Oakland Review of Books calendar of (not just) literary events, May 5-May 10
The spring flood of books and events is finally winding down a little now that the fog has arrived to sock us all in. Oakland is celebrating small businesses this week and trying to get more of them started, so if you have a good idea for an empty storefront, go do the thing. Give your mom an ORB subscription for Mother's Day. We started launching ORB with this calendar one year ago (if you like what we’re doing, have you forwarded this to a friend? Do us a solid, spread the word.) and we included the Lake Merritt Dog Contest then, and we’ll include it again now that we’ve done a full circuit of the sun. Put your dog in the running! Any dog! Even cats snuck in there and were taken relatively seriously last year! There are books to read, poems to hear, and a LOT of comic-based art forms to celebrate this week. There are movies and more movies and plays to see, and if you leave the house, maybe you’ll get a day like I had last Saturday, where I ran into a poet, a fiction writer, and a worldbender on the streets of Oakland, and that was in between the poetry readings. Who will you find at the crossroads? -MS & AB
Tuesday, May 5
Breaking Barriers, Building Community: 2026, 9 am, 2111 Bancroft Way #104 (Cal). An all-day symposium open to all featuring grad students in the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues sharing their research into parks in Oakland's Chinatown, the Ethiopian diaspora in LA, DEI being alive and well inside the West Bay's city government, moldy and lead-ridden rental housing conditions in Alameda County, shrooms, and more! With keynote speaker Ricky Bluthenthal, focused on public health and drug users, to tie a bow on it. [UCB]
Let the Land Breathe!, 12 noon, West Berkeley Shellmound (Fourth Street [“so called Berkeley”]). After years of organizing, court cases, fundraising, planning, dreaming, sweat, and tears, the pavement over West Berkeley Shellmound is being removed. “Bring a chair for yourselves, water, and your good intention for the Land” says Sogorea Te. It's been a long time coming. [insta]
End the AI Race or it May End Us All! Tuesdays & Thursdays throughout Musk v Altman Trial, 12 noon, Ron Dellums Federal Court Bldg. (Downtown). Stand in solidarity with neither Sam Altman nor Elon Musk, and make a scene the way only hairless apes can: in person, with handmade signs, wearing strange costumes. [Indybay]
Using Public Transportation, 4pm, North Branch BPL (North Berkeley). Part of “Literally How: A Life Literacy Series.” If clipper cards confuse you and you're wondering when to ride the TEMPO bus, or you're trying to figure out the ferry schedule and where to drop off those rentable bikes around town, this is for you (I mean me). [BPL]
Tsuru for Solidarity: Panel Discussion, 6pm, Albany Public LIbrary (Albany). Albany and Berkeley libraries together are hosting a panel conversation with Tsuru for Solidarity about supporting targeted immigrant communities through empathy, historical memory, and peaceful protest, in concert with the Albany Reads programming around Satsuki Ina's The Poet and the Silk Girl: A Memoir of Love, Imprisonment, and Protest. [BPL]
One Village, One Book, 6:30pm, Montclair Branch (The Hills). Montclair Library bookclub reading local books, only. Fiercely parochial is the only way I like it (see Paddy Kavanagh's definition, opposing the parochial to the provincial -- the provincial is always looking to the metropolitan center for validation and direction; the parochial “is never in any doubt about the social and artistic validity of his parish.” You missed Chabon's Moonglow last month but you get to talk about Annalee Newitz's Automatic Noodle today, set in a near future West Bay in an independent California. [OPL]
[West Bay Bonus Event] ZYZZYVA Issue 132 Release Party, 7pm, City Lights Books Poetry Room (North Beach). ZYZZYVA knows California writers are making dreams come true. Enjoy pizza and the beauty of good words put together just right with some contributors to the new issue: Carolyn Burke, Anita Felicelli, and Sarah Matsui. [insta]
