Oakland Review of Books calendar of (not just) literary events, May 26–May 31
Be warned: this calendar starts out manageable but gets ungovernable by Friday, as the Bay Area Book Festival starts unleashing itself on Berkeley, and the world (it's also the last gasp of book release season). We’ve picked our favorite BABF panels, but there’s more of everything, and on Sunday, say hi to ORB at our BABF table with SamePage SF and buy some of our spanking new swag.
If you’re feeling like looking at small trees instead: bonsai. Sophia Dahlin’s next generative poetry class starts next weekend so sign up, poets and lesbians of all kinds. Meanwhile, the West Bay is trying to warm up with crowds of hot reality lovers, so SF Doc Fest’s various screenings will be where to go for that. Orinda has old movies and no fog, if that appeals instead, plus your ballot is due in a week and you can turn it in at one library in the Town (Fruitvale) and at most public libraries in the fartherflung suburbs (ORB endorses taxes for libraries, none of the people vying for governor). Plus, two more weeks to diorama before you are judged on your choices and creativity sometime later this year. The children are running wild, school’s out for summer, ORB is still launching, and some of us are under the weather inside this micropoem from Amanda Nadelberg, “Microclimate of Grief”: “ I got you a cake / go fuck yourself.” -MS, XL, AP, AB
Tuesday, May 26
Storytime for Caregivers with Kate Schatz, 10am, Local Economy (Rockridge). Patricia Zaballos hosts Kate Schatz on her novel Where the Girls Were, set in the late '60s, in a West Bay home for unwed mothers and forced adoptions. Bring your babies, and hold them real tight. [luma]
[West Bay Bonus Event The Buzziest] In Person: Caro Claire Burke on her novel Yesteryear, 2pm, United Irish Cultural Center (Outer Outer Outer Sunset). Some people are saying this NYT bestseller about a time traveling tradwife is the best book they've read in forever, some folks think it's a premise in search of a story without any real politics at all, so grab your most bookclubby friends and go hear the author so you can have a third, as yet undiscovered opinion. I'm borrowing it from OPL so ORB can take an official position ourselves. [Bookshop West Portal]
[West Bay Bonus Event The Youngest] Interactive Art Show on State Violence, Displacement, and Environment, 6pm, Medicine for Nightmares (The Mission). Young people from Oakland and the West Bay share their art and activism, inviting community to collaborate and listen, organized by Mycelium Youth Network. Share observations of these places we live, hear about ICE raid impacts, environmental justice, and resistance to state violence and displacement. [Medicine for Nightmares]
On the Record: Miles Ahead, 6pm, Central Library (Downtown Berkeley). Miles Davis on vinyl on his centenary. Follow the jazz legend from swing and bebop to some funky fusion all night long. He made the wrong notes right. [Berkeley Public Library]
The Empusium book club, 6:30pm, Books Inc. (Alameda). Book club discussion of The Empusium, by Nobel-prize laureate Olga Tokarszuk, recently in the news for having apparently told an audience in Polish that she used AI to write her most recent novel, then back in the news to clarify that she didn't (kind of, I guess?). [Books Inc.]
[West Bay Bonus Event The Millennialest] In Celebration of Isaac Fitzgerald's American Rambler / with Mac Barnett, Daniel Handler & Jon Scieszka, 7pm, The Booksmith (The Haight). The boys are back! You might remember Isaac Fitzgerald from The Mission and The Rumpus if you were a book nerd hanging out in the West Bay or on the internet around 2010, but now he shows up on Good Morning America with Jasmine Guillory instead -- and writes his own books! Newest is American Rambler, which as far as I can tell, is for adults, but joining him in conversation are three dudely guys who write for kids: Mac Barnett, Daniel Handler and Jon Scieszka. Will all the Qs in the Q&A be for Mac? Probably. [The Booksmith]
[West Bay Bonus Event Jesus There’s More] An evening with Amy Tan, 7pm, Arion Press (Fort Mason). Amy Tan joins artist and writer George McCalman to share the five books that have most changed her life as a writer, a reader, and a person. Learn about her life through the books that shaped the best selling novelist and now bird artist. Do you want to carpool across the bridge? Subscribe to ORB and get a free ride from Marthine, good for one night only. [insta]
[West Bay Bonus Event It Just Keeps Going] The Racket, 7pm, The Sycamore Bar (The Mission). This excellent reading series comes back from a period of quiet with a loud bang (the best kind). The readers are many, and fabulous: Kristina Ten, Preeti Vangani, Syr Hayati Beker, Vincent Chu, Leigh Lucas, Kimberly Gomes, T.K. Rex. Lauren C Johnson will also read from her debut novel, The West Facade. [insta]
Newsreel! Army, ROTC, and Only the Beginning, 7:30pm, Bathers Library (Downtown). The Newsreel: Collective Fragments of Living Struggle continues with some Vietnam-war era films so Vietnam-war era-y you'll expect a Creedence Clearwater Revival soundtrack (and won't get it). [insta]
