Oakland Review of Books calendar of (not just) literary events, March 17 - March 22
The heat dome has landed with a thump, or with whatever sound climate whiplash makes. Good week for the movies, or your favorite beach. Maybe they have AC where there’s live theatre happening, take your chances with the (gender reversed) Odd Couple in San Leandro and the Irish busker rom-dram Once at the Berkeley Playhouse. The Fever is still happening and you’ll need to sweat it out, and at the Marsh in Berkeley you’ve got a one woman play, Looking For Justice (In All the Wrong Places), give it a go. Ooh fun, there’s even a musical, Sondheim’s Assassins, at the Oakland Theatre Project! The Oakland Alameda water shuttle is back in action starting Friday, so catch some bay breeze to cool down. But then hop right back onto land, because all the East Bay nurseries are hosting talks on Saturday about how to grow your garden into a habitat. Wednesday is weirdly booked up to the hilt, and all the geographers have landed in the West Bay so we’re going to have to count on ORB readers to think about place while they’re busy. This place, specifically, dusted in oak pollen and drying toward gold. -MS, AB
Tuesday, March 17
Storytime for Caregivers, with Courtney Martin, 10am, Local Economy (Rockridge). Anyone with toddlers and old parents knows that the distinctions sometimes blur. This month's "Storytime for Caregivers" is with Courtney Martin, author of Learning in Public and The Examined Family, who will talk about caring for both kids and a parent with dementia. [Local Economy]
Learn About Library Work Life, 4:30pm, North Branch BPL (North Berkeley). A life literacy lesson for young and new adults curious about what it might be like to work at a library. Sorry to break it to all the young nerds, but you don't get to read books all day. To find out more, show up. If you have aged out, you can pre-order Dorothy Lazard's forthcoming book abut her life's work as a librarian: Behind the Desk at the Main! [BPL]
SOLD OUT Crystal Wahpepah with Tommy Orange, 6pm, Intertribal Friendship House (Clinton Park). The launch of Crystal Wahpepah's new cookbook A Feather and A Fork – ok, we're already into it (have you been to Wahpepah's Kitchen?!) – but also in conversation with Tommy Orange! Also food, community, culture, and connection. And also Tommy Orange! If you got a ticket to the sold out event, come sit by Marthine, who will be attending alongside her colleagues from News from Native California, and please help her entertain her children. [Lorena Rivera]
Brian Trapp's Range of Motion, with Tomas Moniz, 6:30pm, Pegasus Books (Downtown Berkeley). Novelist and disability studies scholar Brian Trapp has written a novel, Range of Motion, based on his life as the twin brother of someone with severe cerebral palsy. A funny, emotional, coming of age story that digs deep into caregiving too. In conversation with East Bay novelist Tomas Moniz! [Pegasus Books]
Atria: A Poetics of Absence, 7pm, Clio’s Books (The Lake). Poets D.S. Waldman and David Gorin in conversation. One of the things I loved about working at Small Press Distribution was looking at the blurbs on the back of hundreds of poetry books, which are always just poems of their own and tell you nothing useful about the books, but what else should one expect of poets, plus, really, on any back cover, blurbs are mostly there for the names. In any case, Waldman's blurbers say his new collection Atria is where "the smudge is revealed to be not paint, but turpentine," is "suspended like a Calder mobile," is "a minor geography made of language, suggestion, and absence," with poems that "move and change with light," and it "sometimes orbits gently." [eventbrite]
[West Bay Bonus Event] Anne Lamott and Neal Allen. Good Writing: 36 Ways to Improve Your Sentences, 7pm, Curran Theatre (Union Square). North Bay inspirational writing couple fills up an auditorium with a book of writing advice glazed with spirituality. [Book Passage]