Tracy Clark-Flory: My Mother's Daughter: Finding Myself in My Family's Fractured Past, 7pm, Mrs Dalloway's (Elmwood). East Bay memoirist Tracy Clark-Flory and local guy who reads a lot Alexis Madrigal in conversation about Tracy's second book, about her journey to finding her half-sister, and the layers of shame and grief around unwed motherhood, adoption, and race that they shed to find a new kind of family and a new love. With her sister Kathy in the audience! [Mrs D's]
The Merritt Dialogues: On Iran, 7pm, The New Parkway Theater (Uptown). “In the shadow of the escalating US‑Israel war on Iran,” is what the description for this event said, when it was written, a few months ago, but is that what it's doing? Is that what it is? Anyway, historian Behrooz Ghamari and feminist journalist Fatemeh Jamalpour will talk about "Iran, dissent, and the futures imagined by those forced to live and write between worlds," with Jeff Chang moderating, and with an introduction by local writer, Farzaneh Yassini. Bay Area Book Festival-adjacent. [Bay Area Book Festival]
[West Bay Bonus Event] Full Bloom, 7:30pm, Public Works (The Mission). The Curiosity Guild meets up to learn from Kyle Weaver about the “sexy silphium” plant that was an herbal miracle cure for Romans until it was over-harvested and extincted by the same folks who brought you lead pipes and Christ on a cross. [insta]
Also: Beyond Displacement: The Rohingya Struggle for Justice at Institute for East Asian Studies (Cal)
Wednesday, May 6
Friends of Sausal Creek: Native Plant Nursery, 1pm, Friends of Sausal Creek Native Plant Nursery (Joaquin Miller Park). Nurture seedlings that will go along the banks of one of Oakland's most restored creeks. Become Creek People. [City of Oakland]
Rooted in Legacy, Barbara Lee conversation with Delroy Lindo, 5pm, Oakland City Hall, 3rd Floor (Downtown). Barbara and Delroy, just hanging out. If you don't have a ticket, you can't get one now, but you can drop lajones@oaklandca.gov a line if you want the sweet feeling of being added to the wait list. [insta]
Russian Poetry and Music, 5pm, Dwinelle Hall, Room 370 (Oakland). Slavic Languages and Literature students come together to celebrate what vodka and surviving both Tsars and Stalinism can do for a culture. За здоровье! [UCB]
[West Bay Bonus Event] Simon Rogers with Clara Jeffery: What We Ask Google, 5:30pm, Ferry Building Store (Embarcadero). If you need a reminder that privacy: we don't haz it, Simon Rogers (a data editor at Google) has written a book drawn from everything you've ever asked the internet. Even Publishers Weekly thinks this book is a big piece of fluff, pointing out that “he frames ‘how often can I donate plasma’ as evidence of altruism instead of financial desperation.” In conversation with Clara Jeffery, editor-in-chief of the Center for Investigative Reporting. [Book Passage]
Alan Chazaro Builds His Own Spaceship, 6pm, Nomadic Bookshop (Uptown). Local poet, journalist, and Coyote Alan Chazaro will read from his new book These Spaceships Weren't Built For Us, which has a “here” section and a “there” section, so you know it's a legitimate Oakland book, and also a “gone” section, because he's living in Veracruz, which is not technically Oakland, but we’ll allow it. He'll be chatting with Sacramento-based Jose Vadi, whose own book Inter State is a great piece of contemporary Californiana (now in sweet, sweet paperback). [nomadicbookshop]
The Mysterious World of the Bull Kelp Forest, 6:30pm, North Branch Library (Berkeley). Author Josie Iselin and illustrator Ellen Litwiller discuss their new book The Mysterious World of the Bull Kelp Forest! There are zombie urchins and iridescent algae, urgent calls for otters, and humans diving into the wreck. [Berkeley Public Library]
