house, so is murder. The guns are the problem, because people will always fight, and you can hear how to solve murders and make less of them from the author himself. [UCB]
Beast Crawl Festival 2026, 5:30pm, Lot 2270 (Uptown). Kickoff party for Beast Crawl, Oakland's longest-running literary festival! The organizers get the prerogative of reading first to start off two weekends of festivities, then an open mic follows. [insta]
Anne Pedone, Alexis Almeida, and also maybe Alli Warren, 6pm, Tamarack (Downtown). Ann Pedone (publisher of Bay Area poetry journal and press Antiphony) and Alexis Almeida ("I love this particular gloss of sky and it's cold out, can we be together now?") will read poems, and depending on what ephemeral website you believe, perhaps also Alli Warren. Tamarack will no doubt post something at some point to clarify the matter, but when poets are concerned, it's ok to live in ambiguity. [insta]
Cruz Garcia | LOUDREADERS, 6pm, Wurster Hall (Cal). Puerto Rican architect and professor Cruz Garcia on their work LOUDREADERS, which involves maybe everyone speaking at once, loudly, and speaking to each other without a formal hierarchy of knowledge. Connecting material uses of space with things like revolution, good stuff. Loudly. [UCB]
[West Bay Bonus Event] Jessica Jones—WOMEN WHO RIDE, 6pm, African American Art & Culture Complex (Civic Center). Black Film as Protest screening series starts up! Tonight, see a work-in-progress from filmmaker Jessica Jones, who will show up to explain what happens next. WOMEN WHO RIDE follows Tish Edwards, founder and president of D’Vious Wayz MC, Oakland’s first Black women’s motorcycle club. VROOM! [luma]
Last Seen: A Long Time Ago, 7pm, Central Stage (Richmond). Solo performance by Adib Ghorbani, of a play built from letters exchanged between the US and Iran. Performed in Persian, without translation, so come through Iranian diaspora and scholars of the Orient, and fuck off everyone else. Some things are not for you. [humanitix]
Good Woman by Savala Nolan, 7pm, Unitarian Church (Berkeley). East Bay author Savala Nolan will be in conversation with other East Bay author Courtney Martin about what it means to defy expectations of compliance and also the intersection of Blackness and femininity, East Bayily. [insta]
Love Songs/Love Poems, with poet Zack Rogow and chanteuse Pamela Rose, 7:30pm, The Back Room (Downtown Berkeley). Zack Rogow introduced me to renga and tanka and brought Kim Addonizio to read her poems to us when I was a 17-year-old TA in his summer poetry class, and I have been learning about poetry from him ever since. His new book of poems is The Kama Sutra for Senior Citizens and Other Poems on Aging, because we live a long time and love is not only for the young and foolish. [Humanitix]
Also: The Artwork of Noor Qwfan at Main Library (Oakland) / Stuck: How Money, Media, and Violence Prevent Change in Congress at Banatao Auditorium (Cal) / The Films of Apparatus and Early Works by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha at BAMPFA (Downtown Berkeley) / BAMPFA Student Committee Film Festival at BAMPFA (Downtown Berkeley)
Saturday, April 11
AfroPortals Community Archive Day #1, 11am, East Oakland Youth Development Center (Fitchburg). Community archiving with root families in East Oakland! If you have ephemera from Black Legacy Families in East and Deep East Oakland, bring it in, get it digitized. Hosted by Ms. Towanda Hiba Sherry [Eastside Arts Alliance]
[West Bay Bonus Event] I Left My Heart at CCA, 11am, H & S Homeroom (Dogpatch). The CCA writing MFA is gathering alums , professors, current students etc to read, because 25 years is a legacy and fuck Vanderbilt, the art school still lives. [insta]
Club de Lectura en Español / Spanish Book Club, 11am, The OPL branch technically still called "César E. Chávez" but probably not for long (Fruitvale). Ellos se reúnen cada segundo sábado al mes a las once de la mañana, y las reuniones son en español. If you're skipping over that text because it's in Spanish, this Spanish-language book club is probably not for you, but, in English, the book is Still Born and Guadalupe Nettel is a really great writer. [OPL]
Coffee with a Cop, 11am, Piedmont Avenue Branch (Oakland Piedmont). Join your neighbors and public servants for coffee & conversation! No agenda or speeches—just a chance to ask questions, or speeches—just voice concerns, and get public servants for to for coffee & conversation know the just a neighborhood beat officers in your just a neighborhood. beat officers in your just concerns, and get public servants fojust a neighborhoor to for coffee & conversation know the just a neighborhood beat officers. public servants fojust a neighborversation know the just a neighborrhood beat officnts foj ojust a neighborhoor to for coffee & conversation know the just a neighborhood beat officers ojust a neighborhoor to for coffee & conversation beat officers beat officers beat officers beat officers beat officers beat officers know the just a neighborhood beat officers. public servants foj ojust a neighrsation knoorojust a neighborhoor to for coffee & conversation know the just a neighhoor to for coffee & converersation know the juw the just a neighborhood beat officers. public servarvants foj ojust a neighrsatrhoor tfee & conee & converooffee & conhoor to for cood beat offffee & conversation know the just a neighborho for cion knoorojust a neighborhoor to for cofoicers. public servversation knost a neighhoor to for coffants foj.Cookies, tea, and hot cocoa will be provided. [OPL]