Also: Mystery Book Club: Bluebird by Attica Locke at West Branch (Berkeley) / Slow Food East Bay Happy Hour at Night Heron at Night Heron (Downtown) / Romance Book Club reads Deep Cuts by Holly Brickley at North Branch (Berkeley) / The Tough & Tannic Book Club: Gray Dawn at Book Society (College Ave) / Berkeley launch reading celebrating WHEN WE’RE BORN WE FORGET EVERYTHING at Mrs. Dalloway's (Berkeley) / Herbs and Mushrooms Foraging Discussion & Tea Tasting at Far Leaves Tea (Berkeley) / Litquake – Young King: The Making of Martin Luther King Jr. at KALW Public Media (FiDi)
Wednesday, May 27
In Search of Green China, 5:30am, Zoom (The internet). Gregory Hom, when not collaging, does other interesting things, including hosting this talk: "Learn about China's 30-year struggle to clean up its environment and reduce its carbon footprint" from Ma Tianjie, author of In Search of Green China and an environmental advocate in Beijing. [SFPL ]
Profs & Pints Alameda: A History of Mythical Cures, 6pm, Faction Brewing (Once a peninsula, always a peninsula). Vivian Delchamps Wolf, English Prof at Dominican U and close reader of historical stories of disability, goes way deep on snake oil cures, California's wellness culture (over 100 years old, GOOP just updated it), and a lot more medical malpractice. At the heart of it, she asks, Who has our culture decided needs to be fixed rather than cared for as they are. [Ticket Leap]
Debut Night: First Editions, 6pm, Book Society (Elmwood). Local authors share their debut books in a $45 threefer: Kate Crane's father disappeared and she went looking for answers; Portia Elan wrote Homebound, a semi-scifi computer game puzzle of a novel (to take the blurbs at their word), and Eric Scot Tryon gives us a novel about being sad together, published by independent press Central Avenue. And taste Book Society's new house wine, from Broc, the best winery in the Bay (where you can talk to Lia about books most Fridays for free). [Book Society]
WEATHER/WILDERNESS Writing Workshop, 6pm, Local Economy (Rockridge). Shruti Swamy and Susanna Kwan lead a generative workshop centered on the weather and dreams -- otherwise known as the commons of the body and the collective unconscious. Having just come back from The Dream Library where we drank absinthe and tucked dreams into books, having loved and feared the power of Kwan's foreboding imagination in Awake in the Floating City, and having been spooked by the creepy depths of Swamy's A House Is a Body, we're feeling wild, writerly, and weathering. [luma]
[North Bay Bonus Event] Caro Claire Burke with Matthew Félix - Yesteryear, 6pm, Book Passage (Corte Madera). Go hear what the author was thinking when she created what's become the year's juggernaut novel (literally 200k copies sold out the door in hardcover in its first 8 weeks). In conversation with a life coach, in case anyone needs it after reading those sales numbers. [Book Passage]
Documentary Screening: And Then They Came For Us, 6pm, Tarea Hall Pittman South Branch BPL (Berkeley). Learn stories of interned Japanese Americans and their descendants through interviews, archival footage, and the magic of cinema. Then stay for a discussion with the film's Director Abby Ginzberg and Satsuki Ina, author of The Poet and the Silk Girl, Ina’s family memoir of being born into an internment camp and living in its aftermath. [Berkeley Public Library]
WHB May Book Club: Jane Eyre Part Two and Wide Sargasso Sea, 6:30pm, Womb House Books (Temescal Alley). ORB sadly overlooked featuring the Womb House movie feature Jane Eyre at The New Parkway last week (keep an eye out for WHB's Yearning series recommencing there once they're done boosting Boots's Boosters). But the book is forever! Read the ultimate duo in colonial and post-colonial feminism: Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte) and Wide Sargasso Sea (Jean Rhys). Have fun exploring the attic. [eventbrite]
Sultry Sessions: Liberation, 6:30pm, Zanzi Oakland (Downtown). Explicit, raw, romantic, sweet – however you like it, the mic is yours to describe it in poetry, song, or with wind chimes (just make sure to vibrate in the key of sexy). Get free and get on it. Melanie and Ada know how to make sure everyone has a good time, consensually. See you there? [eventbrite]
[West Bay Bonus Event] Jeremy Lent / Ecocivilization: Making a World that Works for All, 7pm, City Lights Bookstore (North Beach). Berkeley eco-guy Jeremy Lent discusses his new book, Ecocivilization: Making a World that Works for All. From Melville House, which was the funniest publisher on twitter but only reposts things on bsky now so let's write their millennial obituary. You can still read their books though, I guess. [City Lights]
Lyrics & Dirges: A Monthly Poetry Series, 7pm, Pegasus Books Downtown (Berkeley). Monthly reading hosted and curated by East Bay poets MK Chavez and Sharon Coleman. Today! Devi S. Laskar (novelist, poet), Chris Stroffolino (poet, musician, critic), Hao C. Tran (guitarist, birder, memoirist) & Preeti Vangani (poet, MBA). [Pegasus Books]
Also: BOSS Mental Wealth Block Party at DeFremery Park (West Oakland) / The Bike Fix at Martin Luther King Jr. Branch (Deep East) / Nature Storytime! at Golden Gate Branch (San Pablo Corridor)
Thursday, May 28
