Oakland Review of Books calendar of (not just) literary events, July 21–July 26
The Workshop for Care & Repair is revisiting Dream Farm Commons starting July 24 and you can sign up here to be part of ritual, resistance to capitalism, internal healing, and weird art. At the New Parkway you can craft while watching Dirty Dancing or attend something called a “Dogbotic Short Film Festival” and maybe Boots’s hat will show up in front of you (It definitely will on Sunday July 26th at 5:30 PM when the New Parkway’s showing of I Love Boosters comes with a Boots Riley Q&A after). BIMBO book club is happening at Tamarack along with some parties, and it turns out there are book AND movie clubs happening at Oakland Theatre Project this summer around the theme of freedom, with a movie meeting this week and discussing Sarah Jaffe’s book Work Won’t Love You Back next week. Submit your films over the next week to 2727 for a screening of community film on August 1, and the tenth annual SF Art Book Fair is starting Thursday night and going all weekend in the West Bay, with programming (scroll down down down their site to find it) that includes talks on Methods of Publishing in South Korea, Bookstore as Verb: Publishing, Hosting, and Social Space, the release of Resonances by Ashwini Bhat and much much more by the book-loving art weirdos we all know and love. If you are staying East Bay on Thursday night, swing by the Aloha Club in Fruitvale 4-6pm for the ORB happy hour! —MDS, AB, XL, TC
Tuesday, July 21
Storytime for Caregivers with Darby Saxbe, 10am, Local Economy (Rockridge). Dudes of North Oakland: bro out and talk about your Dad Brain after baby with Darby Saxbe and other nurturing adults. (Also read Father Time by Sarah Hrdy tho) [luma]
Online: River Selby with Caroline Tracey at Womb House Books, 5pm, Womb House's Zoom (The Internet). Wildfire and queerness, salt lakes and queerness, books and queerness, and a feminist bookstore keeping hope alive even on the internet. [eventbrite]
Crooklyn, 5pm, Elmhurst Branch (Deep East). The Summer of Spike Lee Joints continues with this one, "a Spike Lee movie for people who normally dislike Spike Lee movies," as one critic said. [oaklandlibrary]
Bora Lee Reed: Song for Another Home, with Gene Luen Yang, 6pm, Albany Community Center (Greater North Oakland). It's the launch of local author Bora Lee Reed's debut, Song for Another Home! Gene Luen Yang (American Born Chinese) joins the conversation to talk about the historical novel's themes: separation of families and subsequent longings, personal dreams versus duty to family, and the terror and possibility of escape from war in Korea. [Pegasus Books]
Utopia Book Club, No. 3: Everything for Everyone, 6pm, Local Economy (Rockridge). A discussion of a speculative novel in the form of oral histories recorded after another pandemic that kills off a bunch of folks, the civil war, the revolution, and then the communes win and peace reigns. I have so many questions, like why the nuclear states wouldn't have used their nukes to bomb the hell out of rebellious cities. Like who is running the data centers for the dance-party based internet. Like why anyone would write the most boring form of narrative which only took over the internet once they fired all the writers and editors and went with straight quotes instead. [luma]
KISS & TELL LITERARY SALON at Books Inc. Alameda, 6:30pm, Books Inc. Alameda (Once a Peninsula, Always a Peninsula). Two new romances and their authors: Ann Adams (Racing Hearts) on rowers and Taleen Voskuni (Our Ex's Wedding) on bisexual couplings that threaten to scandalize a whole lot of Armenians. You know the wonderful thing about being a woman coxing eight men? The ratio. Even better though: scandalizing a community and ruining an ex's marriage, or so Voskuni might say. [eventbrite]
[West Bay Bonus Event] Dad Brain: The New Science of Fatherhood and How It Shapes Men's Lives, 7pm, KALW Public Media (FiDi). Slide by KALW on your way back from work to dip into Darby Saxbe's second event of the day in the Bay and think about dad brain with your dad brains. We'll get together then, you know we'll have a good time then. [eventbrite]