Karen Tei Yamashita / Launch Event for Questions 27 & 28: A Novel, 7pm, City Lights Bookstore (North Beach). Legendary novelist Karen Tei Yamashita in conversation with City Light's local wonder Paul Yamazaki about her new book (her first with Graywolf after a career spent at Coffee House! Much small press drama....). Historical fiction rooted in the real stories of Japanese Americans unconstitutionally incarcerated during WWII and their descendants, with Yamashita's genre play and heady mix of the real and surreal to help us understand what it felt like to be turned upside down and shaken by the state. Say hi to the Tsuru for Solidarity folks in the audience if you missed them in Albany on Tuesday. [City Lights]
FLOATING TO SHORE Poetry Open Mic, 7pm, Night Heron (Downtown). Open mic hosted by Duane Horton, the fantasy and Afrofuturism author (I heard him read a couple months ago -- enjoy!). Featured writer is poet Vernon (Trey) Keeve III (Southern Migrant Mixtape). Genres you might hear, or might bring: “poetry, short stories, creative writing, lyrics, meditations, recipes, prayers, spells, memories.” [insta]
Climate Capital, 7pm, Clio’s Books (The Lake). Venture capitalist, Former GoogleXer, and now author Tom Chi on how to use capitalism to fix the world instead of fuck it up. Sounds like he's the last “Don't Be Evil” standing. Come hang with the good guys of tech, and get them to come make fun of Altman and Musk with you at the courthouse at lunch tomorrow. [eventbrite]
Aguirre, the Wrath of God, 7pm, BAMPFA (Downtown Berkeley). Herzog takes on Spanish imperialism, and imagines a crazy guy seizing power to try to take over all of South America, which isn't really too far off from what they did. Another fiction/fact hybrid: this time in the tropics. [BAMPFA]
Also: Portia Elan – Homebound at Jewish Community Center of San Francisco (West Bay) / Bedtime Club at Local Economy (College Ave) / The Berkeley Slam: New S*** Show! Open Mic at The Starry Plough Pub (Berkeley)
Thursday, May 7
2026 St. Clair Drake Conference, 8am, David Brower Center (Downtown Berkeley). Honoring Black Studies as a field and graduate students doing the work all day. [UCB]
End Ai Job Theft + other Harms. Tuesdays & Thursdays throughout Musk v Altman Trial, 12 noon, Ron Dellums Federal Court Bldg. (Downtown). Do it again! Take your lunch break to throw shade and confetti and other disruptive nouns and generally make a very human mess to protest the plagiarism machines sucking up our water and burning our gas to make pornbots. We don’t care who wins as long as all of them lose money [Indybay]
Lunch Poems Reading with Brandon Brown, 12:10pm, Morrison Library (Cal). Xander is excited for the final Lunch Poem reader: Brandon Brown. Marthine was infected by his enthusiasm because that's the point of ORB. Brown is the author of this exquisitely funny poem and probably not of any of these books that turned up when we searched “Brandon Brown.” And Aaron was infected by this description of his book Work as “an intimate field guide to the East Bay, as seen by a speaker in transit to and from their job.” [insta]
Thursday Features, 4pm, Tarea Hall Pittman Branch (South Berkeley). Every Thursday in May see a movie set in the Bay Area at the library. Today it's Big Trouble in Little China which is so '80s it's almost unreal, but it's fun to see special effects before CGI. [BPL]
What We Talk to When We Talk to Language Models with David Chalmers, 4pm, International House (Cal). A philosopher intends to explain that he agrees with Richard Dawkins and will also riff on the TV show Severance. He got to inspire a Stoppard play, which is how he sneaks into the ORB calendar. [UCB]
De-Reasoning Parrhesia: Ubu Trump at the Edge of Speech, 5pm, 142 Dwinelle (Berkeley). The first line of the talk description is “This talk revisits the ancient Greek practice of parrhesia, or “saying everything,” in the final works of Michel Foucault by comparing the parodic speech of the Cynics to the “grotesque sovereignty” of Donald Trump,” and that’s probably all the information you need to test if YOU are the sort of person that wants to go to this talk. Lynne Huffer, who will be talking it, is Philosophy Professor at Emory, and recently wrote These Survivals: Autobiography of an Extinction. She even does collages. [Department of Rhetoric, Center for Interdisciplinary Critical Inquiry]
