Oakland Review of Books calendar of (not just) literary events, August 18–August 23
Grand Lake Theatre extended the run of Hadestown so you can go watch rhyming myths some more, and they have other movies, including the Anthony Bourdain biopic premiering on Thursday. I am just learning there’s a performing arts theatre in the Oakland hills, and it’s hosting four performances of a Black Western play called Cowboy this weekend. El Cerrito is against new libraries but pro new bookstores, plus you can buy drought tolerant plants for cheap this weekend at the UC Botanical Garden. In Deep South Oakland, the neighborhood called San Jose is hosting a poetry festival starting Friday and going all weekend. In Far North Oakland, children will discuss philosophy regularly all fall, and if you or your people were around Lake Merritt in the middle of the last century, start rummaging through the archives: there’s a Merritt Modernism zine in the works and they want to see your stuff. I’ll be sending in a couple old slides from when Fairyland first opened: what have you got to share? Send it in by the end of the month. See you Thursday! Bring your least essential book to Eli’s! -MS, XL
Tuesday, August 18
Storytime for Caregivers with Vanessa Hua, 10am, Local Economy (Rockabyebabridge). Join East Bay author Vanessa Hua and local caregivers for a conversation about the suburbs, real estate, coyotes, and other uncanny neighbors that pop up in Coyoteland. [luma]
How to Not Know: A Conversation on Uncertainty, 6pm, Book Society (College Ave). For the anxious hordes! Instead of casting divinations and getting your chart done, how about we all just sit in the fact that we don't know what will happen, can't control it, and have to live life in the day to day of who the hell knows what's next. It sucks, I know! Have some wine with Simone Stolzoff and Dr. Emily Anhalt and practice not telling the future. [Book Society]
Nina LaCour's Great Migration novel, Meet Me in the Garden, 6pm, Local Economy (Rockridge). Nina LaCour is hella local — like to the neighborhood, as a former bookseller at the Formerly-Known-As-Diesel bookstore across the Bart tracks. Making her adult debut after cutting her teeth in YA, Meet Me in the Garden takes us back the Great Migration's channel of movement from Louisiana to California, a history drawn from LaCour's own family stories and why some folks who grew up here in the Oakland Bay Area still express the New Orleans-specific coil-curl merger vowel migration (SORRY I find accents FASCINATING, regionalism forever....). [luma]
[West Bay Bonus Event] Everybody’s Climate: Sea Now, 6pm, SFPL Main Library (Civic Center). Guys, if ORB's party wasn't also this week (you're coming right?) we would declare this THE event of the WEEK even though it's unfortunately across the bay. I was in a fabulous quarterly seminar this week that local ORBiter and KALX stalwart Heidi hosts on fascinating topics, and someone there said they were stoked for this event. THEN I had dinner with Leslie-Ann of CAT the other night and CAT is who published Sea Now, and she's super excited — this is the ONLY appearance in the US for Dutch author Eva Meijer! With the book's translator too, all the way from Scotland! And THEN Gregory Hom, ORB collage artist, turns out to be the organizer on the library side AND the interviewer. A triple endorsement! I am going to try to be there with a pair of children in tow, because this is a novel about sea level rise, y'all, by an author deeply invested in our relationship with the nonhuman, how could I stay home? "The sea has spoken, and there’s nothing left to be done but listen." [Center for the Art of Translation]
When We Win: FREE JOAN LITTLE, 7:30pm, La Peña Cultural Center (Oakland part of Berkeley). I first heard from Dorsey Nunn about Joan Little: he celebrated with all the other Black men inside San Quentin in 1975 when they heard about her acquittal for murder of her white jailer and attempted rapist. A rare instance of justice for a Black women. Hear the full story as filmed and told by Yoruba Richen's documentary. The director and members of the California Coalition for Women Prisoners will be present! [eventbrite]
Also: Creative Writing Space at West Branch BPL (West Berkeley) / Sequoia Scribes: A Community Writing Experience at Urban University (Grand Lake) / Lakeview Branch Book Club at Lakeview Branch (The Lake)
Wednesday, August 19