Mālama Mākua and demilitarization in Hawai’i, 7:30pm, La Peña Cultural Center (Berkeley part of Oakland / Oakland part of Berkeley). Mikey Inouye's film, part of their monthly film series on liberation, decolonization, and political education. Hear more about it here. And I'm a simple man, but I get very happy when I hear people pronounce the ’ in Hawai’i, and talk about demilitarization. [La Peña Cultural Center]
Also: Kato - Dreams of Dark Earth at Grand Lake Theatre (Grand Lake) / Community Meeting with DOT for Safer Streets: Bancroft Ave & Fremont Way at Melrose Public Library (Melrose) / Lakeview Branch Book Club Discusses The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes at Lakeview Branch (The Lake)
Wednesday, March 18
Wednesday Walk: McCosker to Huckleberry, 9:30am, Sibley Volcanic Regional Park (The REAL Hills). Use this hike (bring lots of water and a hat) as an excuse to head into Canyon (listen to the East Bay Yesterday story about the town if you don't know it yet!) and then walk up the brand new Pacific Pea Trail to Huckleberry Preserve through San Leandro Canyon. EBRPD warns, "Expect wildflowers." [East Bay Regional Park District]
Berkeley History Room Open Hours, 10am, Central Library (Berkeley). Become a local history buff, Berkeley-style, all day! [BPL]
Book Launch: Near Birth by Andrea Ford, noon, Wallace Center for Maternal, Child, and Adolescent Health (Cal). Andrea Ford is back in town to share her new book based on anthropological research into birthing practices and culture in the Bay Area, Near Birth: Contested Values and the Work of Doulas. Chapter one is titled "Progress: California as Both Utopia and Dystopia," so I am all ears. Kelly Knight (UCSF) will join Andrea in conversation. [eventbrite]
How to Get a City of Oakland Job, 1pm, The Internet (Oakland's Civil Service). There's a lot of people looking for work, and the city of Oakland wants to hire some. Now, knowing budget woes, budget shortfalls, etc, who knows how long it'll last but hey start here and then infiltrate Piedmont. [OPL]
Carolina Ixta in the Strong Women for These Times Speaker Series, 1pm, YWCA (Berkeley). Oakland writer Carolina Ixta has published her second YA novel, Few Blue Skies, and will be talking about intersections of racism, colorism, sexuality, and teen romance. THREE starred reviews from the trades, and it gets described as "dazzlingly lyrical." Oakland is busting out with talent every which way. [google docs RSVP]
Teen Zine Club: Astrology, 3pm, Main Library TeenZone (The Lake-ish). The teens are zine-ing today. Everyone around me keeps asking what my sign is and something about moons and risings, so the astrology theme this month is in the zeitgeist. The library is on point with why paper and staples are back: "No rules, no filters, no algorithm – just pure pre-internet vibes, made by you because you love what you love." [OPL]
The Postman, 3:30pm, BAMPFA (Berkeley). Pauline reviewed Woyzeck when it came to Oakland, as opera; here we have the late Iranian filmmaker Dariush Mehrjui’s version of Georg Büchner’s… whatever Woyzeck is. This is the Iranian New Wave, and this, Mehrjui’s film after The Cow, is one of the newest parts of it. [BAMPFA]
The Chaplain and the Doctor, 4pm, Grand Lake Theatre (Grand Lake). Bringing together the body and soul in Oakland's public Highland Hospital, Chaplain Betty Clark and Doctor Jessica Zitter address patient needs and systemic bias that discriminates against Black Oakland residents. [GLT]
“The Voices of Strangers and the Foreigner’s Home” a lecture by Meg Arenberg , 5pm, Wheeler Hall (Cal). Meg Arenberg, scholar of African literary and culture and Kiswahili translator, speaks about Toni Morrison and Zanzibari poet Mohammed Khelef Ghassani, specifically on the writers' concepts of home and the stranger, and what having a translational mindset can do to trouble that moment at the threshold between. [UCB]