Adult Needlework Circle, 1pm, Rockridge Branch (College Ave). This could be a gathering to embroider porny horny pillows, but it’s probably just flagged as adult to make sure you’re old enough to use sharp tools unsupervised. Bring your preferred needles and fibers to make, mend, and decorate. The library provides the space, company, and hot tea! [Oakland Public Library]
Book Club: The Poet and the Silk Girl, 2pm, Central Library (Downtown Berkeley). Did you think we were done with Satsuki's book? Absolutely not. Rachel Maddow loves it, Adrian Tomine loves it too (ok he's her son but still), Heyday published it: this is on its way to being Bay Area canon. Now, book club it! "Attendees are responsible for attaining the book on their own," your local librarian warns, so figure it out. [BPL]
[North Bay Bonus Event] Prelude to the Bay Area Book Festival, 4pm, Hall of the Above (Petaluma). Not too long ago, the whirling racks at the supermarket were where you got your mass market paperback romances, those fat little bricks of rape culture, for $4.99. Things change, for better and for worse, for richer and for poorer: now MMPBs are toast, but there's active enthusiastic consent, gay sex, and a proliferation of elves in romance books today, and entire bookstores are springing up to sell them. All to say, for romance and romantasy fans, celebrate books and the start of the Bay Area Book Festival with The Velvet Chapter in Petaluma tonight among your kind. Wear your sparkliest make up, most whimsical headdress, and librarianest glasses. [BABF]
THE POET'S BOOKSHELF: Book Club and Workshop, 5pm, Nomadic Bookshop (Uptown). Monthly poetry reading group! This month: The World Keeps Ending & The World Goes On by Franny Choi. From the title poem: "Before the apocalypse, the apocalypse of bees. The apocalypse of buses. / Border fence apocalypse. Coat hanger apocalypse. Apocalypse in / the textbooks’ selective silences. There was the apocalypse of the settlement / and the soda machine; the apocalypse of the settlement and / the jars of scalps..." [Nomadic Bookshop]
Mesa Refuge Happy Hour Before Bay Area Book Festival, 5pm, Beeryland (Telegraphomania). The magical love stories are happening up in Petaluma, but you can also stay in Oakland and the real world. If you are a nonfiction writer who cares about place, social and environmental justice, and finding a quiet place to write all about it, come out and meet the Mesa Refuge residents and community and plan your next book. [Mesa Refuge]
[West Bay Bonus Event] Kitchen Table Poetry Workshop, 5:30pm, Golden Sardine (North Beach). Free-to-attend poetry workshop with poet Hieu Minh Nguyen (whose poem "The New City" was featured in The Slowdown last week -- they've been highlighting all my favorite California poets lately; good job, excellent new host Maggie Smith!) at Golden Sardine. Bring your friends and share those notes app poems over a glass of riesling. [insta]
Love, Knowledge, & Revolution Book Launch, 5:30pm, Bombera (The Dimond). Introduction to Comparative Ethnic Studies: Decolonial Love, Knowledge, and Revolution book launch. Authors are East Bay heavyweights in the work of culturally relevant education: Profs at CSU Easy Bay, Dr. Jocyl Sacramento, Dr. Jennifer Kim-Anh Tran, Dr Carlos M Salomon, and Dr. Nicholas L. Baham. Ethnic Studies as a discipline was born in the Bay at SF State: it continues to be where cross-ethnic solidarity and decolonial consciousness is formed. Get introduced. [insta]
[West Bay Bonus Event] LitLounge: In Defense of the Short Story, 6pm, Mechanics' Institute (FiDi). A density of arts orgs in the West Bay are convening to hang out with books and the people who write them: Mechanics Institute Library (where Oakland's Gertrude Stein read books when she got bored of high school), Saint Joseph’s Arts Society (the most beautiful desacralized church in town), sponsored by Svane Culture Forward and writer Lindsey Crittenden. At 6pm, read your own book, then at 7, join the conversation about the short story as a form with local fictioneers Lori Ostlund (Are You Happy?), Anita Felicelli (Alta Journal), Joan Frank (reviewer, writer), & Kar Johnson (Green Apple, and uncle about town), moderated by Oscar Villalon (Zyzzyva). [eventbrite]
Pretend to be Fancy: The Art of Faking It, 6pm, Book Society (Elmwood). While this book event is a workshop in hosting nice events, ORB's position is that keeping up appearances is only for those not brave enough be their full messy selves in public. Don't be fooled by piles of shit with a nice gilded paint job; how about coming over to a house piled with laundry, books, and kids' art projects instead. We've got an open bottle of wine and Patsy Cline on the stereo and won't even charge you $75 for entry. [Book Society]
Meet the Author: Bernadette Atuahene - Plundered: How Racist Policies Undermine Homeownership in America, 6pm, Main Library (The Lake-ish). You know Californians are going to turn out for a book about property taxes. Bernadette Atuahene is a legal expert on property and professor at the USC Gould School of Law. Her book Plundered: How Racist Policies Undermine Homeownership in America contrasts the experiences of three generations of 2 families in Detroit -- one Black, one white -- to study the systemic impacts of racism. She shows that supermajority Black cities in Michigan got targeted by tax inflation and foreclosures. I think this is the point at which we all become Georgists? [Oakland Public Library]
