Oakland Review of Books calendar of (not just) literary events, May 12–May 17
We sometimes include West Bay events here, if they seem Oaklandy enough, but you can get the full slate from Devon’s SF Has [No] Culture, McSweeney’s’s San Francisco Is Dead, and Christina’s literary calendar Same Page SF, which are all much more thorough, especially on whatever is happening in obscure neighborhoods like “Potrero Hill” and “The Marina.” (ed note—check if that’s made up, sounds fake?) Bay Area Current’s current events listings are also back in action for subscribers, so go subscribe (it’s free, they're socialists after all).
In the part of Greater North Oakland all the way in CoCoCo, Planting Justice is building and burning effigies (of whom? report back!) all weekend, and also up there, the coal mine experience at Black Diamond Mines in Antioch is partially funded by an oil company and is also something you can mostly just show up for even if it says it’s sold out. Relatedly, you can also show up to Anti-Chevron events all week long in Richmond or wherever their fine products are sold (gas stations). In the hills of home, the Oakland Greek Festival is going all weekend too—ready for some lamb and miscellaneous Greek music? Submit your tears by the end of the month to the Rock Paper Scissors Collective’s next zine and go see some good movies at The Parkway and some radical movies wherever Black Hole Cinematheque is showing them. If you enjoyed hearing what public meetings about library taxes in El Cerrito are like, hold onto your hats because Oakland has a whole bunch of public meetings you can go to and make comments at. May is the month that layering exists for, poppies are still popping, cherries and mulberries are showing up at the market, and all the divorce haircuts are freshly chopped.—MS, TC
Tuesday, May 12
Cartooning Against Silence: Futile Prayers from an Undocumented Heart, 4pm, Central Library (Downtown Berkeley). Opening reception for a new exhibit curated by Alberto Ledesma, Cal academic and graphic memoirist who grew up undocumented in East Oakland. Most of Oakland is east of the lake, and that's where things get interesting. [Berkeley Public Library]
Kamishibai Paper Theater with Erica, 6:30pm, Rockridge Branch OPL (Rickettyrodge). When you put together Bicycle Month, Older Americans Month, and Asian & Pacific Islanders Heritage Month, you get a wooden box and a scroll full of memories and Japanese folktales. Kamishibai! [OPL]
[West Bay Bonus Event] M Lin in conversation with R. O. Kwon, 7pm, City Lights (North Beach). M Lin in conversation with R. O. Kwon on Lin's new book of stories, The Memory Museum (Graywolf). From “Magic, or Something Less Assuring,” a story about a “divorce honeymoon”: “She couldn’t withdraw the love she had deposited ceaselessly for eleven years all at once even if she tried—and she had tried.” A collection rooted in contemporary China, asking about the relationship between self and society in a culture that has tried on many different answers to that question. [City Lights]
A Field Guide to More-Than-Human Governance, 7pm, Clio’s Books (The Lake). West Bay-based artist provocateur, experimental philosopher, and occasional plant pornographer Jonathon Keats draws lessons from the nonhuman, from moths to mesquite, in order to advise us on organizing our society away from an ecocidal, genocidal, fascist tendency toward self-regulation and sustenance of all life. Come think with Marthine, who will be listening intently. [Clio’s Books]
[West Bay Bonus Event the Second] 14 Hills Review Issue 32 release party, 7pm, Fabulosa Books (The Castro). 14 Hills is enough hills to name a lit mag after. Issue 32 is partying and releasing, featuring readings from Kate Broad (debut novel Greenwich out now), Ezra Fox (poet: “The pronoun: a migrating bird / wingbeat,/ restless”), Eden Nobile (poet and bookseller in Oakland, influenced by queer ecology like all the good ones are), and other contributors. Thanks to the hardworking SFSU editors for gathering them all under one roof. [insta]