Lawrence Scarpa: The Power of Beauty: Why it Matters , 6pm, Bauer Wurster Hall (Cal). Architect Lawrence Scarpa thinks about beauty as happiness, as emotional memory, and as an expression of moral good. All seismically sound principles. [UCB]
Budget Justice, 6pm, Local Economy (Rockridge). Can municipal finances be democratized? Can collective decision-making happen through participatory budgeting? Ask professor and poet Celina Su about Porto Alegre, Barcelona, and New York, and maybe we'll even talk about Oakland's budget. In conversation with Mary Austin Speaker, poet and creative director of Milkweed Editions. (Also, say hi to Tommy at the door, tell him ORB sent you when he checks you in.) [Local Economy]
Berkeley Poetry Festival Open Mic, 6:30pm, Pegasus Books (Berkeley). Berkeley Poetry Festival hosts an open mic emcee'd by Nazelah Jamison, so sign up ahead of time! Featured readers include Oakland poets Darius Simpson and Wendy S. Thompson. Theme: poetry that changes the world. Per a really good talk over coffee with Gabriel Cortez, what if a poem/performance refuses to offer catharsis but instead leaves you unnerved, unsettled, uncomfortable, uneasy in the throes of a pull to do something in the world. Language can compel as well as connect. [Google Doc]
[West Bay Bonus Event] Poolside Poets, 6:30pm, Saint Joseph's Arts Foundation (SoMa). Decentered Arts hosts a night of poetry, music, dance, and the debut of the Forbidden Words Quilt Project -- come re-hallow the walls of the desanctified church with the community that art makes. Unlike most poetry readings, this one has a dress code: Forbidden Fruit. [insta]
Shelley Sella, Beyond Limits: Stories of Third Trimester Abortion Care, 6:30pm, Rockridge Branch OPL (The Neighborhood Formerly Known as Shafter). Come hear stories of the reality of the lives of her patients from a doctor who was the first woman OBGYN to provide third trimester abortion care -- her book pulls on decades of meeting women where they needed her most. [OPL]
Oakland Privacy: Fighting Against the Surveillance State, 6:30pm, Location upon RSVP (Oakland, Privately). Join in the anti-surveillance movement, there's still plenty of time, even if you missed the Flock postering bike ride. [Oakland Privacy]
Berkeley Book Chat with Sarah Gold McBride, 7pm, Geballe Room (Cal). Hair, hair, long beautiful hair! Muttonchops and mustaches, sideburns and side parts – all subject to the scrutiny of historian Sarah Gold McBride in her book about 19th century hairdos, Whiskerology. McBride is in conversation with Cal historian David Henkin who wrote the history of the week, that weird formation that for some reason includes Monday. [Townsend Center for the Humanities ]
Life After, 7pm, BAMPFA (Berkeley). In 1986, Elizabeth Bouvia sued the hospital in which she was a patient to be legally allowed to starve herself to death without medical intervention, but lost. After that, she vanished. Reid Davenport looks for what happened to her, and to all those she represents. [BAMPFA]
Also: Old Guard “Third Wednesday” Gathering: ”Can California Lead?- An Analysis of the Upcoming Primary and General Elections” at La Peña Cultural Center (Berkeley part of Oakland/Oakland part of Berkeley) / The Bike Fix at Martin Luther King Jr. Branch (Hegenberger/Coliseum) / Photo Saloon's Show & Tell at Untitled Vol. 2 (Temescal Alley) / Black Authors Book Club Reads I, Medusa by Ayana Gray at West Oakland Branch OPL (West Oakland) / Dimond Book Club Discusses Orbital by Samantha Harvey at Dimond Branch OPL (Dimond) / New Book Panel: “Forgetting to Remember Cultural Memory, Intertextuality, and Scribal Agency in the Hebrew Bible” (Jenna Kemp) at Dwinelle Hall (Cal) / The Regional and the Local: Comparative Agricultural Landscapes and Knowledge Across Two Zapotec Communities in La Sierra Norte at Archaeological Research Facility (Cal) / QTBIPOC Book Club reads Hijab Butch Blues by Lamya H., facilitated by Alana Oktay at Nomadic Bookshop (Uptown)
Thursday, March 19