Article Search Office Hours, 5:30pm, Oakland History Center at OPL (The Lake-ish). Have you not yet planned out your Oakland diorama? Such procrastinating! Get started finding the perfect story to depict in your tableau with helpful librarians by your side. [OPL]
Orwell 2+2=5, 6:30pm, Oakstop [1721 Broadway] (Downtown). Raoul Peck’s documentary about Orwell, and now. Part of the “Black Film: Unscreened & Unstreamed” series. [eventbrite]
Ed Lin in conversation with V. Vale, 7pm, A Great Good Place for Books (The Hills). In Ed Lin's new mystery novel, 5th in his Taipei Night Market series, there are dead bodies, gangsters in the family, undercover spying in a factory, and exploited migrant labor. GGP Books announced recently that business is bad in the hills, and closing is in the near future, so if you live in the neighborhood and like having two bookstores directly across the street from each other, shop harder. [A Great Good Place for Books]
Rhapsody!, 7:30pm, Nomadic Bookshop (Uptown). Local poet Matthew Zapruder and Red Light Lit founder Jennifer Lewis take on the rhapsodic topic, “personal freedom in Utopia.” [insta]
Also: SPUR's Ballots and Brews at Local Economy (Formerly Shafter) / Father Circle at 81st Avenue Branch (Deep East) / Barry Gifford at City Lights Bookstore (North Beach) / Kitchen Table at Maritime SF (West Bay)
Friday, May 8
California Gubernatorial Candidates Housing Forum Moderated by Ezra Klein, 3pm, Henry J. Kaiser Center for the Arts (The Lake). Ezra Klein interviews the top candidates for the seat in Sacramento about housing policy inside the auditorium that has the entire parking lot fenced off to prevent unhoused people from setting up tents, vans, and other improvised housing. And also, uh, kind of a history? [UCB]
Poetry! 6pm, Tamarack (Downtown). Reading, singing, translating, it's Tamarack, they'll put on a show: Leslie Lancaster Allison (a composer!), Peach Kander ("Try to find a word that means the feeling of constantly seeing something moving just out of the corner of your eye."), Denise Newman (six books written! And another six translated!), Emji Saint Spero (librettist special). [insta]
An Evening with Robert Hass, 6pm, Local Economy (Rickrockrickrollridge). Local guy Bob Hass has written a lot more since he came up with the perfect ending to a poem (“saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.”) and is still publishing work in his 80s. Come hear him on my three favorite things all in one new book: A Third Commonness: Essays on Poetry, Poetics, and the Natural World. In conversation with another local poet, Jesse Nathan, whose forthcoming book from Scribner is full of phenomenal poems that those of us who went to Woolsey on Saturday got a sneak preview of. Phenomenal I said and I meant it. [luma]
A Regional Bird Extravaganza To Celebrate BIRDS OF SANTA CRUZ, with Sophie Wood Brinker, Aaron N.K. Haiman, and Alex Harris, 7pm, Mrs Dalloway's (Elmwood). Scientific illustrator, librarian, and ardent community spirit Sophie Wood Brinker brings her tender love of the world to all the birds of her family's hometown in Santa Cruz. Today she's gathering with two other Heyday birdy authors to talk art, place, and feathers. [Mrs D's]
[West Bay Bonus Event] The Mother of it All: Raising Children in a Burning World, 7pm, KALW (FiDi). ORB vibe reporter Sarah Wheeler and her cohost Miranda Rake make a live episode of their podcast about parenting while female, featuring wonderful East Bay poet-mom-friend-firefighter Rachel Richardson on writing motherhood into poetry. Fill up the seats, it's a quick walk from BART! [eventbrite]
Climate Change, Drought, & Reservoir Management in Oakland Hills Watersheds, 7pm, The internet (your computer). Rotary Nature Center Friends host Dr. Kristina Faul, Chair of Enviro Sci at Mills, talking about pollutants, climate change, and reservoirs in the Leona Creek watershed in East Oakland. Local topic, listen from anywhere. [eventbrite]
Jesus Sierra reads at the Lit Nights Reading Series, 7pm, Page Street (Berkeley). Theme: “Bad Decisions.” Page Street writers come together to share their words on all the levels of stupid humans can convince themselves to do. [Page Street]