[West Bay Bonus Event the Third] Vanessa Hua with Oscar Villalon / Coyoteland, 7pm, The Booksmith (The Haight). Hot side of the hills writer Vanessa Hua goes west to spill all the suburban tea in her new novel about real estate agents and other feral animals. [The Booksmith]
Davin Malasarn: The Outer Country, with Linda Michel-Cassidy, 7pm, Pegasus Books Downtown (Berkeley). Patrick, events guy at Pegasus, is very excited about this novel, and you should listen because he only says something when it needs saying. Come hear all about SoCal author Davin Malasarn's debut novel The Outer Country. Full of plot featuring secrets, sisterly rivalry, Southeast Asian spookiness, and queer identity, with a “pitch-perfect ending” according to blurber David Gates (now you have to buy it just to see if he's right). Malasarn will be joined in conversation by Sausalito writer Linda Michel-Cassidy, who is dry docking for the night. [Pegasus Books]
Also: Oakland Bloom Presents: Fermentation Workshop with Turnip That Beet at Dimond Branch (Dimond District) / Sarah Gailey and Charlie Jane Anders at Books Inc. Opera Plaza (Civic Center) / Happy Endings: It Takes a Village at Make Out Room (The Mission)
Wednesday, May 13
Art and Craft Night, 4pm, ARTogether Center (Downtown). Gather with immigrants, refugees, and allies to eat, talk, and work with your hands. Collage and craft, write something, be together and enjoy the hum of creativity. Drop in any time until 7pm. [insta]
Repair Advice with Fixit Clinic, 5:30pm, Temescal Branch (Temesqualid). Bring small lapdog sized appliances to be examined, diagnosed, and treated. [OPL]
Alan Chazaro, These Spaceships Weren’t Built For Us, 6pm, Nomadic Bookshop (Uptown). Coyote's CDMX correspondent comes home. Started in June Jordan's Poetry for the People and now we're here (a whole collection from Tia Chucha Press) with a book sectioned up into “here,” “there,” and “gone.” Expect poetry, stories, Oakland energy, and outer space. [insta]
Book & Wine Trivia Night, 6pm, Book Society (Elmwood). Trivia teams, assemble! The squad montage is rolling up College Ave, grabbing a bookseller from Pegasus, a pet nat guy from Vintage Berkeley, an eager rookie, and a blowsy wine mom who knows all the romance novel tropes to kick the competition's ass. [Book Society]
Bestiaries of the More-Than-Humane, 6pm, Local Economy (The Neighborhood Formerly Known as Shafter). Not only a listening experience, but also a making one: with the experimental artist/philosopher Jonathon Keats and his Field Guide to More-Than-Human Governance you will create your own mini bestiary. Animals, fungi, flowers: what will they teach you about how to be best? I love an oak tree, open to hosting teeming lives of mushrooms and birds, caterpillars and lichen, and thriving in interdependent, interpenetrating community. [luma]
Second Mondays, 6pm, Regulars Only (Longfellow). A monthly open mic for Black creatives to perform art for Black audiences. Spoken word pieces are the centerpiece, but all creative performances are welcome -- even comedians. Organized by Gold Beams. [eventbrite]
BIMBO Book Club!, 6:30pm, Tamarack (Downtown). All the anarchists are here to read “It Takes Organizers to Make a Revolution” by Rodrigo Nunes. Come though, you don't have to do the reading ahead of time, but it helps. [insta]
In a Year of 13 Moons, 7pm, BAMPFA (Downtown Berkeley). Tommy “Always Be Launching” Craggs couldn't believe there were still more Fassbinders for BAMPFA to show, but it's true: This time a 1978 one about a trans woman and a hooker, seeking love and happy endings. [BAMPFA]
