Everyone’s doing so good: This at Bathers and the Berkeley Poetry Festival’s queer poetics workshop with Lourdes Figueroa are sold out already! Hell yes. Bonus points if you can still manage to go. But since you adorable people snagged all the tickets, send us your vibe reports while we shiver outside in the June breeze? Or while we go to the movies: the West Bay’s DocFest continues all week, and BAMPFA in North North Oakland is showing black-and-whites (including “the gayest movie ever made in Hollywood’s Golden Era”) so we can luxuriate in the dark curves of backroads and byways all summer, starting this week. And, turns out, First Friday exists on both sides of the Bay, in alleys and on Telegraph, simultaneously (but maybe a little bit first and longer over here on the East). -MS

Tuesday, June 3

Poetry at the Pottery: A Month-Long Generative Writing Workshop, 7 pm, Jered's Pottery (Emeryville). We’re just bristling with local poet laureates, and Emeryville’s, Sarah Kobrinsky, leads a poetry writing workshop starting this week. Four meetings, come on in. [Eventbrite]

Poetry Tea House, 4:30pm, Ishi Court in Dwinelle Hall (UC Berkeley). Collective reading of recent poems about Palestine, and space, time, and community to write. Drop in anytime until 7:30pm. Hosted by Emilie Lygren and Tehmina Khan. [Instagram]

Ghost in the Criminal Justice Machine, 7 pm, Clio’s (Grand Ave). Emile Suotonye DeWeaver and James King of the Ella Baker Center on white supremacy and the criminal justice system (same thing). The only thing parole boards want to hear is that prison worked: confirm their system or stay trapped in it forever [said from having sat in on them at SQ and hearing it in action]. Come hear stories of transformative justice instead. [Eventbrite]

Also: Against Genocide: Open Mic with Lorene Zarou-Zouzounis, Persis M. Karim, and Carla Schick. Sign up, add your voice. [Berkeley Poetry Festival, Online] / Every Tuesday at 4 pm at the Grand Lake Theater intersection, signs and chanting about Trump. Greyhairs holding it down. [Indivisible]

Wednesday, June 4

Conversation between Emile Suotonye DeWeaver and Lenore Anderson, 6:30pm, Rockridge branch OPL (Oakland). DeWeaver, if you missed him last night at Clio’s, is with the former prosecutor and author of In Their Names, offering a critique of the cynical state appropriation of the victim's rights movement, discussing the criminal justice system and mass incarceration. The appointed Alameda County DA just moved to withdraw resentencing motions that Pamela Price had filed to take people off death row. The cruelty is the point (cliche, but sometimes cliches are true). [OPL]

Oakland Divest! Volunteer Meeting, 7 pm, Oakland Liberation Center, 1499 Fruitvale Ave.  (Oakland). Learn, scheme, and organize together to take meaningful local actions to support Palestinian liberation. Topics for June: leadership and local neighborhood and district planning. [instagram]

Also: Talk That Talk Wednesday Poetry Open Mic [Elbo Room Jack London Square]

Thursday, June 5

Playreaders Circle, 12pm, Berkeley Central Library (Berkeley). Table reading of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun. Love a read-aloud. [BPL] 

Third-Trimester Abortion, 7pm, Womb House Books (Temescal Alley). Beyond Dobbs, beyond Roe: Dr. Shelley Sella's essential new book, Beyond Limits: Stories of Third Trimester Abortion Care invites readers into a typical week at her clinic to demystify a stigmatized and misunderstood form of necessary care. [Womb House]. 

A New World Coming, 6pm, 4124 Broadway (Oakland). This 1-month exhibition visualizes queer erotics in political poetry from the 1980s and 1990s: Sarah O'Neal, Huma Dar, Vero Majano, and D'mani Thomas will open the space to celebrate with an evening of poetry. This project seeks to make archival works more accessible through a gallery space that builds out an intertwined history of queer longing and anti-imperialist struggle. Featuring original work by Tijanna O. Eaton, swilk, Trinh Lê, Nimir Saif, tanea lunsford lynx, Leena Joshi, and more, it’s presented by Queer Cultural Center (QCC) and curated by Tiara Amar as part of the Spring Queer Arts Festival (SQAF). [Eventbrite]

Berkeley Poetry Festival Open Mic, 7pm, Pegasus Downtown (Berkeley). Group poetry reading and open mic, part of the 2025 Berkeley Poetry Festival organized by Bay Area poets MK Chavez and Sharon Coleman. Lineup at the link! [Pegasus]

Also: Owen Hill celebrates The Giveaway at Tally Ho (Piedmont Ave) /  Barbara Ramos With Her San Francisco Photography Book A Fearless Eye (Mrs Dalloway’s) / Ilana DeBare’s new novel Shaken Free (Faction Brewing in Alameda)

Friday, June 6

[Bonus West Bay event] First Friday in North Beach. 4:45 p.m. Vesuvio, Kerouac Alley. Start with under-the-radar poetry in the alley, then head over to Golden Sardine, and then who knows where the circle will circulate next. [Last of the Sunshine] 