Also: Oakland Bloom Presents: Oaxacan Chocolate Workshop with Rufi's Cacao at 81st Avenue Branch (Deep East) / Andy Goldsworthy: For Olle at Haines Gallery (West Bay) / The Tin Drum at BAMPFA (Downtown Berkeley)
Saturday, May 9
[North Bay Bonus Event] Kula Nursery Open Day, 10am, the greenhouse (The Petaluma Gap). Get some delicious plants that connect the South Asian diaspora to home through heritage flavors growing in California soil. Celebrate all things subcontinental with culture, music, and food! [Kula Nursery]
Comic Con Oakland, 10am, Oakland Convention Center (Downtown). All the stories, costumes, and artists you could possibly want. Get geeky, get freaky, Oakland. [Comic Con ]
College Cops: UC Berkeley and the Creation of Modern American Policing, 11am, Gayley Road & University Drive (Cal). History PhD candidate Sarah Lee leads you astray for about two hours by walking you through the history of Berkeley's school of criminology, which started as a school for police during Prohibition, became a hot bed for radicals who actually wanted to understand criminality forty years later, and was summarily closed for the above turn in 1976. [insta]
What Is Tragedy?, 11am, Clio’s Books (The Lake). First in a four-week cross-cultural seminar led by Cal lit profs Victoria Kahn and Alan Tansman. Start it off with Oedipus today, and try not to kill your father and marry your mother on the way down into the belly of human carelessness. [eventbrite]
Club de Lectura en Español / Spanish Book Club, 11am, César E. Chávez Branch (Fruitvale). Nos reunimos cada segundo sábado al mes a las once de la mañana. Las reuniones son en español. This week the book is, in English, Gabriela Cabezón Cámara's We Are Green and Trembling, or Las Niñas del Naranjel when it's untranslated, which it will be, because this is an en español book group. [Xochitl Gavidia]
Hella Comix Open Mic, 11:30am, Walnut Creek LIbrary (CoCoCo). If you don't want to tunnel through the hills to all the comics happening in Oakland, you could stay on the hot side of the hills and do a show and tell with the East Bay BIPOC Cartoonists. All the cool kids hang out at the library and draw. [insta]
Walking Waterhoods: Sausal Creek in Lower Dimond Park, 11:30am, Dimond Park (The Dimond). Join Wholly H2O for a historical and ecological walk along Sausal Creek. Hear about Oakland's first people the Huichin Ohlone in the area, the redwoods and the WPA, and share what you know and love about the creek. Say hi to Lucas for me! [Zeffy]
Grand Lake Neighbors Community Meeting, 12 noon, Clinton Park (Eastlake). Alameda County Supervisor Lena Tam and Oakland Councilmember Charlene Wang host a town hall to hear local concerns: come say your piece, and please don't make it about break-ins and potholes. Sign up/send questions ahead of time here. [insta]
Coffee with a Cop, 12:30pm, Elmhurst Branch (Deep East). Ask questions like, Where do you live? How much money do you make? How many times have you stopped a criminal act in progress, not just taken a report later? What do you think of the lead-exposure theory of the rise and fall of violent crime? How many of your colleagues are white nationalists? [OPL]
House of Feelz, 1pm, Nomadic Bookshop (Uptown). Poet/DJs David Maduli and Jason Bayani are trying to break down the difference between music and poetry once and for all. Ran into Jason at Golden Sardine over last weekend; glad he's back on the East Bay side of things this weekend. Poets Janice Lobo Sapigao (Her book of poetry Microchips for Millions will be coming out in a new edition this fall), Kevin Dublin (huge fan of Swedish Modernist poetry, now you know), and Aimee Suzara (who knows what to do with a backing band). [insta]
The Poet and the Silk Girl by Satsuki Ina, 1pm, Central Library (Berkeley). In case you didn't take the time to think deeply about Japanese internment and generational trauma this week, one last chance. Satsuki Ina discusses The Poet and the Silk Girl: A Memoir of Love, Imprisonment, and Protest and how to learn from history. [BPL]