Third Transmission, 7:30pm, Shapeshifters Cinema (Jack London Squareish). I can't do the copy better, so here you go: “Miss Video is an alternative video distribution project inspired by feminist VHS chainletters [WHAT?! Is this a real thing that happened??]. In each transmission, they bring together submitted films, zines, manifestos, reflections, and ephemera from artists around the world.” Filmmakers featured include Alicia Nieto, Lau Mota, Lenny Farinholt, Mary Filippo, Paulina Jamieson, Ruth Peyser, Jackie Blue, and more. [instagram]
Also: Stephanie Fairyington and Monique Jenkinson - Ugly: A Letter to My Daughter at Book Passage (SF Ferry Building) (Embarcadero) / Oakland Privacy: Fighting Against the Surveillance State at Somewhere Private (Oakland)
Thursday, May 14
Leamos autoras, 4:30pm, Central Library (Berkeley). ¡Bienvenides al club de lectura en español de la Biblioteca Pública de Berkeley! For the rest of us gringos, an incentive to learn spanish is this en español book group that’s reading El tiempo de las mariposas by Julia Álvarez, and meets every month. [BPL]
Second Reading: The Will to Change, 5pm, Kinfolx (Uptown). Reading club for BIPOC individuals, facilitated by Black thinkers. This month get into The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love by bell hooks. Read together, discuss, be in your body, make an altar, and write letters full of dreams of men who don't seek power and domination. [insta]
Nicole Wong, 5:30pm, North Branch (North Berkeley). Mahjong is having an extended moment! Come meet the author whose book Mahjong: House Rules from Across the Asian Diaspora is selling better in its second year than its first, which almost never happens. You get to learn the rules and play a game yourself if you stay for the history lesson. [BPL]
[West Bay Bonus Event] CCA MFA Writing Class of 2026 Graduation Celebration, 6pm, CCA (Dogpatch). The penultimate class of CCA Writing MFA grads read their work: Isaiah Diaz-Mays, Hana Malia, Jasmin Guillén, Anthony Silva, Susan Skeele, Solomon Sofolawe, Zeeniya Yahiya. One more set next year, and after that whatever Vanderbilt replaces writers with, probably AI prompting classes for business majors or some shit. [insta]
The Art of Midlife 2: Sandwiched — Courtney Martin & Mia Birdsong on Caregiving, 6pm, Local Economy (Collegial and Communal Ave). Christie George brings together another way of thinking through middle age: this time about being trapped by caretaking demands of both aging parents and our own children. Can we find the immanence and joy in caregiving, turn it into ritual instead of drudgery? Works for some, and Courtney Martin and Mia Birdsong are here to talk about showing up for others and ourselves. There's no good sandwich without a luscious filling holding it together. [luma]
Margaret Juhae Lee—Starry Field, 6pm, Main Library (The Lake-ish). Margaret Juhae Lee (Starry Field: A Memoir of Lost History) shares how her interviews of her grandmother brought her deep into her family's role in Korean history, and advises attendees how you can approach your parents, elders, uncles and learn the oral histories they hold. [OPL]
Celebrating Asian Voices in Children's Media: a Talk With Nira Liu, Eugenia Yoh, and Elenor Mak, 6pm, Oakland Asian Cultural Center (Chinatown). Local experts in kids' entertainment—Eugenia Yoh of Chronicle Books, Nira Liu of Pixar, and toy entrepreneur Elenor Mak—share their knowledge of stories, creativity, and Asian representation in their industries and creative projects. [Oakland Asian Cultural Center]
The Sampaguitas, Live Music and Storytelling, 6pm, Tarea Hall Pittman South Branch BPL (South Berkeley). Local girl group The Sampaguitas perform songs and storytelling shaped by Filipino folk traditions and third culture diasporic childhoods. [BPL]
[West Bay Bonus Event Squared] Eleni Sikelianos / Launch Party for Memory Rehearsal, 7pm, City Lights (North Beach). Hometown author at her hometown publisher for the Launch for Memory Rehearsal by Eleni Sikelianos. Praised by Anne Waldman and CAConrad, so we're in the world of a special kind of weird nonfiction, the chimeric, the intertidal, the multi-genre, in the spirit of Le Guin's carrier bag theory of the book as a technology for holding a jumble of human culture and ideas. [City Lights]