The Black Love Forum, 5pm, Martin Luther King Jr. Branch (Lions Creek Watershed). Four leaders of the Black community will share their expertise and perspective on creating and maintaining relationships. Panelists are Robin Dawn Rivera (her book Love on Lock helps couples stay connected though separation, especially when created by incarceration); James Weeks, Lord Rab (No Vultures Podcast that explores Bay Area hip hop and more), and therapist Melissa Geddis. [OPL]
History of Greek Wine w/ Kimberly Slate, 5:30pm, Solano Cellars (Solano Ave). There's over 150 references to wine in the Odyssey, which is probably why it took that guy a couple decades to get home. $60 for tonight gets you lots of wines from Greece and a history lesson about Dionysian indulgence from Kimberly State, owner of Alluvial Wine. You will be learning about the wines of a subregion of the place that calls itself Hellas, and it won't be the South-Central and Peninsula, because that was last week. [Vintage Berkeley]
The Hidden Life of Libraries with Dorothy Lazard and Alexis Madrigal, 6pm, The New Parkway Theater (Uptown). Dorothy Lazard, Oakland's beloved and legendary librarian, doyenne of the History Room, launches her second memoir, about her decades in the Oakland Public Library, as one of the few Black librarians in the Town. Get your library gossip fresh, hot, and spicy tonight! [eventbrite]
CINEMA AS PRAYER: A NIGHT OF QUEER SOUTH ASIAN CINEMA, 6:15pm, Rialto Cinema Elmwood (College Ave). Paramita by Kirthi Nath is a short documentary that follows Bangaldeshi Oaklander Pajna Choudhury’s coming out process and I watched a brief trailer of the second in the double header, Longing Suite by Lata Mani & Nicolas Grandi, and can tell you there's some art and poetry in it. [Elmwood Theatre]
[West Bay Bonus Event] Craft Talk: The End of Everything with Risa Lenore, 6:30pm, Arion Press (Fort Mason). It's still the summer of puppets, and the West Bay is finally catching on. Hear from puppet master Risa Lenore about puppets, practices, performance, and other prioritized plosives. Then make your own puppet! [eventbrite]
The ACOTAR Countdown Book Club: Book 4, 6:30pm, Book Society (Elmwoody). Go deep, hard, and long on the very popular romantasy series before the climax of book six's release in October. [Book Society]
Acid, Fear, and the American Mind, 7pm, Clio’s Books (The Lake). Lindsay Kent, author of the "psychedelic thriller" My Twin the Murderer starts asking questions about who we are and how we know ourselves, in conversation with psychedelics advocate Renée Franzwa. [eventbrite]
[West Bay Bonus Event] Lenna Jawdat’s 70,000 with Janine Mogannam, 7pm, Green Apple Books on the Park (The Sunset). Jawdat, a trauma therapist and poet of Palestinian and Iraqi descent, explores what it means to lose cultural inheritance though the books removed from Palestinian houses as they were taken or destroyed. A book that’s also a ritual of counting, making sense of layers of loss, a container for lost words. [GAB on the Park]
Devyn Defoe: "Burnside," with Kate Folk, 7pm, Pegasus Books (Downtown Berkeley). Sacramento-based writer, former Stegner fellow, and bookseller Devyn Defoe’s debut weird fiction, Burnside from Astra House is out now! Celebrate with Devyn and Kate Folk, author of another weirdo novel: Sky Daddy. On Defoe: "A wild new talent” says our favorite California expat, Lydia Kiesling. Two young women's paranoia about a homeless guy named Burnside somewhere in the valley drives the action in this hazy, dystopian charting of scapegoating and anomie, and wrapping up Pegasus's frankly amazing events this summer, with so many quirky, unusual reads from indie presses. [Pegasus Bookstore]
Also: SOLD OUT August Butterfly Walk at UC Botanical Garden (Berkeley Hils) / The Bike Fix at Martin Luther King Jr. Branch (Deep East) / Creative Power Moves at YBCA (SoMa) / Writer's Workshop at Nomadic Press (Uptown) / Open Mic Night at Lumen Labs (West Berkeley) / Nancy Kurshan - Levitating the Pentagon and Other Uplifting Stories at Rockridge Branch OPL (College Ave) / Dimond Book Club at Dimond Branch OPL (The Dimond) / SOLD OUT Why Work Feels Broken: Marx and the Modern Workplace at Guildhouse (San Jose) / Bob le flambeur at BAMPFA (Downtown Berkeley)
Thursday, August 20
ORB Launchiversary: Always Be Launching, 6pm, Eli's Mile High Club (Oakland). We hear there's a cool party happening. Seems to be the only thing on an otherwise dead night. Weird but that’s just how the calendar goes sometimes! [luma]