Also: Literally How: Using Tools at North Branch (Berkeley) / Banned Book Club: To Kill a Mockingbird at San Francisco Public Library, Bernal Heights (Civic Center)
Wednesday, July 22
[West Bay Bonus Event] SFAI Memory Collection: Alumni-Run Art Spaces, 6pm, Et al. Gallery (The Mission). SFAI alums Aaron Harbour, co-founder of Et al. Gallery in San Francisco, and guests Bob Linder (Queen's Nails, CAPITAL), Conrad Meyers (Aggregate Space), Jordan Stein (Will Brown, Cushion Works), and Kathleen Quillian (Shapeshifters Cinema) talk about making places for artists to make, show, be art and what the legacy of art schools is in the Bay. [insta]
QT Book Club BIPOC, 6:30pm, Nomadic Bookshop (Uptown). Talk about Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte. A very good reader of my acquaintance says the people who don't like this novel are boring and full of shit. Can't wait to love it and prove I am scintillating and that my colon is clean. [Nomadic Bookshop]
Teresa the Thief, 7pm, BAMPFA (Downtown Berkeley). The directorial debut of Carlo Di Palma, better known as a cinematographer for the likes of Antonioni and Bertolucci. It’s a comedy, and it’s got Monica Vitti in it, so there you go. [BAMPFA]
[West Bay Bonus Event] “When the Skeleton Does Not Stand” with Kristen Cosby, 7:30pm, The Marsh San Francisco Mainstage (The Mission). Kristen Cosby is a fantastic local writer who grew up mostly on a sailboat, which will do things to a person (my best friend spent formative years sailing in the Mediterranean and that definitely made her the weird woman I have known and loved for decades). Hear the stories that came with surviving not only the boat but everything after. [The Marsh]
Also: Moth Night with Damon Tighe at Joaquin Miller Park (The Hills) / STACIE GREY: SHE HAD ENOUGH at Books Inc. Alameda (The Island) / The ACOTAR Countdown Book Club: Book 3 at Book Society (College Ave) / Our Knives Will Save Us at Clio’s Books (Grand Lake)
Thursday, July 23
Caldecott Tunnel Virtual Tour & Panel Discussion, 12 noon, America (Online). The California Preservation Foundation is doing this online program exploring the history, design, and engineering of the Caldecott Tunnel, which is weird because we already did that. Anyway, could be cool! A video tour inside the tunnel, plus a moderated panel discussion. [californiapreservation.org]
The Many Voices of Cinderella, 3pm, Claremont Branch (Berkeley). Opera pill your child, it can only end well. [BPL]
ORB Happy Hour, 4pm, The Aloha Club (Fruitvale). We bring you free books, you bring your friends who aren't yet subscribers and we change that by throwing books at them until they admit to their cowardice and shame and then give us all their money. ORB is a protection racket (and occasional dating service). [ORB]
Dragon Days, 4pm, Tarea Hall Pittman South Branch (Berkeley). Some of us have children whose only real question about a novel you suggest they read is: is there a dragon in it. This is for them. [BPL]
Poet's Bookshelf, 5pm, Nomadic Bookshop (Uptown). Read Incendiary Art by Patricia Smith and talk about it. I am very into this poem of hers full of anaphora and the memories of Black men and women who have made art, who have been killed, who have survived. [insta]
1850-1882: A Chinese American Origin Story—A Book Talk with Veronica Li, 5pm, Oakland Asian Cultural Center (Chinatown). Hong Kong-born Veronica Li, author of the new historical novel 1882: A Gold Mountain Odyssey talks with Sue Lee about Chinese American history, political advocacy, the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, and the Icelandic word for stupid being heimskur (homebody). OK that last part is slight speculation based on the author having co-written her Icelandic husband's memoir but it feels relevant to a conversation about migration. [OACC]
[West Bay Bonus Event] SF Art Book Fair, 6pm, Minnesota Street Project (Dogpatch). Tenth year of people getting together to show off paper held together in mysterious ways and which ask, what is book? Opening night with music and food, then keep coming back all weekend long for programming, zines, editions, typography. Is it ephemera or is it for the archive? Buy a bunch of beautiful bound objects and decide later. [insta]