SOLD OUT: One must imagine Sisyphus happy, 7pm, Clio’s Books (The Lake). So it says sold out, but show up and I bet they'll squeeze you in like coal miners at the Experience. Harriet Clark discusses her debut novel, The Hill, with East Bay fave Lauren Markham. Storytelling about imprisoned radical activists, a communist grandma, and the impact of locking up parents on their children. [eventbrite]
Beth Piatote: distant water, with Alex Saum-Pascual, 7pm, Pegasus Books (Downtown Berkeley). Bay Area poet, playwright, and Nimi:pu:(Nez Perce) scholar Beth Piatote offers a reading and craft talk to honor her new book of poems, distant water, from Milkweed Editions. Patrick is also really excited about this book, and I can see why: we've got an almost Poundian focus on the verb, but in a form that is shaped by the structure of Piatote's heritage language of Nez Perce, not a third-hand grasp of Chinese linguistics. "Coyote mostly unmade dams," she says, and "these rocks mean home. Stories live in rock. Alive too is your heart, your tim’íne, / moving along the Clearwater. The river your companion, and everything is wá·q’is:" [Pegasus Books]
[West Bay Bonus Event Cubed] Tracy Clark-Flory and Savala Nolan, 7 pm, Green Apple Books on the Park (The Sunset). East Bay-for-lyfe memoirist TCF and essayist-slash-happily divorced Berkeley Law professor Savala Nolan talk sexual adventuring, womanhood, race, shame, family stories, and the pluses and minuses of DNA testing. AKA: former Jezzie reporter tells all! [Green Apple]
Dorian Gray in the Mirror of the Yellow Press, 7pm, BAMPFA (Downtown Berkeley). A surrealistic bit of camp media crit from Berlin undergrounder Ulrike Ottinger, released in 1984. Dr. Mabuse, the underworld kingpin of the old Fritz Lang movies, is here transformed into a media tycoon (played by Delphine Seyrig) whose dream is to control a human being: Dorian Gray (played in drag by the supermodel Veruschka von Lehndorff). What a terrible libel on underworld kingpins, comparing them with people who run media companies! [BAMPFA]
Also: Sophie Wood Brinker and Keith Hansen at Buteo Books (North Bay) / Josie Iselin - "The Mysterious World of Bull Kelp Forest" at Books by the Bay (Sausalito) / Writing, teaching, and international literary exchange with Rita Bullwinkel at Goethe-Institut San Francisco (SoMa) / Grief & Gratitude open mic at The Lost Church SF (North Beach)
Friday, May 15
[West Bay Bonus Event] Futurity Library: Disobedient Artists' Books in the Postbook Age, 5pm, San Francisco Center for the Book (Design District). What is book is the big question, really – is it a communication technology, a container for information, a piece of art, a consumer object, a lockbox, a portal? Curator bex ya yolk doesn't answer this question at all, bringing together artists books that range from 3D-printed structures to works that abandon the codex altogether. But "postbook age" – now you're making me mad. [San Francisco Center for the Book]
Friday Nights at OMCA with La Cumbiamba Colombiana & Combo Tezeta, 5pm, OMCA (Lake). I’m really excited about this one; the more dancing and percussion-oriented the music at OMCA on Friday, the better, as far as my kids are concerned, and this one is very: A dance performance from La Cumbiamba Colombiana followed by psychedelic música tropical from Combo Tezeta. [Oakland Museum of California (OMCA)]
OPY Event: An Evening of Kelp with Josie Iselin, 5:30pm, Deep Ocean Explore Store (Alameda The Former Peninsula). Dive into the hidden world of bull kelp forests with West Bay artist and marine scientist Josie Iselin, celebrating her new book from Heyday about Pacific Coast seaweed that love the cold water of NorCal and more northerly climes: The Mysterious World of the Bull Kelp Forest. Art is on view from the beginning, Josie's presentation starts at 7, and enjoy the strange phenomenon of huge algae that only live one year but make a forest from sunlight filtering through the water. [eventbrite]