OK FINE. Also: Oak Town Thursdays featuring Kamaiyah at Latham Square (Downtown) / Oakland City of Stars: From the Archive Exhibition at African American Museum and Library at Oakland (Old Oakland) / The Technology Industry and Power at Local Economy (Rockridge) / Cybersentics (little) Library — Launch at Gray Area / Grand Theater (West Bay) / Poetry Circle at Claremont Branch (Fancy Berkeley) / Meet Your 2026 Alameda County Candidates at Kinfolx (Downtown) / Booksmith presents: Danny Ramadan with Zeina Hashem Beck / Crooked Teeth at The Booksmith (West Bay) / syllabary: poetry and music at ATA (West Bay) / Allen Fish : Raptors in the Concrete Jungle at The Tamalpais Room at the David Brower Center (Downtown Berkeley) / The History of Gender: How Culture Has Shaped the Way We Think About Identity at Donkey & Goat Winery (West Berkeley) / Queer Bedtime Stories at Nomadic Bookshop (Uptown) / A.I. Artificial Intelligence at BAMPFA (Downtown Berkeley) / Chang-rae Lee with R.O. Kwon at Green Apple Books on the Park (The Sunset)
Friday, August 21
Friday Nights at OMCA with Sabrina Shauna, 5pm, OMCA campus (The Lake). Picnic with food truck sustenance and watch kids and grown ups groove to Sabrina Shauna's singing and to DJ Zaynub's grooves. You can also practice your drawing skills inside the museum, that's pretty cool. Don’t draw on the ART though, you have to make your own. [OMCA]
Queer Black August Film Screening, 6pm, EastSide Cultural Center (Deep East). It's Black August! We're celebrating rebels and revolutionaries, Black Power and Pride all at once. A bunch of short films made in the last couple years by queer women of color will be screening. The revolution might not be televised but it's projected, just this once. [insta]
Poetry!, 6:30 pm, Tamarack (Downtown). Your poets for one night, one night only are <drumroll>.....Amanda Nadelberg (Shake Until Cloudy from Songcave!), Elizabeth Robinson (author of so many books of poetry they’re arranged alphabetically on her website!), and Jessica McGuinness who remains a mystery (guest hosted by Jamie Townsend, who doesn’t).
Dorothy Lazard: Behind The Desk at the Main, 6:30pm, Books Inc. (Alameda, Once and Future Oakland Peninsula). After growing up in Oakland libraries, Dorothy Lazard went behind the desk one day and stayed a while. She talks about the challenges facing library workers during her tenure and today, from libraries changing under the varying pressures from digitization to meeting the needs of all community members, wherever they are. In conversation with Angela Dalton. My favorite chapter is the one where Dorothy details breaking up with a boyfriend because he had too many books. Come and ask why she found this intolerable! [eventbrite]
Four Films by Jerome Hiler, 7pm, BAMPFA (Berkeley). Meet filmmaker Jerome Hiler and watch his impressionist collages with no sound and then you can ask him, What's up with that? Have you considered adding words next time? [bampfa]
Also: The Bike Fix at 81st Avenue Branch (East Oakland) / Freedom From Flock Fest at A March (Wast Berkeley) / Open Mic: The Poetry Lounge hosted by Reno the Poet at 811 Parliament Events (Old Oakland) / Get Hype Open Mic at Discover Community Cafe (West Oakland) / Catherine Newman's "WRECK" Paperback Release at Mrs. Dalloway's Bookstore (Elmwood)
Saturday, August 22
Oakland Kids First Kick-Off, 9am, Castlemont Farm (Arroyo Viejo Watershed). This is a workday to help out at an urban farm in East Oakland that supports local high schoolers getting familiar with how food grows. Bring gloves and tough shoes, start weeding. [insta]
[West Bay Bonus Event] The San Francisco Historium, 10am, Pier 35 (The Seawall Disguised as The Embarcadero). We're doing living history, bring your bustle to Baghdad by the Bay, along with your favorite sea shanties, and meet the characters who brought notoriety to the West Bay when the city was made of wood and railroad fortunes, as they twirl their mustaches and flirt their skirts at you. [SF Historium]
Piedmont Ave Branch Community Potluck!, 11am, Piedmont Avenue Branch OPL (Glen Echo Creek Watershed). We got to teach Konnor this weekend that Piedmont Ave is entirely within Oakland (Piedmont doesn't do things like have a shopping district, they come to Oakland for that, and for the libraries). If you are also new to the Piedmont Avenue as entirely within Oakland phenomenon, go meet your neighbors, drink tea in the park with them, plot the coming assault on the enemy city in our midst. [OPL]