[Bonus West Bay Event the second] New Session Issue 3 Launch + Readings, 6:30pm Little Raven Gallery (West Bay). New Session, the world’s foremost Telnet literary magazine, is returning after a nearly four-year hiatus, featuring work that depends on adaptations. WHO KNEW Telnet was gonna keep being a thing? [Eventbrite]

Tamarack Friday poetry, 6:30pm, Tamarack (Downtown Oakland). HOLY SHIT you guys, Jocelyn Saidenberg and Robert Glück are in Oakland for the night. The weight of literary innovation they’re bringing, I am not sure the beams under Tamarack’s second floor’s floor will be able to hold it all up. [Tamarack]

Oakland Youth Poet 2025 Announcement, 7 pm, Oakstop (Downtown). Come hear all the finalists and the announcement of the 2025 Laureate. Emceed by the incomparable artist and educator, EJ Walls. Drumroll please!  [OPL]

Also: Janelle Brown on her new novel What Kind of Paradise (Great Good Place for Books) /    Lakeside Chat #55:Salsa by the Lake! (Lake Merritt Rotary Nature Center) / Friday nights with food trucks and Aguacero for dancing (OMCA) / Fundraiser for NOISEBRIDGE Writer’s Workshop (West Bay) / First Friday: Black Essence (Uptown Oakland) / Berkeley Rep costume shop sale (Mercer-Golden Rehearsal Hall)

Saturday, June 7

Hana Baba shares Folktales from Sudan,11 am, Piedmont Ave Branch. Last chance! [OPL]

East Oakland Futures Fest, 11 AM, on 90th (Deep East). A block party with an Afrofuturistic theme showcasing the best in East Oakland’s food, arts, tech, and culture. I bet there will be books there. [East Oakland Futures Fest] 

La Peña’s 50th Anniversary Festival!, 11:30 am, La Peña Cultural Center. An all day celebration of the power of community, art, and culture to transform lives. Fifty years of community at the center of the anti-Pinochet dictatorship movement in the United States in a place that has become a catalyst for hundreds of diasporic communities promoting social justice and cultural understanding through the arts, education and community action. [La Peña]

Meet Dr. Robert Mossi Alexander, 3 pm, AAMLO. Conversation with executive film director and documentary filmmaker of Reclaiming Our Humanity. The documentary is a collection of stories by six African American men who experience the criminal justice system, proving that with determination, support, and belief in themselves, even the darkest of circumstances can be overcome. Listen in. [OPL]

Strike Debt Bay Area Book Group: The New Possible: Visions of Our World Beyond Crisis, 5 pm, location given on RSVP. Discussing the second half of the book’s essays offering an inspiration and a roadmap for action. [Indybay]

Seeing Red, 6 pm, Firehouse. Oakland’s own Jasper Bernes on his book The Future of Revolution: Communist Prospects from the Paris Commune to the George Floyd Uprising. What will a 21st century revolution look like? Bernes’ book draws out the lessons of past revolutions to understand the attributes that any successful future attempt must have. Praxis! [DSA]

Also: The Last Great Dream with Dennis McNally (Berkeley Public LIbrary North Branch) /   Jim! Six True Stories About One Great Artist: James Marshal, a picture book biography (Books Inc Alameda) / Pride in the Park (Tilden) / Fuck Tesla, you know who and where.

Sunday, June 8

Keep Oakland Beautiful June Garden Tour, 10 AM, East Oakland. Visit two beautiful public gardening spaces: Phoenix Rising Peace Park and Melrose Community Garden. [Eventbrite]

Unfolding, 6 pm, Oakstop (Downtown). A meditative journey of poetry and sound exploring Black queer love, softness, and the sacred moment of being seen—and met—in return. Curated by Lyn Patterson. Readers and writers, speakers and listeners, we make poetry together. [Eventbrite] 

Monday, June 9

Making an exception and including two Monday events, even though according to ORB canon, Mondays don't exist. These are very special. You can’t go wrong

[West Bay Bonus Event] The Back Room Party, 6 pm, Cushion Works (West Bay). Co-curated by TBR editor Claudia La Rocco and Elisabeth Nicula, founder and editor of the SF Review of Whatever. Featuring a bilingual reading of TBR’s final commission  and an edible, limited-edition preview of the Review’s second issue, created by Katherine Ross Ward. I am so bad at goodbyes so thank goodness there’s also a hello here! [Small Press Traffic]

Monday Evening with Malcolm, 6pm, Earth Island Institute, Brower Center (Berkeley). Current leader of California ICAN and retired founder of Heyday and of News from Native California, Malcolm Margolin hosts Robert Aquinas McNally, author of Cast Out of Eden: The Untold Story of John Muir, Indigenous Peoples and the American Wilderness. A serious reassessment of Muir’s legacy, his iconic role as prophet of the American wilderness and the impact of the American conservation movement on the people who were removed for the recreational pleasure of settlers. RSVP to claire@californiaican.org to reserve your seat(s).