Trans Grief + Joy Open Mic Night, 6pm, Nomadic Bookshop (Uptown). Trans folx, enbies, 2Spirit people: perform your feelings and your gender at the mic — allies and community members are welcome to attend. [insta]
Poetry and not-poetry!, 6pm, Tamarack (Downtown). Sara Larsen (Detonated Mirror from Fonograf Editions), Sam Lohmann (librarian poet whose poems include sentences like, "In love we’re interlibrary coxcomb trolleys, trolleys in love morphology." ), Pauline Kerschen (novelist, ORB theatre and rave and opera critic, web-mistress), Lauren Levin (surprise poet host) [insta]
Spring Fundraiser, 7pm, Bathers Library (Telegraphic). Experiment communally and educationally and cocktaily, semi-responsibly. "Win ephemeral prizes" and enjoy musical, poetic, and unnameable performances so that we can all Summer Symposium together again in a few months. This place is special and so, so generous: buy tickets and keep it going. [insta]
Eleni Sikelianos' MEMORY REHEARSAL, 7pm, Mrs. Dalloway's Bookstore (Elmwood). Eleni Sikelianos (The California Poem, blurbed by Fanny Howe!) shares her new memoir Memory Rehearsal in conversation with Tess Taylor. Making a story out of "a family of tree workers, bohemians, poets, ne'er-do-wells, visionaries, and smalltime sort-of hustlers" sounds like the right kind of work for a Naropa-trained poet, especially when lesbians in Paris, Delphic revivals in Greece, and a belief in the ideal no matter how down-at-heels the real is are all thrown in. Friday night fun on College Ave! [Mrs. Dalloway's ]
Also: The Exceptional Botanical Diversity of the Siskiyou Crest at UC Botanical Garden (Strawberry Canyon) / Possible Outcomes by Elisabeth Nicula at Et al. (The Mission) / Literary Salon at The Grotto (The Mission) / Foraging in Oakland: Herb and Mushroom Talk & Tea Tasting, Vol 2 at Local Economy (Rockridge) / The Poetry Lounge Rooftop Edition at Passport Bar & Lounge (Downtown)
Saturday, May 16
Historical Walking Tour: Alameda's Park Centre, 10am, Marti-Rae Court (Alameda). Historical Walking Tour Season is in full swing in , and local historian Dennis Evanosky will be hosting the third in his octet of peripatetic explorations of the Bay's Island City sponsored by the Alameda Post. This tour focuses on the political struggles over slum clearance and redevelopment surrounding the Park Centre project, which somehow culminates in a murder plot?? The event organizers specifically encourage you to bring your dogs along if they are well-behaved and cute. If you can't make it Saturday, the tour will happen again on Sunday. [Alameda Post]
Discover Native Pollinators, 10am, Bathers Library / Rotary Nature Center (The Lake). Dr Rei Scampavia, Bug Doctor will help you look close, listen for the buzz, and appreciate little crawling caterpillars all around the lake. Honey bees and butterflies might be your immediate thoughts, but flies and bumble bees are actually more important. And don't forget the night fliers whose long tongues are welcome only under the moon as they suck inside unfurling white petals. [Bathers Library]
Malcolm X JazzArts Festival, 11am, San Antonio Park (Oakland). The 26th of this annual event, celebrating Black Liberation, unity in the Black, Brown, Asian & Indigenous communities, and some kicking music. A Jazz Stage, a Graffiti Court, a KidZone, a Soapbox Stage, a Dance Stage, vendors, a Wellness Zone, and a Food Court. You will not regret losing a day here. [EastSide Arts Alliance]
Introduction to 16mm Filmmaking, 11am, Shapeshifters Cinema (Jack London Square). Materiality is back! In this beginner-friendly 16mm filmmaking workshop, Silvia Turchin will teach the history and practice of 16mm filmmaking and you'll get to play around on a loaner camera, and then the cloud comes back and you get a digital copy of whatever you filmed to take home. If anyone wants to get further practice filming a reading and dream experience on an island in the Russian River in July, start today, and get in touch: plans are afoot. [insta]