How to Write for Current: A Workshop Series, 6:30pm, 1610 Harrison St (Downtown). The alt newspapers are back, if mostly online. The Bay Area Current reports from the local labor trenches. Pitch, write, and read them. [eventbrite]
[West Bay Bonus Event] Anthology Celebration: When We Exhale, 7pm, KALW (FiDi). Celebrate Black Freighter Press's new book When We Exhale: An Anthology of Black Women Rooted In Ancestral Medicine at KALW with Sights + Sounds host Jeneé Darden and anthology editor Alie Jones with contributors Nia Pearl, Ayodele Nzinga, Adrienne Danyelle Oliver, Lyn Patterson, and Kelechi Ubozoh, all local Black women dedicating their words to community and healing. [insta]
Heyday Presents: Dillon Osleger and Victoria Schlesinger, 7pm, Clio's Books (The Lake). Heyday Presents: Dillon Olseger's book Trail Work. This debut work of investigative and researched nonfiction by a trail steward, mountain biker, and geologist (all one guy!) about the forests of the West follows the paths and trails that once brought ordinary folks to the land; as Osleger explores and cares for land in the Los Padres and Tahoe National Forests, he discovers why they have—by plan and by neglect—begun to disappear. Trail Work is a heartfelt account of how and why we can restore these routes, and in the process come to be in better relationship to our public lands. Dillon will be joined in conversation by Victoria Schlesinger, journalist, author and Editor-in-Chief of Bay Nature magazine. [The Third Place]
Inside the Next Big Bay Area Earthquake, 7pm, Donkey & Goat Winery (West Berkeley). The Hayward fault likes to shimmy, and Artie Rodgers, seismologist at Lawrence Livermore, will explain what The Big One will feel like if our local fault decides to take up the two step instead. Andrew Alden's Deep Oakland tells you more about the fault in our hills for the geologically curious. [luma]
George Floyd Uprising Celebration Party, 7pm, Hasta Muerte Coffee (Sausal Creek). In a city bristling with politically-forthright cafes, the cooperatively-run Haste Muerte Coffee—which gained nationwide fame for its No Coffee for Cops policy in 2018—is king. This week they are commemorating the sixth anniversary of the George Floyd uprisings that shook the world in 2020, with free dinner and DJs spinning vinyl in celebration of the legacy of militant action in the streets. [insta]
"Places in Pieces", 7pm, Bathers Library (Telekinesisgraph). Volume 4 of Places in Pieces, a non-narrative film (see the trailer for some flavor) by Jason Pappariella about time and memory and maybe moths, unless that's a metaphor. With some music by Michael James Tapscott ahead of the screening. [insta]
Jennie Durant's BITTER HONEY, 7pm, Mrs. Dalloway's Bookstore (Elmwoodn’t You Like To Know). Jennie Durant is among the leading honey bee advocate-scientists in the country and has extensive East Bay roots, including graduate degrees at both UC Berkeley and Saint Mary's College in Moraga. Her new book, Bitter Honey, is a wild ride through the perils and turmoil of honey bees and their keepers as they fend off a litany of ecological and economic crises, from vampiric mites to climate change. Durant will join fellow writer and Saint Mary's alum Mary Volmer to discuss what celebrated Oakland science writer Mary Roach has called "ambitious, important, and utterly captivating book." Attendees are not required to wear black and yellow, but it would probably be funny if we all did. If you need an event buddy, feel free to seek out ORB contributor and former entomologist, newly-endoctored geographer Xander in the audience. [Mrs. Dalloway's]
Also: Repulsive Reads: Rosemary's Baby at North Branch (Berkeley) / Jeremy Lent - Ecocivilization: Making a World that Works for All at Book Passage Corte Madera (North Bay) / From Water To Plate: The Hard Truth About Sustainable Seafood at Faction Brewing (Alameda) / The Art of Midlife 3: Snatched — Angela Garbes & Manjula Martin on Fashion at Local Economy (Rockridge)
Friday, May 29
Wood Street Commons 5th Annual Block Party and Resource Fair, 1pm, Old Greyhound Station (Uptown). OPL and Wood Street Commons are gathering to party and share what we’ve got. Get a haircut, listen to music, make art, chow down with your neighbors. [Wood Street Commons]
Friday Nights at OMCA with Non Stop Bhangra, 5pm, OMCA (The Lake). Non Stop Bhangra and the DJ duo Lychy Jelly take over the Garden Stage with Punjabi beats: live drumming, DJs, dance performances, and interactive lessons for your Friday night. Pairs well with food trucks and hanging out with families and friends. ORB editor Aaron has been known to lurk on the lawn with some babies at an OMCA night out. [OMCA]
Walter Mosley, Ghalen, 6pm, Marcus Books (Longfellow). From one of the great crime fiction writers, who's been cranking them out for decades since Devil in a Blue Dress, Walter Mosley's newest novel Ghalen is described as a coming-of-age novel about love in all its forms, and may (or may not) be a real departure from his whole thing, depending on what you thought his whole thing was. Hear one of the greats read, ask him questions, that sort of thing. [eventbrite]