Radical History of Alcatraz Walking Tour, 9:20am, Alcatraz Island (The ACTUAL Bay). Left in the Bay is taking a ferry to Alcatraz to tell the history of colonization and peoples struggles on the rock, how the island's ecology was re-shaped by the prison. RSVP by Tuesday (today!) to reserve your spot. It's a good thing you always open your calendar as soon as it gets to your inbox. [insta]
Beyond Bias, 5:30pm, North Gate Hall (Cal). A.J. Bauer speaks on the topics of his new book Making the Liberal Media: How Conservatives Built a Movement Against the Press with scholars from the Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies and the Journalism school. Instead of accepting the conservative claims of liberal bias of the news as accurate, Bauer points out that the right wing built their movement around this claim of bias, starting in the mid-20th century. [UCB]
[West Bay Bonus Event] Carol Becker’s “A Time of Radical Imagining: California 1968-1978”, 6pm, Wattis Gallery (Dogpatch). Becker's new book is "partly memoir, partly sociology, partly history, and partly imaginings" centered on her time as a grad student at UCSD when she lived way the hell off the grid and supported organizing agricultural workers. Stay for the opening of the "8 Hours For What You Will" show. And if you have some spare time, read the “Labor” chapter in Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition, specifically section 17 on the distinction between work and labor, and get there early for a discussion. This is what art schools are for, dammit. [Wattis Institute]
Culture Makers: Keeping Oakland’s literary scene strong, 6pm, The New Parkway (Uptown). Listen in on local romance author Jasmine Guillory and YA novelist Carolina Ixta, and Nomadic Bookshop founder and Bay Area Book Festival director J.K. Fowler in conversation with Oaklandside culture reporter Azucena Rasilla. With poems by Myra Estrada. Come hear about community, place, identity, and the craft and process of making stories. [The Oaklandside]
Witness Journaling: A Gift to the Future, 6pm, Local Economy (Used to be Shafter). The word journal and the word diary both just mean day. Write these days down in order to help people in the future know what this was like. Guided by Diana Ruta Lempel. [Luma]
[West Bay Bonus Event] Heartbreak & Other Geographies: In Celebration of Katherine McKittrick, 6pm, MoAD (SoMa). Celebrate the publication of Heartbreak and Other Geographies, collected writings by black feminist scholar Katherine McKittrick edited by Brittany Meché and Camilla Hawthorne. McKittrick, Meché, and Hawthorne in discussion about the essays, which particularly explore placemaking through literature and culture in the Black diaspora. [MoAD]
Coup 53, 6pm, Berkeley City College (Downtown Berkeley). My other motto besides "go to the geographers' parties" (AAG landed in the West Bay, so there's lots of those around the Bay this week) is Always Historicize. Watch the documentary that tells the story of when a certain English-speaking North American country and its former colonial master for some reason overthrew the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran in 1953, which definitely didn't set anything in motion relevant to today. [Indybay]
Liberation Open Mic Night, 6pm, The Long Haul (Berkeley). Creative work that speaks to liberation. Read your own piece or bring a poem by a Palestinian creative. Songs and more also welcome. [UCB]
Poetry Circle, 6pm, Claremont Branch (Berkeley). Missed the alley poetry of a couple weeks past? Come to the leafy avenues of Claremont and share poetry of all kinds, or come to listen. [BPL]
[West Bay Bonus Event] Professor Ignacio Navarrete to present a lecture at the San Francisco Ballet, 6:30pm, War Memorial Opera House (Civic Center). I will leave you with the official description of this event, because it is a beautiful gem I encourage everyone to enjoy, and advance congrats to Prof Navarrete for pulling this off. I hope he learns how to do a pirouette."Professor Ignacio Navarrete will present a pre-performance lecture at the San Francisco Ballet on the opening night of the performances of the three-act 'Don Quixote' ballet. Coincidentally, the students in his Spanish 111A class on Don Quixote were already scheduled to attend that performance. Navarrete concedes that he doesn’t know very much about ballet but counts on his familiarity with Cervantes’s novel to be his center of attention. 'I must have read Don Quixote over twenty times in the last fifty years,' he says." [UC B]