Individual Poetry Writing Workshops, 12 noon, Central Library (Downtown Berkeley). First of two one-on-one sessions with Ray Hsu, who claims a big list of published poems but is a little slippery on the internet. He is offering individual poetry writing workshops of you can handle criticism and are ready to go home and start revising at the end of the 15-minute intensive. [BPL]
Poetry Workshop with Yan-Yin Choy, 1pm, Golden Gate Branch OPL (Golden Gate). Meditate, then get started writing in this poetry workshop with Oakland-based Cantonese writer Yan-Yin Choy who will help writers practice within Asian literary traditions. With tea and snacks! [OPL]
Our Hitler, 1:30pm, BAMPFA (Downtown Berkeley). A seven-hour movie about Hitler in four parts, with puppets and skits and dildos and fart jokes and a little Brecht and lots of Wagner. Susan Sontag wrote a famous swoony essay about it that's still worth reading (even if you wish she'd been a bit more embarrassed by it later on, as the cranky antimodernism of director Hans-Jürgen Syberberg began to curdle into open antisemitism). Screen Slate also has thoughts. BAMPFA is showing the four parts in two chunks, with intermissions and a dinner break. Good luck. [BAMPFA]
Meet Gubernatorial Candidates Ramsey Robinson and Claudia de la Cruz, 2:30pm, Williams Chapel Baptist Church (Eastlake). OK, last week gave us billionaires and Ezra "Elon Musk has a point" Klein blowing smoke about what to do about housing in Sacramento (did anyone talk about repealing Prop 13? No??). Now, cleanse your palate with a talk about socialism and Black liberation with two Peace and Freedom Party candidates. [Vote Socialist CA]
Pop-Up (Books & Cards) for Palestine, 3pm, Local Economy (College Ave). Elizabeth Gordon teaches you how to make messages and stories that pop, literally, and learn how this folding artform came to be. Ticket proceeds go directly to two families in Palestine. [luma]
One Book, One Coast, 3pm, Central Library (Downtown Berkeley). Libraries along the Pacific Coast are all reading George Takei's graphic novel about Japanese internment: "They Called Us Enemy." Today, watch the musical Allegiance based on his experiences as a kid growing up in a prison camp as part of the coellctive work to reckon with our West Coast history. [BPL]
How to Blow Up a Pipeline, 3pm, The New Parkway Theater (Uptown). See a showing of the ecothriller in the Climate Cinema with Sunrise Movement Bay Area series, followed by a discussion. [New Parkway]
Wavy Gravy's 90th Birthday: A Benefit for Seva, 7pm, The Masonic (Nob Hill). Not every Merry Prankster followed up acid trips with ice cream flavors and a circus camp in Mendocino that shaped a surprising number of my Bay Area raised friends (shout out to my fellow stilt walkers and trapezists!), and also managed to live to 90. Sweets, psychedelics, nature, and clowning around are clearly the recipe to both a good and long life. Go celebrate with the man in the tie dye shirt and send money to a good cause. [do the bay]
Also: Food Drive at North Branch (Berkeley) / #Bare2Breakers Weekenders’ SF World Naked Bike Ride at Rincon “Cupid’s Arrow” Park (West Bay) / Poetry Open Mic at Medicine for Nightmares (The Mission) / Creative Critical Thinking with Daniel Segrove at Underpainting Collective: School of Drawing and Painting (Berkeley) / Ergonomic Gardening at Piedmont Avenue Branch OPL (Piedmont Ave) / BYOBook Club at Evergreen Cafe (West Berkeley) / Ellen Burstyn with Rayne O'Brian and Luisa Smith - Poetry Says It Better: Poems to Help You Wake Up at Book Passage Corte Madera (North Bay) / Toni Cade Bambara’s Salt Eaters at Black Feminist Book Club (Laurel).