Tattoo Storytime, 11:30am, Central Library (Strawberry Creek Watershed). Every tattoo tells a story, and even though most of my stories are variations on "I was 21 and had terrible taste," often these are stories worth hearing. This month the Berkeley Public Library is exhibiting a Tattooer Art Show at Central, with an associated program of events including Tattoo Storytime. Come hear the tattoo artists at Old Crow Tattoo read stories about You Can Probably Guess What. [BPL]
Where Does Your Water Come From?, all afternoon, Local Economy (Claremont Creek Watershed). Swing by any time in the afternoon to learn more about your local watershed (though of course, local watersheds are not where the East Bay's water that comes out of taps comes from — 90% of that is piped in from the Mokelumne River thanks to the Pardee Dam). There are lots of creeks here, culverted and dammed, mostly buried but occasionally singing in daylight. Gary Snyder wrote in 1992 encouraging the organization of governance by watershed, for "the watershed is the first and last nation whose boundaries, though subtle shifting, are unarguable.... For the watershed, cities and dams are ephemeral and of no more account than a boulder that falls in the river or a landslide that temporarily alters the channel. The water will always be there, and it will always find its way down." [luma]
[West Bay Bonus Event the Shortest] Haiku In The Alley, 1pm, Kerouac Alley (North Beach). Haiku in Kerouac Alley! We love the alley. And you know, Kerouac's haiku are damn delightful, so all very apropos here, and of course Snyder got in on the three line action too. The San Francisco Haiku Anthology, Volume Two gathers a whole lot of locals who keep it simple (if you want to hear more abut the collaborative origins of haiku in the renga, start asking—Marthine wants to know if haiku split off from the collaborative form thanks to the exquisite tiny poems by exiled courtiers in the mountains who just had no one else to play the poetry game with, or if there's some other point of schism) [City Lights]
Historic Sites in Joaquin Miller Park, 1:30pm, Joaquin Miller Abbey (Palo Seco Creek Watershed). So THIS GUY. Born with the name Cincinnatus, changed it to Joaquin because he needed to be even more fabulous. Before he settled in Oakland and planted a LOT of eucalyptus, he was part of the state-authorized genocide of far Northern California tribes, but then he also wrote one of the first sympathetic portraits of them in Life Amongst the Modoc. Hang out in the park that was his estate, where redwoods grow and musicals are performed nowadays. [humanitix]
Berkeley Poetry Festival Fundraiser, 2pm, Goat & Donkey Winery (Schoolhouse Creek Watershed). Oh, you thought you could just get away with going to poetry readings for free forever? Of all the people you've decided to mooch off of, you chose a bunch of starving poets? Have you no shame?! Come to this fundraiser for the Berkeley Poetry Festival, you parasitic ass. Take one for the team by enjoying a lovely afternoon of tarot readings, fanciful writing games, and incredible readings by incredible poets like Leticia Hernández-Linares, Natasha Dennerstein, Jennifer Hosekawa, and James Cagney. [Donkey & Goat]
Hemming & Mending Clothes By Hand, 2:30pm, Temescal Branch OPL (Temescal Creek Watershed). Did you miss last week's mending blitz? I patched several pants and sewed up holey crotches in leggings, but things are always wearing and tearing, so take an afternoon to do more fixing because "so long as we elevate convenience above all other values, so long as we refuse to eschew trash, we will live under the selfish, solipsistic cloud of human extinction" (Kennedy, An Ontology of Trash, of course). [OPL]
Author Tea Party with Annie Barrows, 3pm, North Branch (Cordonices Creek Watershed). OK wow, Annie Barrows who wrote Ivy and Bean and more besides is at the library to have cookies, lemonade, and banter with fans. Register your children, but keep yourselves off the list, instruct the Berkeley librarians. [BPL]
Pom Poko, 3:30pm, BAMPFA (Strawberry Creek Watershed). Americans tend to remember this Studio Ghibli film for the scene in which a squad of raccoon dogs brawls with an army of riot cops using their impossibly enormous testicles as weapons. And to be sure, that is an extraordinary scene to witness! And yet this is also a moving and complex satirical drama about the stakes and hard choices of environmental activism, the double-edged sword of modernization in the face of traditional folklore, and the violent forces that underlie suburban sprawl. But please don't mistake this as some sort of embarrassed apology for the scrotal ACAB scene, because let me be clear, that scene fucking rips. [bampfa]