Earth Mama, 6:30pm, Oakstop (Uptown). A single Bay Area mom, pregnant with her 3rd child, fights to reclaim her family, trying to be the "fit mother" according to a form and bureaucracy. The 2023 feature from filmmaker Savanah Leaf – who won a bafta for outstanding debut – released at Sundance, and got picked up by A24. Reminds me of when I read The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan, sold as a dystopian novel – I was like, but this is just real life for so, so many mothers, and thanks be there's East Bay Family Defenders to help. [Sarah Webster Fabio Center for Social Justice]
[West Bay Bonus Event] Queer Birders Bay Area presents "In the Shadow of the Bridge", 7pm, Fabulosa Books (The Castro). Celebrate birds of the Bay Area with East Bay author Hannah Hindley and West Bay photographer Dick Evans. Connect with birders of all feathers, but especially the rainbow ones. [Fabulosa Books]
Decoding the Tech Vibe Shift, 7pm, First Unitarian Universalist Church & Center (West Bay). "A Night of Left-Wing Tech Criticism" with Jathan Sadowski and Edward Ongweso Jr. of This Machine Kills, in conversation with Wendy Liu and Jimmy Wu of Bay Area Current. (Spoiler: Capitalism sings, "Hi, I'm the problem, it's me"). [Bay Area Current]
Brenda Navarro's Eating Ashes, 7pm, Mrs. Dalloway's Bookstore (Elmwood). Spanish writer Brenda Navarro in conversation with her translator Megan McDowell about her darkly humorous novel which traverses between Mexico and Spain, the present and the past, between mourning a brother and remembering him. [Mrs. D's]
Consensus and Conflict in the Women’s Studies Movement Archive, 7pm, The Bancroft Library (Cal). Think with some feminist archivists about what we do today with our inheritance of Second Wave Feminism's emphasis on women's separatism to escape patriarchy when gender divisions are dissolving but also anything that says women or gender got DOGEd. Read more about this history in Public Books. [The Bancroft Library]
Also: When Repair Isn’t Enough: Architecture and the Right to Heal at Townsend Center for the Humanities (Cal) / Department of African American Studies Open Mic Night! at Social Sciences Building (Cal) / “The Voice of No-Labor: Fantasy, Ideology, and Escapism in Keats’ ‘Ode to a Nightingale’,” a lecture by Orrin Wang at Wheeler Hall (Cal) / Jason Buchholz: The Cartographer of Sands at Books Inc. (Alameda) / Return of Ancient Epic: The David Story at Clio’s Books (The Lake) / Born to Lose: The Making of Dog Day Afternoon - Conversation and Screening at 4 Star Theater (West Bay) / Spencer Lee-Lenfield and Kyung-Nyun Kim Richards on Theresa Hak Kyung Cha at BAMPFA (Berkeley).
Friday, March 20
Courtland Creek Park Community Clean-Up, noon, Courtland Creek Park (Melrose). The creek people have a surprise guest coming! If you haven't gotten to know your local Oakland creek, go pick up some trash, hang out with the ivy-pullers, the folks who rock hop and try to undo all the ways we've buried and forgotten the flows that shape this whole place. [Melrose 27X Neighborhood Council]
Young Törless, 4:30pm, BAMPFA (Berkeley). I had to read the novel by Robert Musil this Volker Schlöndorff film is based on, but I remember nothing, other than “don’t go to an Austro-Hungarian military academy,” and that advice has never steered me wrong. [BAMPFA]
Poetry! 6pm, Tamarack (Uptown): Evan Kennedy (West Bay poet and bicyclist), Geraldine Jorge (Oakland-based, Filipina poet interested in sound, form, and forms of sound), & Temperance Aghamohammadi (usually haunts the Midwest studying poetry, sound, and erotic theory). Come for some good lines and all the vibrations. [Tamarack]