[West Bay Bonus Event] Public Opening Reception: Vessels for Healing and Transmuting Grief, 6pm, Guardhouse at Fort Mason Center (The Marina). Bay Area raised and Oakland-based multi-media artist Monica Canilao creates reliquary altars, embellished found portraits, and site-responsive assemblage for the Guardhouse: peek in through the windows to observe acts of ritual and remembrance. She creates what she describes as a placeholder for the memories, rituals, and ancestral ties that existed before war and colonization. FOR-SITE's art installations invite us reimagine this shared place, its ghosty buildings and remnant shapes, into new forms. [insta]
OPEN CENTER: Artists-in-Residence— A Conversation, 6pm, Berkeley Art Center (North Berkeley). Artist and writer Thet Shein Win will facilitate a conversation with the recent local artists-in-residence: Jillian Crochet, Dawline-Jane Oni-Eseleh, Natalie Palms, and Sabina Shanti Kariat. All my favorite things will be in the mix: art, nature, place, and our relationship to our lived and local environment of Live Oak Park and the broader Bay Area landscape. Snack and chat about being an artist in the Bay and what we can imagine into being, together. [eventbrite]
Poetry! Re-release Celebration of The Life and Times of Steve Orth, 6pm, Tamarack (Downtown). Friday poetry is.... the re-release celebration of The Life and Times of Steve Orth, by Steve Orth, featuring Steve Orth and Corina Copp. He is "dripping with class resentment and charm," she "poses writing itself as dialogic longing." [insta]
Film & Flick Friday, 7:30pm, Tempyl Skin Studio (Emeryville). Network Effects Theater Company hosts this regular screening of an independent local short and then a feature film, and wants you to come. You'll be flying pretty much blind, since we don't know anymore than that, but in risk there's occasionally reward, so check it out and maybe it will be awesome. [luma]
[West Bay Bonus Event] SF DocFest: Lost Landscapes of San Francisco, 8:15pm, Roxie Theater (The Mission). Rick Prelinger sits among the greatest Bay Area public archivists of all time, and his Lost Landscapes films are one of the of the coolest ongoing local history projects, bar none. The fall and winter showings of this sold out right quick, we're lucky there's a spring chance. Audience members are encouraged to interject when they can identify buildings, parks, people, etc. on screen; each viewing is effectively an attempt to crowdsource spatial data from our collective memory of the Bay Area. This screening of his twentieth installment in the series is drawn from around three hundred reels of archival, largely-unseen footage of the City. [insta]
Also: The Bike Fix at 81st Avenue Branch (Deep East) / N.T. McQueen's NEVER HIDE FROM THE DEVIL - FOR TEENS! at Mrs. Dalloway's Literary & Garden Arts (Oakland) / Free Key Choir: Free Key Forever at First Congregational Church of Oakland (Adams Point)
Saturday, May 30
Black Birders Week Field Trip, 8:30am, Tarea Hall Pittman South Branch BPL (Berkeley). Black East Bay Bird-Curious Folks: you can meet up at the library to get a ride up to Lake Temescal and join the big gathering. [BPL]
Black Birders Week, Day 7: Temescal Regional Park, 9am, Temescal Regional Recreation Area (The Hills). Meet the folks coming up from the library, then look for ducks and herons, listen for robins and crows, search out towhees and woodpeckers with other Black birders going for a walk with binoculars. [East Bay Regional Park District]
Walk and Talk: Ecology of Native Grasses, 10am, Joaquin Miller Park (The Hills). Saumitra Kelkar, local ecologist and environmental educator, takes a walk to share the ecology of native grasses. Grasses are a flowering plant, with the wind as pollinator, and most of our food throughout time has come from grass seeds (wheat, oat, rice etc!): but the native grasslands of California, once expansive and life-sustaining, have been fragmented, developed and destroyed (read Deep Oakland to learn more about all the parts of Oakland that were open grassland during Ohlone stewardship). Follow Saumitra to see remnants and learn the difference between our perennial native grasses and annual invasives. [Friends of Sausal Creek Event Calendar]
Lakeshore Spring Festival, 11am, Lakeshore Avenue (The Lake-ish). Lakeshore is officially the neighborhood where the lesbians, gays, transbians, bears, and all the other letters of the queer alphabet hang out. The inaugural Lakeshore Spring Festival is for all the Oakland LGBTQs and straights, too, adults and kids, diners and drinkers and dancers. Come over in the rainbow crosswalk and enjoy a fashion show and music too, and support all your local businesses, from Silver Moon Kids to Arizmendi all the way up to the Queer Arts Center. [Lakeshore Avenue ]