Meet the Author: Noel Hassan, noon, Piedmont Avenue Branch (Oakland Piedmont). Yemeni-American Muslim poet from Oakland just graduated form college shares her writing. [OPL]
West Berkeley Community Print Festival, noon, Kala Gallery (Berkeley). You can print or buy printed things! Ink sticks to paper, we pass it around, worlds collide, bounce and reform. [insta]
Author Talk with Mark Anthony Wilson, 1pm, Central Library (Berkeley). Finally! Mark Anthony Wilson discusses his new book on Frank Lloyd Wright making buildings Hollywood loves to film! You saw Blade Runner, Gattaca, Rush Hour, now chit chat all about it with the guy who did that too but then wrote about it. [BPL]
Geologist's Walk Around Oakland's Lake Merritt, 1:30 pm Fairyland (The Lake). Join Andrew Alden, author of Deep Oakland, for a walk around the lake and into deep time. [eventbrite]
Co-Founders, the musical, 2pm, Henry J. Kaiser Center for the Arts (The Lake). So, I can't say that ORB officially endorses this "hit hip-hop musical + real startup accelerator + on-the-spot investment" event, but it does feel like maybe this might be guerrilla marketing for whatever Boots Riley is doing next? Last year, Co-Founders: The Musical was said to have given Silicon Valley "the Hamilton treatment," exploring "how the Bay Area’s inventive spirit extends beyond tech to rap and activism," and now Oakland is blessed with this, which will "fuse live performances from the acclaimed hip-hop musical Co-Founders with a live startup accelerator that will award $30,000 in funding to first-time entrepreneurs." Give me a second, I need to google something. I hope Ishmael Reed is already writing a new play about how much he hates this. [All People Powered]
Thriving in the Margins: History from a Woman's Perspective, 2pm, First Presbyterian Church of San Leandro (San Leandro). Local authors Julia Park Tracy and Karin K. Jensen talk about the real history in their memoir and novels about mothers and ancestors. Patriarchy isn't over, but it sure has been worse. [San Leandro Historical Society]
James Cagney, 2pm, West Branch (Berkeley). James Cagney will be reading and discussing his newest collection, Ghetto Koans: A Personal Archive, which welcome you to Oakland: “where the rich compete in buildings / tagging territories with titanium graffiti.” [BPL]
Parents of Berkeley Writing Circle, 2pm, Tarea Hall Pittman South Branch (Berkeley). Sharing your writing about parenting and the workshop comes with free childcare, and snacks, and a discovery of your own inner child. Facilitated by Milani Pelley. [BPL]
[West Bay Bonus Event] Ja weya ob’aj wij · ex weya nchemaj, 2pm, Medicine for Nightmares (The Mission). Textiles woven by women from the Mayan Mam community, and the stories they carry. [Medicine for Nightmares Bookstore]
Meet the Author: Noel Hassan, 2pm, Lakeview Branch (The Lake). I did a double take, but in fact it's double poet, twice in one day! [Oakland Public Library]
Book Release Party for Colleen Shoshana McKee's Feeding Ghosts, 3pm, 2727 California Street (Berkeley). A book of poems is birthing itself today, and you can witness its crowning! Blurber says the book is" a window into the life of an artist—addiction, mental illness, poverty, disability" which does sound about right for poets. [insta]
What Marx Tells Us About Uber: The Gig Economy and the New Class Struggle, 6pm, The Oakland Grove (The part of south Temescal where it's not really Temescal anymore but isn't really anything else, yet, until you cross the freeway). Jodi Dean will chat about last year's Capital’s Grave: Neofeudalism and the New Class Struggle and also the gig economy, in which the servant vanguard is a new agent of history. Specters be haunting. Party afterward. Lots of communists. [SEEING RED]
Third Culture Tales: Stories Beyond Borders, 7pm, Impossible Stage (Berkeley). Storytelling, singing, and community around being not from where you're from, or at least, never completely. [humanitix]
The Marriage of Maria Braun, 7pm, BAMPFA (Downtown Berkeley). BAMPFA's Fassbinder bender continues. "To survive in postwar Germany, Maria becomes a sex worker, a wealthy industrialist's mistress, and eventually a ruthless capitalist during the German Economic Miracle," says Wikipedia, and then, helpfully: "a metaphor for Germany’s rise from the ashes of defeat into a maelstrom of progress and capitalist greed." It will end well, surely. [BAMPFA]
