Oakland Review of Books calendar of (not just) literary events, August 12 – August 17
Black August honors the life and death of George Jackson and the legacy of Black revolutionaries. Black August is now, which is why BAMBDFEST 2025 INTERNATIONAL is also now. Pretty hard to transition from that, so also, it’s CATVIDEOFEST 2025 at the New Parkway all week for some internet circa 2005 vibes; stop off at Cat Town and make an evening of it. The creeks are still running, so take a break between readings and screenings and shows and listen to the water, seeping, seeping, carrying our mountains all the way to the Bay. -MS
Tuesday, August 12
One Village, One Book reads Hella Town, 6:30pm, Montclair Branch OPL (The Hills). Hill people, discuss Mitchell Schwarzer’s history of The Town’s urban infrastructure amongst yourselves. [OPL]
Ghetto Grimoire Album Release Mixer, 7pm, B.A.M. House (Downtown). ayodele nzinga, Oakland's inaugural Poet Laureate and founder of the city's oldest African Theater Company, presents her new album of poetry, with wine, cheese, hors d’oeuvres & good people. “where life / stretches you / like a rubber band / it's the tension / you find traction/ to go forward” [instagram]
Oceanic Feelings with Lapham's Quarterly, 7pm, Clio’s (The Lake). Lapham’s Quarterly, it’s aliiiive! And newly at the helm is a fellow who likes to write about the ocean, acting editor Donovan Hohn. He and fellow West Bayer Greil Marcus will swim right up the channel into Lake Merritt in order to talk about the history of California and the sea. Revisit Lapham’s “The Sea” issue to dive in. [eventbrite]
Also: Phone Fix-It Clinic at Elmhurst Branch OPL (Deep East)
Wednesday, August 13
Berkeley Barb: A 60th Anniversary Celebration, 3pm, Central Library (Berkeley). The original alt weekly. But was the event calendar ever as good as ORB’s? [BPL]
THIS IS NOT A POEM, THIS IS THE ONLY WAY, 6pm, The Berkeley Finnish Hall (West Berkeley). A going-away party for Ivan + poetry & translation reading bringing together the Bay’s Russophone and Anglophone poetry scenes. Featuring Polina Barskova (“She lives here in Prague’s soil, under wet pines, his mother / Who washed him in the basin with a cup of water, and sang.”), Ivan Sokolov (translating Ron Silliman into Russian like a champ), and Alli Warren (“whatever you do don’t / let the tongue slip / from its moorings”), with surprises and surprise translations in the works. Bon Voyage, but in Russian! [instagram]
Ashley Jordan and Jasmine Guillory in conversation, 6pm Orinda Books (Hot Side of the Hills). Jordan’s new Once Upon A Time in Dollywood “fulfills all the juicy expectations of its genre, while also giving us a maximum amount of heart.” Heat and a pulsing organ or two. [instagram]
Ellen McBarnette Live Fiction Reading, 7:30pm, Rock Paper Scissors Collective (Uptown). Come on in for an evening of fiction and speculation followed by an open mic. McBarnette leads the Afrosurreal Writers Workshop of Oakland, and her novella “Negrita” is in Midnight and Indigo Speculative Fiction Vol 2. Time travel sounds real good right now. [instagram]
Thursday, August 14
Golden Hour plant volunteering, 5 pm, Friends of Sausal Creek Nursery (Joaquin Miller Park). Get your hands dirty dividing seedlings, transplanting, and washing pots to help grow plants for restoration sites throughout the creek’s watershed this winter. RSVP here. [instagram]
[West Bay Bonus Event] Closing Reception: Do Not Try to Remember: The American School of Architecture in the Bay Area Exhibition, 6 pm, Center for Architecture + Design (Financial District). Panel about Coastal Bay Area architecture that drew inspiration from the landscape and local materials. Weirdly, the movement’s roots are in Oklahoma, but it got cool in Big Sur. [AIASF]
Black Film: Unscreened & Unstreamed, Creating Space: Nijla Mu'min, 6:30pm, Oakstop (Uptown). Free but sold out for a reason. If you’re already going, you know why: the East Bay’s own Nijla Mu’min will screen and talk about her feature debut, Jinn, as well as her earlier short, Noor. (the “unstreamed” of the film series title is metaphorical; stream Jinn here). [sold out eventbrite link here]
Sorry I Missed Your Show, 7pm, EastSide Arts Alliance (San Antonio). Simone Nalls, NAKA Dance Theater, and others (facilitated by Juan Manuel Adalpe) reflect on The Anastasio Project (2015), a multidisciplinary, roving public performance work that initiated an investigation into racial profiling, state brutality, and border violence. "Sorry I missed your show!" is a series of informal and intimate conversations, using archival media to reflect on and revive past performances by Bay Area artists, capturing their political and artistic significance from a specific era, space, and time. [EastSide Arts Alliance]
Aisha Muharrar with Loved One, 7pm, Mrs Dalloway’s (College Ave). Funny, smart lady writes books now, since she already won an Emmy for her TV writing. We’re considering this an upward trajectory, right? The reviewers are raving. Muharrar will be joined in conversation by Shruti Swamy. [Mrs Dalloway’s]
Also: Mindy Uhrlaub’s Last Nerve at Clio’s (The Lake) / Playreaders at Berkeley Public Library (Berkeley)
Friday, August 15
Climate Adaptation Site Visit, 10 AM, Coyote Hills (Fremont). There are no details about this, but at least someone’s making plans that aren’t hurtling us straight into hell (the EPA’s fucking off with Congressionally-mandated solar project funding and I need any scrap of hope). [EB Parks]
Fairyland for Grownups with Oaklandish, 6 pm, Fairyland (The Lake). Watch puppet shows, drink and eat, listen to local DJs spin, wear a costume if you want (oh you know you do). [Fairyland]