East Bay Open Studios & Oakland Art Murmur Summer Block Party, 11am, 489 25th St (Uptown). Oakland Art Murmur is turning 20, and while this makes me feel impossibly ancient, it is still worth celebrating. Discover your inner Murm Worm while dancing to live music and DJ sets, creating art with free on-site art supplies, and witnessing immersive performances. The block party is also an opening for East Bay Open Studios (née Closed Studios), with an exhibition showcasing the work of over a hundred East Bay artists. [eventbrite]
~BABF~ Finding Your Literary Community, 11am, Brower Center, Goldman Theater (Downtown Berkeley). BABF heard there's a loneliness epidemic among writers, so they invited representatives from the Writers Grotto, the Ruby, Left Margin Lit, Decentered Arts, SF Writers Workshop, and Page Street to talk about their organizations, and how you can become a member. ORB thinks you should come to our happy hours and write vibe reports for us, but hey: many roads to literary community. [Bay Area Book Festival]
~BABF~ Mindful Democracy, 11am, The Freight (Downtown Berkeley). Opening up the Bay Area Book Fair's running theme of "Fascism Is Here and It's All We Can Think About," this panel is, appropriately, about navigating political burnout. Join Jeremy David Engels (On Mindful Democracy), Liza Rankow (Soul Medicine for a Fractured World), Rima Vesely-Flad (The Fire Inside: The Dharma of James Baldwin and Audre Lorde) and coauthors Kailea Loften and Kate Weiner (Compassion in Crisis) to discuss resilience in the face of a reactionary political movement that feeds on despair. Truly a full deck! The panel, which is moderated by Rev. Dereca Blackmon of Oakland's East Bay Church of Religious Science, promises to be "nourishing," so come hungry. [Bay Area Book Festival]
~BABF~ Staying True to Our Futuristic Minds, 11:45am, Berkeley Public Library, Mystery Room (Downtown Berkeley). Log off! This Bay Area Book Festival panel gathers three J/YA authors whose books confront the digital challenges and perils that define the lives of their young readers. Join Kelly Yang (Finally Heard), Abigail Hing Wen (The Vale), and Aida Salazar (Stream) for a discussion about the quest for virality, AI psychosis, catfishing, and more. Compellingly, the panel will be moderated by Berkeley High librarian Allyson Bogie and Berkeley High senior Penelope. [Bay Area Book Festival]
The 7th Annual Oakland Community Block Party, 12 noon, DeFremery Park (West Oakland). When the Public Library and the Public Defender's Office are throwing a block party for the whole community, you know you're with the best people, the ones holding the whole community together. With jumpy houses, facepainting, bike giveaways, and free legal services, health screenings, job trainings, and everything else we need for a good, decent life in this place we call home. [Oakland Public Library]
~BABF~ The Ins and Outs of MFA programs with SJSU, 12:15pm, Brower Center (Downtown Berkeley). Your parents failed to convince you that you're about to throw your life away, your MFA fees are due, and you're starting to wonder what the hell you got yourself into. Fear not, young poet/novelist/essayist/etc., the sages of San Jose State University have assembled a panel at the Bay Area Book Festival to guide you. Meet SFJU MFA program coordinator Nick Taylor (who writes under the pseudonym T T Monday) and faculty members Keenan Norris (The Confession of Copeland Cane), J. Michael Martinez (Tarta Americana), and Brook McClurg (The Dictionary of Modern Consternation). You can ask them how to prepare for publication after graduation, how to build strong mentor relationships, and if their department plans to eventually hire a second woman. [Bay Area Book Festival]
Local Author Showcase, 1pm, Dublin Library (Hot Side of the Hills). Join the Dublin Library and Towne Center Books for the eastern east bay's Local Author Showcase! Get a book, make a bookmark, meet local writers. Ask them why they weren’t invited to the BABF. [Alameda County Library]
Oakland Noticing Club: Sidewalk Joy Meet-up, 1pm, Local Economy (College Ave). Share what you saw as you sauntered around town this past month, via photos or poems, notes or powerpoint presentation. Vibe report it and get all meta. [luma]
Author Talk: Alka Joshi with Deepa Fernandes, 1pm, Alameda Free Library (Used to be a Peninsula). Alka Joshi comes to the library to talk about her novels: her NYT bestselling Jaipur Trilogy and new novel Six Days in Bombay -- now out in paperback. She's joined by Alameda resident and cohost of NPR’s Here and Now, Deepa Fernandes. South Asian stories, Bay Area writers: sounds like a good day on the temporary island. [humanitix]
[North Bay Bonus Event] Thrity Umrigar with Luisa Smith - Missing Sam: A Novel, 1pm, Book Passage (Corte Madera). Bestselling author Thrity Umrigar appears in person to discuss her new novel Missing Sam, the rare thriller that dares to ask: what if books like Gone Girl or The Lovely Bones weren't just about straight white characters? [Book Passage]
Book Fair Author Talk: Civil Rights and Structural Attacks, 1:30pm, The Freight (Berkeley). Another extremely Oakland lineup at the Bay Area Book Fair: celebrated activist and civil rights attorney Walter Riley and abolitionist journalist (and La Peña program director) Jesse Strauss discuss their new book, Civil Rights and Structural Attacks: Interviews with Walter Riley. Boots Riley, who wrote the book's foreword, is taking a break from undermining capitalism through trippy movies to support his dad for the day. [Bay Area Book Festival]