Also: Plein AiR Patrol Blitz with Forest Stearns at University of California Botanical Garden (Strawberry Canyon) / Sue Granzella with Jenny Pritchett - Pushed to the Edge: Teachers' Stories from the Culture Wars at Book Passage Corte Madera (North Bay) / Onaketa 4th Annual Dream Big Book Fair at Studio One Art Center (Temescal) / Southeast Asian New Year Celebration 2026 at Oakland Asian Cultural Center (Chinatown) / Alameda Writers Group at Alameda Library (Alameda) / Ada Limón—Against Breaking: On the Power of Poetry at Book Passage Corte Madera (North Bay) / National Letter Writing Month Craft @North at North Branch (Berkeley) / Death Cafe at Central Library (Berkeley) / Chef Nikki of Asúkar at Asian Branch (Chinatown) / Kouté vwa at BAMPFA (Downtown Berkeley)
Sunday, April 12
Creative Sunday: Memoir Writing Workshop with Walter, 9am, (Oakland). The mononymous Walter is writing about FOUR Walters, and will speak to his experience writing this memoir, and teach a workshop on writing about your own family of names.[insta]
Poetry Workshop with Lyn Patterson, 1pm, Black Panther Party Museum (Downtown). Hang out with poets and their poems, take time to revise, share with each other. Sweet way to spend a couple hours thinking deeply about which words are the ones you want to reach for. [insta]
Opening of “On the Waterfront: The Other Side of Berkeley,” 1:30pm, Berkeley Historical Society & Museum (Downtown Berkeley). Liam O’Donoghue will interview Mitch Fleischer, lead curator of the exhibit about Berkley's bayfront. According to the copy, the topics of conversation will all be Fs: "failed development proposals to stories of fishing, factories, ferries, and fun" [Berkeley Historical Society & Museum]
[West Bay Bonus Event] Bay Nature's 25th Anniversary Celebration, 2pm, Presidio's Golden Gate Club (The Used to Be a Naval Base or Something of the West Bay). Our friends at Bay Nature have been a real magnet and gathering place for people who care about lands, waters, and wildlife: celebrate them and rub elbows with fancy bay environmentalists and naturalists, and give them $175 to keep doing what they do. [Bay Nature]
F.A.G. Archive Pop-Up Programming Weekend, 2pm, Bathers Library (Telegraph). Poets Lê Ðoan Trinh, alexis n garcia, mara hassan, and Leila Weefur have hung out in the library and made poems out of the words and ideas they encountered there. Come listen and leaf through the books that became poems. [insta]
[West Bay Bonus Event The Next] Khiara M. Bridges with Zea Malawa - Expecting Inequity (Ferry Building Event), 2pm, Book Passage (Embarcadero). Cal Prof of law Khiara M. Bridges' Expecting Inequity: How the Maternal Health Crisis Affects Even the Wealthiest Black Americans is just the gift to hand to pregnant women making a birth plan and women with newborns wondering what the fuck just happened. In conversation with pediatrician and public health professional Zea Malawa. [Book Passage]
[West Bay Bonus Event The Third] How They Did It: The Art of Revision, 3pm, Page Street (Lower Haight). Local authors Margaret Juhae Lee, Lori Ostlund, Shobha Rao, and Maw Shein Win talk across genres about how you really need a friend to read your work and say, "this needs more ocean in it" or "have you considered tercets?" Bring your favorite editor with you.[eventbrite]
Days and Nights in the Forest, 4pm, BAMPFA (Downtown Berkeley). Satyajit Ray!! Finally, fewer Germans in the arthouse theater, more Indians. This is the really good shit. [BAMPFA]
The Hidden Labor in Our Food, 4pm, Clio’s (The Lake). Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern's Will Work for Food: Labor Across the Food Chain is about all the human labor in every step of the food system: agricultural fields to restaurant kitchens to grocery stores and waste. She'll chat with Vera Chang about the people who make our food system possible and the movements working to transform it. (related unrelated, but Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies is the book that made it weird to eat strawberries). [eventbrite]
Can I Get a Witness? Open Mic, 5pm, Air Temple Art Space (JLS). Open Mic night, with loving feedback after! A true exchange. [insta]
Freedom Way, 7pm, BAMPFA (Downtown Berkeley). A melodramatic thriller flowing out of the tragi-heroic tale of software developers building a rideshare app, thwarted by corruption and cops, that turned out to be a Big State of the Nation film and one of 2024’s most acclaimed Nigerian movies. Get a taste here. [BAMPFA]
Also: Punks Parade and Animal Shelter Fundraiser at Gilman Brewing (West Berkeley) / Peter Richardson with Paul Liberatore - Brand New Beat: The Wild Rise of Rolling Stone Magazine at Book Passage Corte Madera (North Bay) / The Oakland Join-Up Activity Fair at Two Pitchers Brewing Company (Uptown) / Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Late Works: Mouth to Mouth, Permutations, and White Dust from Mongolia at BAMPFA (Downtown Berkeley)