The Red Sacrament: Vampires and The Paris Commune, 6pm, Spire. The Church (West Oakland). The Red Sacrament is historical gothic vampire horror by Sara Hinkley set in the Paris Commune, which did not last but maybe will come back, like a vampire? Is that how the metaphor works? She will be in conversation with feminist horror scholar Johanna Isaacson and will talk about vampires as metaphors for extraction — of labor, emotions, and sometimes literally blood if you’re Bryan Johnson. [insta]
[West Bay Bonus Event] Greg Sarris in conversation with Oscar Villalon, 6:30pm, Kerouac Alley (North Beach). In Greg Sarris's new historical novel The Last Human Bear, about a Pomo woman who shapeshifts between human and animal worlds and between Native and white worlds, the master storyteller returns to his roots as a novelist after more than a quarter century, most of which has been spent as Chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria. Praised by Dave Eggers, Rebecca Solnit, and Amazon (take it where you can get it), reviewed in the Washington Post, the LA Times, and The Believer among others, this is a major work, but also doesn't mean Heyday will be publishing any other fiction anytime soon by anyone else, so the editors thank you for keeping your novel manuscript to yourself. [City Lights]
Colleen Morton Busch's SMOLDER, 7pm, Mrs. Dalloway's Bookstore (College Ave). Local Zen poet shares her latest collection of poems inspired by caretaking for a spouse with a chronic illness, and the kinds of fires that keep burning inside of us as we age in this world. [Mrs D's]
SOLD OUT Eyes Wide Shut, 7pm, BAMPFA (Downtown Berkeley). They got the imported uncensored archival print and everyone wants to see THAT so it's sold out sorry. Go see The Shining instead. [BAMPFA]
Also: Disability Inclusion in Tech: Strategies for a new Digital Accessibility Ethics at Local Economy (Rockridge) / Meet the Authors: Marisa Solis and Elizabeth Dougherty - The Complete Expert-to-Author Guide at Oakland Main Library (The Lake-ish) / BOOK OF LIGHT POETRY SERIES READING: Lenore Myers, Carolyn Miller, and Dane Cervine at Books Inc. (Alameda) / Natasha Benjamin & David Helvarg on Kelp Forests at Faction Brewing (Alameda the Temporary Island) / How to Write for Current: A Workshop Series at 1610 Harrison St (Downtown) / Grandma Joy and Me at Tally Ho Books (Piedmont the Avenue not the Ethnic Enclave)
Friday, July 24
Poetry! 6pm, Tamarack (Downtown). Readers are: Oakland’s Jamie Townsend (who is queering both genre and gender and we’re so glad they’re here), Claire Marie Stancek (co-founded Nion Editions with Jane Gregory and the late Lyn Hejinian, a powerhouse writer who makes poems that feel like helixes and twine), and Gabrielle Daniels who remembers New Narrative and has written a lot since, too. This is a rocking line up: Tamarack is hitting homers and kicking field goals and whatever Argentina was doing in the World Cup. [Poetry in the Bay]
The Imprisoned Voice, 6:30pm, Clio’s Books (The Lake). Nora Igova is doing very ORBy work but within the Central California Women's Facility. She calls in to speak about the work of literary journalism while incarcerated and the importance of remembering that prisons exist to societally assert barriers between people deemed good and bad, even though we're all capable of harm and of healing and the work of repair for all parties requires reconnection, not shunning. [eventbrite]
Mississippi Mermaid, 7pm, BAMPFA (Downtown Berkeley). Jean-Paul Belmondo is a tobacco planter who sends for a mail-order bride and gets Catherine Deneuve instead. Noirish, full of film references and doomed romance, this is Truffaut in one of his dark moods. His daughter Laura will be on hand to discuss. [BAMPFA]
Also: Lunchtime Jazz Concert at Main Library at Main Library (The Lake-ish) / Drawing with Alan Leon at Oakland Main Library (The Lake-ish) / Friday Nights with NOODLES at OMCA (The Lake) / road trip – a musical journey inspired by the california coast at 2727 California (Berkeley)
Saturday, July 25