The Voice of Hind Rajab, 2pm, Newark Public Library (Deep South Oakland). Free screening of the winner of the Grand Jury Prize (Venice International Film Festival) and Oscar and Golden Globe nominated 2025 docudrama film The Voice of Hind Rajab. The voice of the little girl trapped in a car in Gaza, dying with the bodies of her family around her as emergency workers try to get to her, only to be killed themselves. Children in Gaza are still being killed by Israel. [Alameda County Library]
~BABF~ Yeah I'm a Writer. Now What? A panel discussion for emergent authors and literary program alums looking for advice on what’s next, 2:45pm, Brower Center (Downtown Berkeley). Literary citizenship is a practice. Join three working poets and organizers within music, publishing, activism, arts education, and beyond for a discussion on ways new authors can apply their craft in impactful ways once they’ve chosen the writer’s life. Walk away inspired and with a clearer sense of direction as authors Giovanna Lomanto (Game Over Books), Aleah Bradshaw (aka Nyfe of musical duo “Closegood,” Youth Speaks), and Darius Simpson (When the Smoke Comes, SFJAZZ) share advice from each of their unique paths. [Bay Area Book Festival]
[North Bay Bonus Event The Second] Jennie Durant with Novella Carpenter, 4pm, Book Passage (Corte Madera). If you missed Thursday's Jennie Durant bee book talk at Mrs. Dalloway's you'll have another chance to catch the buzz in the North Bay over the weekend! This time she'll be joined in conversation by a central pillar in the East Bay beekeeping community, author and homesteader Novella Carpenter (Farm City). [Book Passage]
~BABF~ Academic Free Speech, 4pm, The Freight (Downtown Berkeley). School is out but the fight against repression and censorship in the academy continues. Law professor Brian Soucek (The Opinionated University), historian Aleida García (Out of the Lab, Into the Street), and Islamic law and theology professor Hatem Bazian (Erasing the Human) gather to discuss union organizing, the myth of institutional neutrality, and resistance against the new wave of suppression of free speech on campus. The discussion is moderated by UC Berkeley professor of American and African American Studies Michael Mark Cohen (The Conspiracy of Capital). [Bay Area Book Festival]
Art and the Archive: A Party + Convo w/ The Believer, McSweeney’s Quarterly, and Transit Books, 5pm, Transit Books (Strawberry Creek Park). Local mags and publishers meet up and get down! The Believer, McSweeney’s Quarterly, and Transit Books like to party by talking about the intersection of art and the archive. Featuring local authors Ingrid Rojas Contreras and Leah Mensch and oral historian Shanna Farrell, thinking together about the past seeping into the present. [luma]
~BABF~ Publishing the Future, 5:30pm, The Freight (Downtown Berkeley). How do we reckon with an insurgent fascist political movement openly dedicated to crushing any sign of diversity in literature, even and especially children's literature? How can publishers and authors push back? This stacked panel lineup includes publishers and authors Phoebe Robinson (Tiny Reparations Press), Cynthia Leitcich Smith (HeartDrum of HarperChildren's), Hannah Moushabeck (Interlink Publishing, the only Palestinian-owned indie press in the country), and Kate Gale (Red Hen Press) alongside moderator María Mínguez Arias (Auntie Lute). Woof! To ease us into a heavy topic, Tristan Marcelle and Oakland's own Bushwick Book Club are opening with a musical performance. [Bay Area Book Festival]
[West Bay Bonus Event] Movie screening + Panel Discussion | From the Ground Up by Katie Quan, 6pm, Unbound Books and Coffee 格外书店 (West Bay Chinatown). Short doc following local history afficionados artist Leon Sun, Barnali Ghosh and Anirvan Chatterjee. Hear why and how they are committed to the work of sharing Asian-American history. And get your tickets for the Radical South Asian Walking Tour, which has an upcoming June date in the West Bay -- just an early foray of East Bay expansion, pay no attention to the Berkeleyites among you, West Bayers. [luma]
Also: Walk & Listen: A Piedmont Ave Branch Audiobook Club at Piedmont Avenue Branch OPL (Not the Ethnic Enclave) / Free Notary Services at Elmhurst Branch (Deep East ) / Bike Mobile: Free Bike Repair Day at Tool Lending Library (Berkeley) / Family Movie Matinee Pop-Up at Lakeview Branch (The Lake) / Cole Swensen, Forrest Gander, & Gillian Conoley: Veer, Mojave Ghost, & Notes from the Passenger at Book Passage Corte Madera (North Bay) / They Called Us Enemy Book Discussion at Albany Library (Solano Ave) / Oakland Bloom Presents: Oaxacan Chocolate Workshop with Rufi's Cacao at West Oakland Branch OPL (West Oakland) / Outdoor Movie Night - Jurassic Park at Duboce Park (West Bay)
Sunday, May 31
Immigration Today Exhibit Opening, 10am, The Lowdown (Downtown). California College of the Arts students made banners and other crafty, artistic objects to communicate the heavy weight of ICE raids and mass deportations, with Lowdown co-founder and arts professor Chris Treggiari as their guide. Come meet the artists, absorb the works of art that exist in relationship tp social struggle. [eventbrite]