Screening of From Ground Zero: Stories from Gaza, 6 pm, Open Test Kitchen (Old Oakland). The 2024 film features 22 short films from storytellers and filmmakers from and in Gaza, including documentaries, fiction, animation and experimental films. (Curious though about community pushback to show this over the initially planned No Other Land screening: what’s up with that?) [instagram]
Poetry! With Compton’s Coalition, 6:30pm, Tamarack (Downtown). Featuring local queer & trans sensations Sylvia S., Tatiana Luboviski-Acosta, and Trinh Lê! Come through for the poetry AND to learn about how to support the fight to Liberate 111 Taylor, the site of the 1966 Compton’s Cafeteria riot (West Bay history matters too, sometimes), from the clutches of ICE-contracted prison corporation GEO Group. K/N95 masks required. [Instagram]
Town Takes the World screening, 6 pm, Performing Arts Theater, Holy Names Univ (The Hills). Exclusive screening of a powerful short documentary capturing the historic journey of the Bay Area Phoenix, who are a women’s pro basketball team in Oakland, I am learning right now, live as I am typing. Player & guest panel discussion after. [eventbrite]
Film Friday: Palestine Seen, 7:00 PM, EastSide Arts Alliance (San Antonio). So much Palestinian creativity on screens this Friday! Eight experimental short films from the 8th Biennale /si:n/ Festival of Video Art and Performance that took place in Ramallah Palestine during October 2024. [instagram]
Saturday, August 16
Public tour of the Paramount Theatre, 10am, The Paramount (Downtown). David, who gives the tours and designed the curtains, will walk you through his decades of efforts to bring this 1931 Art Deco palace back to its most glamorous self, and everything that came before. Those galvanized metal ceiling decorations send me, I love their shiny edges so. [Paramount Oakland]
Artist’s Talk and Conversation: Stephanie Syjuco and Matthew Villar Miranda, 1 pm, BAMPFA (Berkeley). Syjuco has just installed Present Tense (Roll Call), sourcing materials from the archive about the first ethnic studies programs and exploring radical pedagogy in the politics of education. Collaborative collage might be the Bay Area’s ultimate expression of itself in art. [UC Berkeley]
Core Memories from Old Photographs, 1:30 PM, Art@Archer (Downtown). Local painter Gaila Turner in conversation with local culture journalist Pendarvis Harshaw about her art drawing from her family archives and her life in East Oakland. Come for the paintings, stay for the stories about baby Penn! [instagram]
Night Soil Seance, 3 pm, Winslow House Project (Vallejo). The second iteration of this durational experience of sound and light. All day and into the night in Deepest Northeastest Oakland. [instagram].
[West Bay Bonus Event] 2025 BLUSH San Francisco PornFilmFestival, 3 pm, Brava Theatre (The Mission). Spotted on a pole, so it goes in the calendar, that’s the rule. Starts with an “in person workshop” (work it), ends with what’s sure to be a fabulous afterparty. Vibe report potential is through the roof! [Brava]
Non/phenomenalities Second Opening, 4pm, 120710 Gallery (West Berkeley). Phenomenology’s so nice they’re doing it twice. A show of works that stage multiple aesthetic inversions of the phenomenal, ranging from the subtle or understated to the invisible. What comes to the fore when vision encounters computation’s resistance to consciousness, its “discorrelation” from the phenomenology of embodied experience? [120710.art]
Popeye, 4 pm, BAMPFA (Berkeley). Jules Feiffer wrote it, Altman directed it, Robin Williams had his big screen debut in it, and Shelley Duvall saves it. [BAMPFA]
Cardboard Drive-In Theater, 6 pm, Lot 2270 (Uptown). Hands-on art party, part sidewalk parade, and part outdoor movie night. WHIMSY!! There’s a clown in charge (not a joke). [State of Play]
Desert Hearts, 7 pm, BAMPFA outdoors (Berkeley). A lesbian Western in the biggest little city; plus, watch the ‘80s interpret the ‘50s. Free! [Berkeley]
Also: Field Trip Collecting Native Seeds at Sabercat Historical Park (Fremont) / Ohlone Games: Walnut Dice at Coyote Hills (Fremont)
Sunday, Aug 17
Oakland Art Ride, 9:30am, Rock Paper Scissors Collective (Downtown). There’s so much art in The Town you can’t see it all on foot. [RPS calendar]
Pop-Up Craft Fair, 11 AM, Intertribal Friendship House (Lake-ish). Get your shoulder dusters and know the name of the beader who made them. [instagram]
Creative Radio Club, 11 AM Winslow House Project (Vallejo). Want to use radio for all kinds of art mischief? Go north for the day to hang out with other curious hams. [WHP]
The Encampments 12pm, New Parkway (Uptown). Screening of the doc about student protests against the genocide in Palestine, fundraising direct aid for families in Gaza. [instagram]
[West Bay Bonus Event] Footprints Re-collection: A Generative Writing Workshop, 1 pm, the Ruby (The Mission). Start writing your or your family’s migration story. What’s in your archive? First of two sessions, run by Alexia Nader and Rebeca Abidaíl Flores. [Third Place]
Spotlight Sundays: Rituals of Care, 1 PM, OMCA (The Lake). Partake in a Gongfu tea ceremony, origami, kite decorating, & more with Chelsea Ryoko Wong, and write notes for elders based in Chinatown & Little Saigon. [instagram]
Sunday Summer Jazz at Golden Gate (but actually at Doyle Park today), 3 pm, Doyle Park (Emeryville). Melba's Kitchen Big Band, an all women band playing all the great songs by Black women. Good times to play out the summer. [OPL]