[West Bay Bonus Event] Sound Poetry, 7pm, The Poetry Center (SFSU). An evening of poetry & music featuring poets who are gonna have to read fast but in sync with the tunes, including, but not limited to: Marina Lee, Mikey G, Amy de Rouvray, Karla Khine, May-Li Khoe, Abrahim El Gamal. Go run the gamut. [insta]
Andrew Curran's Biography of a Dangerous Idea, 7pm, Mrs. Dalloway's Bookstore (Elmwood). Scholar of race and the humanities Andrew Curran investigates how thirteen key Enlightenment figures shaped the concept of race in the 18th century. I'm starting to believe in the whole Long 18th Century frame considering we're still living in the crap they left us. [Mrs. D's]
Film Fridays: March Edition with Liyang Network, 7pm, EastSide Arts Alliance (San Antonio). A program of short films and newsreels centered around Mindanao, Philippines, followed by a community discussion facilitated by local organizers. Complimentary food and beverages provided. [EastSide Arts Alliance]
Also: Silkroad Ensemble with Rhiannon Giddens, Sanctuary: The Power of Resonance and Ritual at 101 Zellerbach Hall (Cal) / The Bike Fix at 81st Avenue Branch (Fitchburg) / Modes of Cinematic Sound: Short Films at BAMPFA (Downtown Berkeley)
Saturday, March 21
Lemon Food Preservation Workshop, 10am, Tamarack Oakland (Downtown). Glean and BYOJ (Bring Your Own Jar). [Oakland Gleaners]
Emeryville Film Festival, noon to night (Emeryville). Second version of this little film festival, with six blocks of movies about all kinds of stuff. Short films, but hours and hours of them. [EE]
Literary Salon: A Walk Through Time, 12-2pm, Marcus Books (Longfellow). Black Girls Write (Dera R. Williams, La Rhonda Crosby-Johnson, Sheryl Lister, and Suzette D. Harrison) invite you to hear works that take you on “A Walk Through Time.” Register ahead of time. [Black Girls Write]
Wildflowers of the Bay Area noon, Central Library (Downtown Berkeley). If you couldn't make it to Canyon and at least during the heat dome prefer learning about flowers in air conditioned environments, then this is for you. Everything's flowering hella early this year, so learn where to go and sniff them all, or just pet a silky poppy petal in the hellstrip. [BPL]
[West Bay Bonus Event] Bending the Color Wheel: Adventures in Color Theory, 1pm, San Francisco Center for the Book (Design District). So you thought about Color with Heyday at Local Economy last weekend -- now put your ideas into practice. But wait, there's more! The instructor Tim Svenonius self-published a monograph, A Book of Lost Latitudes, which uses mixed media, archives, found texts, and drawings to explore the whale in our minds, hearts, and in the world. [San Francisco Center for the Book]
Refusing Settler Domesticity, 1pm, North Branch (Berkeley). Caitlin Keliiaa discusses her book on Native women's labor and resistance in the Bay Area Outing Program, placing the program within California’s long history of colonial Indian labor exploitation and centering Native women’s resistance. [BPL]
International Women’s Day 2026 Celebration, 1pm, Uhuru House (Eastmont). Come center and celebrate International Women’s Day with a panel of Palestinian, Sudanese and Indigenous women. Moderated by All-African People's Revolutionary Party Women's Union member, Shakura Umi. Poetry by Jae Gayle, local Oakland resident. [insta]
Oakland Noticing Club March Meet-up, 2pm, Local Economy (College Ave). An informal meet-up inspired by Rob Walker’s “Savor of the Month” at The Art of Noticing, Things That Look Like Faces has been the first theme. [insta]
ALAMEDA EDUCATION FOUNDATIONS 3RD ANNUAL POETRY SLAM, 2:30pm, Books Inc. (Alameda [Temporarily an Island]). If you know a student in Alameda, tell them about this poetry slam focused on place. "Where I Live" is the theme and is inspired by Alex D. da Silva’s paintings: Warriors and The Meanderings of a Watershed, itself inspired by a geological map of Alameda from 1963. [Books Inc.]