~BABF~ Best of California, 11am, The Freight (Downtown Berkeley). Heyday's publisher Steve Wasserman moderates a panel that turns the jewel of California in the light, examining its facets. John Freeman puts on his critic's hat for Heyday and finds the new California canon, one that includes Reyna Grande writing about being an undocumented child migrant, Elaine Castillo's entirely Asian American Bay Area, and Venita Blackburn in Long Beach -- the Oakland of LA. [Bay Area Book Festival]
~BABF~ Environmentally Resourceful: Global Climate Action, 11am, Brower Center (Downtown Berkeley). Ann Carlson's Smog and Sunshine tells the story of clearing the smog from LA's skies, and the collective grassroots work it took. Lead, however, is never gone: it's in our cities, it's in the soil. We can moderate our impact, change for the better, but the metal is heavy, and the damage stays done. In conversation with the wonderful Vijaya Nagarajan, who thinks often about how we make place together, over time. [Bay Area Book Festival]
~BABF~ Carrying the Land: Bodies and Belonging, 11:15am, Poetry Stage (Downtown Berkeley). Poets Abi Pollokoff, Kenneth Wong, Daniel Moysaenko, and Wendy M. Thompson (whose Black California Gold is on the ORB syllabus!) carry land to us in their words, shape it, sketch it, squelch through its blurred and shifting edges. They see the grief in places and the possibility. [Bay Area Book Festival]
~BABF~ Unsung Heroines: Visionary Women of the Bay Area, 12:15pm, Hotel Shattuck Plaza (Downtown Berkeley). Rae Alexandra and Jewelle Gomez will talk about the women sidelined by mainstream histories for being too gay, too loud, too Black, too radical, too from the future, and always too sexy for your party, and who shaped the Bay Area anyway. Also, vampires. Moderated by author of Where the Girls Were and Rad American Women A-Z Kate Schatz, who probably thinks it's fine if you bring your babies here too. [Bay Area Book Festival]
En El Séptimo Día, 12:30pm, The New Parkway Theater (Uptown). An award-winning, independent film about a group of Mexican immigrants working long hours six days a week, then savoring their day of rest on Sundays on the soccer field. There will be raffles from Oakland sports teams and information about local organizations supporting the East Bay’s immigrant communities, all proceeds support El Tímpano, who rock. [El Tímpano]
[West Bay Bonus Event] Bay Area Premiere: Wood Street Documentary, 1pm, The Roxie (The Mission). After a long wait, we can finally catch Oakland filmmaker Caron Creighton's debut feature documentary Wood Street, which narrates the incredible organizing surrounding the Wood Street encampment in West Oakland that was razed by the city in 2023 under the pretense of building affordable housing (it is currently used a parking lot for Ballers fans). Watch this film, read Brian Barth's recent book Front Street, check out the OPL/Wood Street resource fair, and Oakland will keep making community and culture while the West Bay watches it. [SF DocFest 2026]
Cinema Craft Series hosted by Film Critic, Matías Bombal, 1pm, Orinda Theatre (Orinda). Paris Blues! Two American expatriate jazz musicians in Paris meet and fall in love with two American tourist girls (Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, and Sidney Poitier). Our favorite Chilean cinephile Matias Bombal will introduce the picture and lead a discussion afterwards. [orindamovies.com]
~BABF~ Alex Werth on Sonic Politics in Oakland, 2:45pm, Brower Center (Downtown Berkeley). Have you read the compelling and tastefully-curated excerpt from Alex Werth's On Loop: Black Sonic Politics in Oakland in Oakland's most prominent Review of Books? Werth is returning to the The Town for the Bay Area Book Festival, where he will discuss On Loop with Bay Area sideshow legend Yakpasua Zazaboi in a conversation moderated by Oaklandside journalist and East Oakland native Azucena Rasilla. Until then, pump up the volume and listen to Oakland's Black Sonic Politics in Nine Sounds, a playlist assembled for ORB by Alex Werth himself. [Bay Area Book Festival]
Can I Get A Witness? Poetry Circle, 5pm, The AirTemple (Jack London Sq). Share your poems not just to entertain, but to be seen and heard, and help others find the words they need to see their own lives too. Art is a conversation; stay for what happens when your words reach inside people's minds and hearts. [insta]
Fundraiser Open Mic Showcase, 7pm, Chémaki (Hippest Part of Telegraph). An open mic night of poetry, music, art, healing, and powerful performances where the proceeds all go to.... teaching kids how to build robots. Maybe the robots Oakland kids invent will blow up oil pipelines instead of flailing when they encounter stairs. Featured artist: Donte Clark, with Reno the Poet, spoken word artists, rappers, singers, a guy with a saxophone, and more. [insta]
Also: ART SALE: Supporting Immigrant Families at La Peña Cultural Center (Berkeley) / David Helvarg - Forest of the Sea: The Remarkable Life and Imperiled Future of Kelp at Book Passage Corte Madera (North Bay) / Open mic in West Oakland! at TBA (West Oakland)