Oakland Ilokana: Film Screening & Cultural Preservation Workshop, 2pm, Oakland History Center (The Lake-ish). Director Elenita Makani O'Malley shows her movie about her Oakland-born grandmother and covers four generations of Bay Area Filipinas navigating displacement, inheritance, and memory along the way. Then she'll teach everyone how to record and create archives of their own elders' lives. [Oakland Public Library]
Bouchra, 4pm, BAMPFA (Berkeley). “Bouchra, a thirty-five-year-old Moroccan jackal and filmmaker living in New York, as she writes an autobiographical film exploring how her queerness has impacted her mother, Aicha, a cardiologist jackal living in Casablanca.” Or it's just a film within a film about the filmmaker making a film about herself, and all that. “Inventively animated.” Indeed! [BAMPFA]
Strike Debt Bay Area Book Group: The Pacific Circuit, 5pm, TBA (Oakland). The paperback of The Pacific Circuit by Alexis Madrigal is out now, and your local library probably has a copy too. Read and discuss the first three chapters of this award-winning book about Oakland's place in the global economy and the sacrifice zone that West Oakland has become to the benefit of everyone else. [Indybay]
Also: The Fragrant Flower Garden: Tea & Bouquet Workshop with Stefani Bittner at UC Botanical Garden at Berkeley (Strawberry Canyon) / Parks and Community Resource Fair at Civicorps (Acorn) / Low Tide Explorations at Crown Memorial State Beach (Alameda) / May Death Cafe at Central Library (Downtown Berkeley) / Roundtable Reading / Lalani of the Distant Sea by Erin Entrada Kelly at BAMPFA (Downtown Berkeley) / Marin Theatre - A Conversation about “Pictures from Home” at Book Passage Corte Madera (North Bay)
Sunday, May 10
South Berkeley Neighborhood Photowalk, 10am, 2727 California (South Berkeley). Walk around and get to know the place you live; find beauty in the ordinary with some local snap-happy new friends. [insta]
WATER WARS - Benefit Screening, 12:30pm, The New Parkway (Uptown). The Klamath is undammed: which river is next? WATER WARS, the new documentary by Todd Darling tells the history of damming, diverting, and finally restoring the Klamath, Missouri, and Mississippi to a future where the surges and floods, and fish and the beavers, come back to reweave a broken net that could hold all of us in its nurturing power if only we'd let it. Land Back, Water Back. [insta]
Rethinking Abstraction: Chinese Calligraphy Workshop, 1pm, BAMPFA (Downtown Berkeley). Peiting C. Li teaches a workshop on the fundamentals of Chinese calligraphy, its simultaneous concreteness and abstraction. Read this essay for more of their thoughts on brush touching ink touching paper. And even if Pound wasn't like, actually accurate about anything in Chinese linguistics, the materiality of it all might get you in the Modernist mood. [BAMPFA]
Long Hail Direct Action Workshop, 2pm, Long Haul (Oaklandkeley). The basics: a workshop on how to change this shit by acting, directly. The Why To that they've linked to. [long_haul_infoshop]
Robert Wilson and the CIVIL warS, 4:30pm, BAMPFA (Downtown Berkeley). We've been opera-pilled thanks to SF Opera's La Boheme and Barber of Seville community outreach (free is the right price for opera) and now we're ready for the behind the scenes avant-garde lets-make-an-insanely-complex historical-opera movie. Of course it features Philip Glass and David Byrne, too. [BAMPFA]
Freaky Tales Benefit for Gilman, 8pm, 924 Gilman Street (Spiritually Oakland). Watch Freaky Tales at Gilman Street, and hear stories about the thing it was really about--at least that first part of the movie--from the people who were there when it was real, and also what it was like to portray a Gilman punk in the film: Q&A with real punks Michelle Cruz Gonzales (Spitboy), Joel Wing (Corrupted Morals), Andrew Champion (Screw 32), and, also, from the movie, LeQuan Bennett, Mikey Infante. Proceeds to 924 Gilman for another 40 years. Print this out and bring it with you. [924 Gilman Street]
Also: Mother's Day Birding at Tilden: Nature Area (Berkeley HIlls) / May 10th Creative Sunday Featured Artist at Gold Palm (Downtown)