Sunday, May 17
The ABCs of California’s Native Bees—Book Talk & Bioblitz, 11am, SF Botanical Garden (San Francisco). Krystle Hickman, author of The ABCs of California’s Native Bees (Heyday) will be hanging in the West Bay's botanical garden with community botanist and landscape architect Cat Chang, talking about shiny blue bees, parasitic bees, digging bees, and the roles all these wonderful weirdos play in California's vast and diverse patchwork of ecosystems. Then put on your bee eyes and go with Krystle to find the bees and observe their bee-havior. [Gardens of Golden Gate Park]
Fossil Free Futures Festival, 11am, (Richmond). A whole anti-Chevron day, in the town that has even better reasons than most to celebrate it. Starting at 11am, at Keller beach and continuing with a gathering at Carroll park and a rolling march. [oilandgasactionnetwork]
Stories from the Edge of Sea, 2pm, Oakland Asian Cultural Center (Chinatown). Come in for a book launch, film screening, and discussion with Vietnamese-American author Andrew Lam. After reading from his new book of short stories, watch a segment of the PBS documentary My Journey Home and join in a Q&A with UC Davis professor Dr. Kiều-Linh Caroline Valverde discussing Lam’s 30 years of writing about Vietnam and Vietnamese-American experiences here, there, and everywhere. [Oakland Asian Cultural Center]
Molly Fisk and Francesca Bell, 3pm, Art House Gallery & Cultural Center (South Berkeley). Poetry Flash still exists, and is hosting a poetry reading by Molly Fisk of Walking Wheel, which is a historical novel-in-verse about settlers in California, alongside poet and translator Francesca Bell, whose What Small Sound (Red Hen Press, starred Kirkus review) takes on motherhood, mass shootings, mammograms, and other minor feelings. [Poetry Flash]
[West Bay Bonus Event ] Golden Gate: An Oral History of Bay Area Poetics, 3pm, Et al Gallery (The Mission ). Small Press Traffic presents Golden Gate: An Oral History of Bay Area Poetics (2026, directed by Oliver Katz & Vincent Katz), an hour-long documentary abut how fucking cool the poetry scene was in the Bay Area in the second half of the 20th century. Featuring all the icons: Diane di Prima, Kevin Killian, Joanne Kyger, Michael McClure, Duncan McNaughton, Aram Saroyan, Anne Waldman, and more. With archival images and recordings woven between the interviews. Elder poets Steve Dickison and Norma Cole will both be on the screen and in person with the Katzes in conversation.(Shows in Bolinas next Monday night at the Community Center too, if you want to go to Smiley's, as is poetic tradition). [Small Press Traffic]
Confidence & the Magnitude of Failure with Ross J. Farrar, 3pm, Gilman Brewing (West Berkeley). It concerns me that hurdle was spelled “hurtle” in the original copy but hey at least we know it was written by a human and to err is... . How to fail bigger, fail harder, fail again at poetry, teaching, life with a former punk musician and current poet who might know a thing or two on that score. [CWC Berkeley]
[North Bay Bonus Event] Book Talk: Compassion in Crisis: Building Disaster-Resilient Communities, 4pm, Dance Palace (Point Reyes Station). Come learn how to get ready for what's coming, together, from Kailea Rose Loften and Kate Weiner, editors of Loam and authors of this revised and updated guide to world-building in a time of polycrisis and precarity. There's herbal recipes, stories, and go bag prep lists to read up on. [Point Reyes Books]
Joseph Tseng's Shanghai: An American Story Performance, 5pm, Local Economy (YachtRockRidge). Storytelling through song, live and in person. Hang out in the hyphen, mourn lost motherlands, and feel your way toward home with a songwriter who's lived it. [luma]
Paris, Texas, 5pm, BAMPFA (Downtown Berkeley). A modern western from Wim Wenders, based on a Sam Shepherd play, with canyons, neon, masculinity, and guys stumbling into town from the vastness offstage. [BAMPFA]
Party At The Parkway, 9pm, The New Parkway (Uptown). The New Parkway has a fun deal where you can rent out the theater for a movie of your choice on your birthday for cheaper than normal IF you let the whole neighborhood crash your party. Come celebrate someone's birthday and watch the beloved queer road trip film To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, which is famously the ONLY film in which Wesley Snipes, Patrick Swayze, and John Leguizamo appear together on screen in drag. [veezi]
Also: Film and Video Makers at Cal: Works from the Eisner Competition at BAMPFA (Downtown Berkeley)