Glenview Open Edible Garden Day, 10am, Your Neighbors' Back Yards (Glenview). Learn which neighbors to recruit for the communes by scoping out their gardens and befriending them before disaster strikes. Offer to take their extra zucchini if you want to cement the bond. [Glenview Open Gardens]
Montclair Village Tour, 10am, Montclair Branch Library (Hills Oakland). What even is going on in Montclair? What IS Montclair? So much of Oakland is hills, but do those hills want to be part of Oakland? Are they? I don't know, but go "Explore the history and architecture of Montclair Village, a vibrant hill community...learn about Montclair's social, residential, and commercial development. Montclair's distinctive buildings...on a gently sloping walk with some unpaved areas" and report back. [humanitix.com]
30th Anniversary Summer Sausal Creek Fair, 11am, Dimond Park (Sausal Creek Watershed). Celebrate thirty years of creek restoration with a fair for all the humans who are part of the creek's world. And there will be a "live raptor presentation" so if you like hawks, come closer. Also, cornhole, face painting, and BYOT-shirt block printing. [Sausal Creek]
American 250 Movie Screening, 12 noon, African American Museum and Library at Oakland (Downtown). Documentaries on Tuskegee airmen and the role of Black Americans in WWII in planes, ships, and D-Day. Stay patriotic, Oakland. [OPL]
Noname Book Club, 1pm, 81st Avenue Branch OPL (Deep East). "Noname Book Club is a Black-owned worker cooperative connecting community members both inside and outside carceral facilities with radical books. Each month, we uplift two books written by Black, indigenous, and other people of color. We believe building community through political education is crucial for our liberation." I stopped by the really awesome 81st Ave branch because it's the only other library open on Sunday besides Oakland Main and they had the sign up indicating this club was still meeting monthly but maybe give them a call to check and to find out what the book is this month because there's no specific info online. [OPL]
Haiku and other Japanese poetic forms, 2pm, Claremont Branch BPL (Fancy Berkeley). Short poems! But this time in historical context! I have always liked a tanka but am also getting more into rengas in the pest few years. Then there's the haibun! So many different ways to syllable. [BPL]
Octavia’s Legacy: Imagining Futures She Made Possible, 2pm, Tarea Hall Pittman South Branch (Berkeley). Aunt Lute Books and Sistah Scifi bring together a panel on California writer Octavia Butler's legacy of possible futures. Black writers of queer joy, queer fantasy, poetry, and song Be Steadwell, Eboni Dunbar, BlackDuane Horton, and Imani Sims will reflect on Octavia Butler as an ancestor of new forms of storytelling within sci-fi and fantasy. [BPL]
The Story of Yanagawa Waterways, 3pm, BAMPFA (Downtown Berkeley). A cultural and environmental history of place, focused on the canals that have turned a marshland in Japan into a city. By the same director that brought you Grave of the Fireflies, but with cameras instead of cartoons. [BAMPFA]
Amanda Nadelberg and Cole Swensen, 4pm, Orinda Community Church (Hot Side of the Hills). There’s a reading series every second Sunday at a church in Orinda organized by a poet: having been to far too many churches in Orinda during stays with my evangelical grandparents over there in the heat last century, I could use a new set of associations with those institutions, and these two poets are a great place to start. Amanda’s micropoems and collage-y lyrics are written in Oakland and published by The Song Cave, and Cole Swensen is a translator, poet, and giant of contemporary American poetry (I like these especially) who came from the Bay Area and is coming back, piece by piece. [Amanda telling me about this in Temescal Alley at the Book Festival on Saturday]
[SOLD OUT] Is there a whistle big enough for Trump?, 5pm, Clio’s Books (The Lake). The author of Into the Wood Chipper: A Whistleblower’s Account of How the Trump Administration Shredded USAID will be at Clio's to talk to anyone who got a ticket before now, when there still were some. Basically: Nicholas Enrich was USAID’s lead official for global health, Elon Musk DOGEd him and the agency, and Enrich released a set of whistleblowing memos. [eventbrite]