Adios Amor, 3pm, César E. Chávez OPL Branch (Fruitvale). Celebrate National Farmworkers Awareness Week with this suppressed history of the people who harvest the food on our tables, along with discussion with the film makers. [OPL]
Sun Ra: Do the Impossible, 4pm, BAMPFA (Berkeley). Christine Turner’s documentary about the impossible-to-summarize Sun Ra, the first focal point for any discussion of Afrofuturism. “The impossible attracts me,” he once said, “because everything possible has been done and the world didn’t change.” [BAMPFA]
[West Bay Bonus Event] Newroz Bonfire, 5pm, Ocean Beach (A Beach is A Process Not A Place). Burn last year down, stir the ashes. Hosted by Bay Area Mesopotamia Solidarity Committee [insta]
Jerusalem Through Seams, 6pm, Uptown Autobody & Fender (Uptown). At the wokest most Free-Palestine Autobody and Fender shop that Oakland has to offer, see the murals and take in this exhibit of oral testimonies, photography, maps, and other media centering Palestinian voices. Curated by Saad Amira and Samar Awaad, who first showed it at the Al-Bireh Cultural Center in Palestine in October 2025. [UCB]
MEXICANA: Poemas y más poemas, 7pm, Nomadic Bookshop (Uptown). Diosa Xochiquetzalcoatl brings along her friends to celebrate the release of her newest poetry collection. [Nomadic Bookshop]
Space Is the Place, 7pm, BAMPFA (Cal). After Sun Ra taught a course at UC Berkeley on “The Black Man in the Cosmos,” this movie happened: filmed across the Oakland Bay Area, the plot is indescribable. [BAMPFA]
Also: California Black Rail Habitat Helpers at Point Pinole (Richmond): Giant Road Staging Area (Richmond) / 2-Day Botanical Watercolor Workshop at Tilden Regional Park Botanic Garden. (Berkeley Hills) / Hemming & Mending Clothes By Hand at 81st Avenue Branch OPL (Fitchburg) / A Year of Kites reading and craft with author Monisha Bajaj at Central Library (Berkeley) / SĪ思意YÌ: spring equinox celebration with music, snacks, books, and sauna at Good Hot (Richmond) / CIGAW Spring Equinox Open Mic at 524 Union St (West Bay)
Sunday, March 22
Little Free Library Trek, 9am, Book Society (Berkeley). The Wandering Book Club wanders through Berkeley, charting a course by Little Free Libraries. Bring a book to share, also $15. [Book Society]
Basic Repairs on Hardbound Books, 10am-5pm, San Francisco Center for the Book (West Bay). Bring a broken book, learn how to mend it. Also bring $240. [San Francisco Center for the Book]
BTMC x Wildflower Walk, 10:30am, Reinhardt Redwood Regional Park (The Hills). Walk and learn about native wildflowers with the Black Trans Masc Collective. There will be zines! But bring your own lunch. [black trans masc collective]
Springtime Snakes, 11am, Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve (Antioch). It is getting hot and so wakey wakey snakeys! Enjoy getting to know them – just watch where you step and don't thrust your hands into cracks without looking (always a good policy). [East Bay Regional Park District]
Newts Nearby, 11:30am, Tilden Nature Area (Berkeley Hills). The newts are fucking in all the ponds right now. Perfect opportunity to explain sex to children and how we all like to climb over each other in pools and tubs of various kinds, depositing eggs around the edges. [East Bay Regional Park District]
Celebrating Literary Foremothers, 2pm, Chapter 510 (Old Oakland). Readings to benefit Chapter 510: Dorothy Lazard (librarian to the history room stars) hosting Judy Juanita, Angela Dalton, Aya de Léon, and Jeneé Darden. [Chapter 510]
Love and Lit Book Club Meeting, 2pm, Marcus Books (Longfellow). This Black Romance Book Club will discuss Restore Me by J.L. Seegars. Will there be banter about the steamy stuff or just the warm and tender bits? [eventbrite]
Cléo from 5 to 7, 2pm, BAMPFA (Cal). Agnès Varda’s first big one, it gives us two hours in the life of a pop singer waiting to learn if she has cancer. Spoiler: lots of French people. [BAMPFA]
Signs of Life, 4:30pm, BAMPFA (Cal). Werner Herzog’s first feature film, it features war and Germans fucking losing their minds. [BAMPFA]
Eyes of the Rainbow, 6pm, Moments Co-op (Downtown). Gloria Rolando's 1977 film about the resting-in-power Assata Shakur, as part of Nostalgic For Nothing Cinema’s Moments Movie Nights. Wash the taste of any Oscar-awarded films from your mouth, if needed. [Nostalgic For Nothing Cinema]
Case Study on International General Strikes, 6pm, Long Haul (Berkeley). What it says on the box. [long_haul_infoshop]
Also: Creative Radio Club at WHP Vallejo at Winslow House Project (Vallejo) / Healing Through Writing and Sound Book Launch + Mini Workshop at Nomadic Bookshop (Uptown) / Nancy Matsumoto with Larissa Zimberoff, Reaping What She Sows at Book Passage Corte Madera (North Bay) / Know Your Rights Now. For Immigrants and Allies. at La Peña Cultural Center (Berkeley) / Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney on LAKE EFFECT with Jasmine Guillory at Mrs. Dalloway's Bookstore (Elmwood)