fairy wells, 4pm, Canticle Farm (Peralta Creek Watershed). Sing the river, sing the waterways, sing the creeks and all the flows that are coursing through you. A gathering featuring textile art made by ayo balogun, inspired by the daylighted portion of creek near their home! With music, a potluck, fire, and water as we keep moving. [luma]
[West Bay Bonus Event] D.R.Y. Vol 2 Release Party, 6:30pm, Now Place 此间 (West Bay Chinatown). The Bay Area is a roaring focal point in the history of comics, and the risograph comics anthology magazine D.R.Y. (named after founding collective members Daniel Zhou, Raul Higuera, and Yasmeen Abedifard) is reassuring proof that our reputation is safe for another generation. Come celebrate the launch of Volume 2 (arguably the most important issue of any publication) with standard party fare, including a piñata. The organizers request that you come dressed in blue, yellow or green, presumably to celebrate the pride and heritage of the people of Brazil, Rwanda, Saint Vincent and The Grenadines, and the Solomon Islands. 🇧🇷 🇷🇼 🇻🇨 🇸🇧 [luma]
Barry Lyndon, 6:30pm, BAMPFA (Strawberry Creek Watershed). Get in loser, we're going gold-digging. Some say that Barry Lyndon, the boisterous adaptation of Thackeray's picaresque 1844 novel starring the unreasonably charismatic Ryan O'Neal, is Stanley Kubrick's most underrated film. Letterboxd user "bnanarepublican," on the other hand, says "Damn I thought I was sitting down for a stuffy period piece, not the story of a young money pussy getter." Buckle up! [bampfa]
Lexie Sharabianlou's THE BLUE MOON CAFE & 24-HOUR OCCULT EMPORIUM with Maggie Tokuda-Hall, 7pm, Mrs. Dalloway's (Derby Creek Watershed). Cozy sapphic fantasy novel with a good corgi and bad coffee, written by local Lexie Sharabianlou, who will be in conversation with fellow queer fantasy author Maggie, who is keeping too busy with book events to paint pigeons these days! [eventbrite]
Also: Feed the Hood 38: Shock G Forever in partnership with Digital Underground Family and Friends at East Oakland Collective (Arroyo Viejo Watershed) / A Tribe Called Queer Book Club at Main Oakland Library (San Antonio Creek Watershed) / Congressman Jared Huffman No Prophets: The Fight to Save Democracy from Christian Nationalism, with Peter Coyote at The Finley Community Center (Santa Rosa) / California Writers Club at Rockridge Branch OPL (College Ave) / August Death Cafe at Central Library (Berkeley) / Discuss New Yorker Short Stories Meeting 14 at Alameda Free Library (The Island)
Sunday, August 23
Tiles & Terra Cotta Part 2: Focus on Art Deco, 9:30am, Southwest corner of 17th Street & Telegraph Avenue (Uptown). Nearly fifteen years ago I went on an architectural walking tour around Up/Downtown Oakland, and I felt deeply moved when I learned that the highly stylized blue and silver terra cotta designs on the Oakland Floral Building represent spouting fountains of water. The feverish era of terra cotta building facades was unfortunately brief in Oakland, but it has left us with some of the most memorable features in the city's landscape. This tour will be led by Riley Doty, who is literally director emeritus of the Tile Heritage Association, so you just know it'll be good. [humanitix]
[West Bay Bonus Event] Beyond Baroque, 12 noon, Kerouac Alley (between City Lights and Vesuvio Cafe) (North Beach). From L.A. to the West Bay! Beyond Baroque is a bubbling literary cauldron based in Venice Beach, is boiling over into San Francisco with a great lineup of Mexican and Chicano/a poets from The Big Orange and thereabouts: Rhiannon Cielos Chavez, Genesis Perez, Iván Salinas, & jimmy vega. This is a crew of people uniquely qualified to write mournful abecedarian poetry about freeways, though personally I'll be arriving via BART. [City Lights]
Jazz on Sunday, 4pm, Golden Gate Branch OPL (San Pablo Corridor). The Golden Gate Library is known for three things: it is an unusually old for a city building (constructed in 1918 with Carnegie funding), it circulates one of the largest African American collections in Oakland library system, and it hosts the celebrated Jazz on Sunday music series every summer. This installment is special, because they are welcoming back one of the East Bay's greatest blues, jazz, and soul singers: Rhonda Benin. Benin is perhaps best known as a founding member of the Grammy-winning Cultural Heritage Choir, but her solo act is a mainstay in Oakland as well. [OPL]