Shaun Ossei-Owusu – Law on Trial, 6pm, Marcus Books (Longfellow). Author Shaun Ossei-Owusu , a Bronx child of immigrants now professor of law at U Penn, discusses the practice of law and how legal education perpetuates inequality by creating lawyers who treat the law as a game to be won, not as a system to ensure fair treatment of all. In conversation with Civil Rights Attorney John Burris. [eventbrite]
I Know That You Know That I Know, 6:30pm, BAMPFA (Downtown Berkeley). Alberto Sordi’s 1982 comedy, with Monica Vitti, about which we can tell you nothing except that Sordi and Vitti are married, and there’s some extremely Italian-sounding business with a detective following the wrong person. [BAMPFA]
Also: California Writers Club at Rockridge Branch (College Ave) / Book Launch: The Mother/Daughter Papers by Gail Rudd Entrekin with Leah Korican at The Orchard Galleries on 25th (Uptown) / International Zine Month Social at 2727 California Street (Berkeley)
Sunday, July 26
Tiles & Terra Cotta Part 1: Focus on Beaux Arts, 9:30am, Howden Building (Downtown). Set your earthen hearts ablaze on this architectural walking tour, visiting surviving examples of Oakland's early twentieth century buildings clad in beautiful Beau Arts-inspired terra cotta. This is seemingly only the first in a series of Oakland Heritage Alliance tours on architectural ceramics, which is extremely exciting because elaborate stonewear facades are one of my favorite parts of the Town's built landscape. The tour is led by Riley Doty, who I suspect knows what he's talking about because he is himself a seasoned tileworker and the former director of the Tile Heritage Foundation. Meet at the gorgeous Howden Building and be on time, early birds. [humanitix]
[West Bay Bonus Event] Maxine Chernoff & Friends, 1pm, Kerouac Alley (North Beach). North Bay poet and former editor of the wildly important poetry journal New American Writing hangs out in the alley like all good poets do, and talks about her new book, full of poems on the work of daily attention. Joined by poets Paul Hoover, Claudia Keelan, Roxi Power Hamilton, and Cole Swensen who will fill your cup with poems as you empty it of beer. [City Lights]
Bushwick Book Club Oakland: Songs inspired by Undrowned, 2pm, Peralta Hacienda Historical Park (Peralta Hacienda). The name "Bushwick Book Club" is technically accurate but a little misleading for the uninitiated; rather than a traditional book discussion, they organize concerts with a lineup of ten local musicians who perform original and brand-new songs about a book. This show's textual inspiration is the extremely amazing Alexis Pauline Gumb's "Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals," so make sure to pick up a copy (and rewatch Star Trek: The Voyage Home) before you head over to Peralta Hacienda. [Bushwick Book Club Oakland]
West Bay Bonus Event: Early Draft Reading of Howie Klein's Memwah, 2pm, Bird & Beckett (Glen Park). Howie Klein is celebrated among Bay Area punks as a committed anti-censorship activist and a host on the world's first regular punk radio show in the late 70s on KSAN, but he was also a serious writer. Although he passed away last year, his writing is in fresh ink again thanks to the editorial work of local poet and fellow music writer Denise Sullivan. Come hear an early draft of the forthcoming collection of Klein's writing, as read aloud by his friends. [DeniseSullilvan.org]
Disability Visibility Book Club, 2pm, Hipline (Grand Lake). If you liked watching a movie at a dance studio, try talking about a book there — it'll blow your mind. Join the discussion of Disability Visibility, the now-classic anthology edited by the late activist and oral historian Alice Wong. Snacks are encouraged. [insta]
West Fest, 3pm, 7th West (West Oakland). West Oakland Matters' third annual West Fest offers a diverse smörgåsbord of arts and advocacy, including live DJs, a hula performance from Ko Makou Ohana Aloha, and interviews with local luminaries by Janice Edwards of NBC's "Bay Area Vista." [West Oakland Matters]
Punk Gongfucha, 3pm, Two Two (Grand Lake). Gongfucha literally means "making tea with skill" (full disclosure: I had to check wikipedia), but this workshop is meant to lower the stakes a bit. Interdisciplinary artist, PhD candidate at Stanford (for which she will be begrudgingly forgiven), and self-described "historian of the future" Kelsey Chen will introduce attendees to techniques for brewing both traditional and "blasphemy" teas. "Play-in-dirty-get-messy whimsy-fairies" are explicitly welcome according to the event listing; finally! [Two Two]
Winslow House Project Open House, 3pm, Winslow House Project (Vallejo). Come see an open house with the July artist fellows at the grand and mysterious Winslow House Project, who have organized a raft of "Side Quests" for us to explore. After peeking at the latest WHP newsletter, I'd say you can probably expect an afternoon filled with poetry (including some from current Vallejo poet laureate Erik Soto), video installations, painting, and sculpture. [insta]
Heal the Hill!, 3pm, Canyon Trail Park (El Cerrito). Megan Steffen has gotten so far back into local politics that now she's going IN to local politics! We sort of feel like maybe we at ORB are partially responsible for enabling this act of self harm by publishing her piece on the Library Tax? Anyway, support the people who love libraries and also seismic safety and also aren't Wally. No screen, snacks, and chatting with El Cerrito neighbors. [bluesky]
The Shining, 3pm, BAMPFA (Downtown Berkeley). Look, this is Kubrick and you know this movie, and if you don't, well, "how bad can writers block get?" Pretty fucking bad, turns out. [BAMPFA]
"Can I Get a Witness?" Poetry Open Mic, 5pm, 236 2nd Street (Jack London). What distinguishes this "poetry witnessing event" from the average open mic is that the audience discusses every single poem after each reading, so pay attention! The event listing promises that you will "get fed in more ways than one," which sounds a little ominous (or at least ominously horny), but it probably just means that food is provided. [insta]
Bottoms directed by Emma Seligman paired with The Fre by Taylor Mac, 5 pm, Oakland Theatre Project (Downtown). A satirical movie about popularity, kink, cheerleaders, and queer brawling, paired with “a queer children’s play about loving after bullying, set in a ball pit” — this performance of The Fre is a resuscitation after the play’s debut was derailed by COVID and lockdowns. The playwright says and I nod sympathetically, “It was bad timing to stage a children's play in a ball-pit at the start of pandemic. Gyrrrrl.” [OTP]
When The Smoke Comes Writing Workshop, 6pm, Kinfolx (Downtown). When the Smoke Comes isn't the only politically-inflected writing workshop in the East Bay, but it might have the best name among its peers. This workshop is completely free and doesn't require any prior writing experience. And the youth are leading it. [insta]
[West Bay Bonus Event] Velvet Underground Unbound: An Evening of Discussion and Music, 6:30pm, The Make Out Room (The Mission). It isn't on Sunday Morning, but close enough. Richie Unterberger is one of our most prolific historians of popular music in the 60s and 70s, and his new book on The Velvet Underground promises to be a fascinating read whether you're the kind of fan who hates Lou Reed because of his mistreatment of the trans women in his life or the kind of fan who is just mad about Reed's notorious collaboration with Metallica. Unterberger will be introduced by the Rock n' Roll Book Club of SF and met in conversation with Peter Maravelis of City Lights Books. BYOB (Bring your own banana). [City Lights]
Le corbeau, 7pm, BAMPFA (Downtown Berkeley). A Clouzot film that wikipedia tells me is about "a provincial French town where a number of citizens begin receiving anonymous letters containing libelous information, particularly targeting a doctor accused of providing abortions. The mystery surrounding the letters begins to tear apart the social fabric of the community" and I'm sold. [BAMPFA]
Also: Artifacts from a Matriarchal Future at Local Economy (Rockridge) / Cyanotype Animation with Lije at BAMPFA (Downtown Berkeley)
