Oakland Review of Books calendar of (not just) literary events, October 20–October 25
The Transit party was a forest of epic entanglement in the leaves and vines of writerly, bookishness in the East Bay on Friday; Norah at Litquake is building literary culture and community in the West Bay with forays East but her local calendar makers might keel over along the way. We will crescendo together on Saturday at Litcrawl, the climax of three weeks, and then crawl home. And then there’s the library, who can’t stop won’t stop programming art and culture, celebrations and workshops, brava and thank you. There’s women on screen in Orinda according to Screen Slate, BAMPFA is going all in on Hong Kong on their screens, Tamarack is hosting some Anti-Flock stuff on Thursday, and there’s a community altar for Dia de los Muertos starting this week in Alameda the Island that was Once a Peninsula Before They Dug the Shipping Channel, You Know. You can be a poet who makes theatre as long as you submit by 11/9, and in Deep North Oakland, ecology and art come together around trees starting Wednesday and ending in smoke on Saturday. That heat last week meant short sleeves in North Beach at night, but the acorns are getting fatter and pock-pocking harder, it’s still fall and falling, and now I need to go make soup for dinner because children don’t seem to live on words, but need beans and bread and butter and broth. Cozy up to a bowl and read the bounty before you this week. —XL, AB, MS
Tuesday, October 20
[West Bay Bonus Event] Walking Tour: SF Bay Delta Estuary, 5pm, Mining Exchange building (Downtown). A walking tour of where the water used to be, and where it will be again, if climate change is to be believed, with artists Hughen/Starkweather. Free, but RSVP: Unlike the great wave, which will be come one come all when it comes, this one you have to sign up for beforehand. [eventbrite]
SOLD OUT From the Ground Up Screening and Panel, 5:30pm, Dwinelle Hall (Cal). Short film about Bay Area AAPI community historians, followed by them appearing live and in person, specifically Leon Sun, Barnali Ghosh, and Caroline Cabading, with filmmaker Katie Quan asking questions that her own film hasn't apparently answered. [eventbrite]
[West Bay Bonus Event] ~Litquake~ Living in the Shadow of Silicon Valley, 6pm, SFPL Main Branch (Civic Center). When San Francisco got absorbed into the Valley, the vibes twanged hard and sour in the West Bay. There's still pockets of resistance to the idea that I heard from a South Bay suburbs-raised tech startup CEO turned VC that SF was always dirty and yucky and you'd never go there until Ubering around made it easy (I was like, wait what, I was a Marin teenager going thrifting and Haight Ashburying and getting in the backdoor to raves and eating dim sum and swing dancing and loitering in bookstores in SF in the '90s because nothing was cooler than the city what the fuck are you on about dude and who takes Ubers anyways). Anyways, those guys are in charge now and the vibes they brought are OFF, but the pockets, they resist, and three authors analyze the how and why of it all: Investigative journalist Brian Barth (Front Street: Resistance and Rebirth in the Tent Cities of Techlandia), anthropologist Manissa Maharawal (Anti-Eviction: The Fight Against Tech-Led Gentrification in San Francisco), and journalist Jonathan Weber (City on the Edge: Technology, Politics, and the Fight for the Soul of San Francisco) are all present and accounted for. [sched]
Emerging from the Shadows: Revisiting Black Horror & Black Healing, 6pm, Tarea Hall Pittman South Branch BPL (South Berkeley). Instead of falling prey to tropes like the Black Girl Dies First, what happens when Black authors write horror? Looking at spooky, speculative work that finds fear not in white people's worries but in the horrors history has normalized, Sistah SciFi holds the second gathering of authors on this topic just in time to help you imagine a new haunted house theme this Halloween. Featuring Tamika Thompson, Andrea Hairston, Clarence A. Haynes, Justin C. Key, Hayley Dennings, John Jennings, and jump scares. [eventbrite]
David Naimon, Conversations with Ursula K. LeGuin on Writing, 6pm, Local Economy (Rockridge). Experience the dulcet tones of this bookish podcaster David Naimon ("Between the Covers," now in partnership with Milkweed), who will talk about having talked with LeGuin about her craft nearly ten years ago, when the first edition of the book was published. Interestingly, this is another re-release from Tin House, who since being bought by Zando (there's some good publishing gossip behind that), has been reissuing and repackaging quite a bit. [luma.com]
CSO Chicano History Bookclub with Eastside Arts Alliance, 6pm, Eastside Arts Alliance (Rancho San Antonio). Chicano Movement for Beginners by Maceo Montoya is the text, and the discussion will cover the midcentury movimiento, from the zoot-suited Pachucos who rejected cultural assimilation, to the organizing work that led to the UFW, and, in a 2026 update, one hopes for a discussion of the people being the movement, and how powerful men who use their charisma to create cultures of abuse and secrecy will be toppled and their legacies erased. [insta]
Grace Krilanovich and Kate Folk in conversation, 7pm, Tally Ho! Books (Piedmont Avenue). Grace Krilanovich who is a Two Dollar Radio author (we love love love them!) has written a new novel, Acid Green Velvet, and will talk with local plane fetishist Kate Folk about her fever dream world of early Californian bohemians in San Benito County, writing all night and getting into whatever the nineteenth century equivalent of psychedelics were. [insta]
~Litquake~ Celebrating 50 Years of Publishers Group West, 7pm, Clio’s (The Lake). The seventies were a good time for California presses and Jack Shoemaker and Charlie Winton were your guys for getting your books into warehouses and back out again. PGW is still here, still in Berkeley where it started, though it's now part of Ingram, the only trade distributor left. PGW makes sure many of your fave indie presses can make it into bookstores, including Heyday, Milkweed, and Grove/Atlantic. Come out tonight and experience a real publishing party, with a lot of people who remember when they were even more bumping. [sched]
~Litquake~ Memoirs: Writing Against Silence or Erasure (FULL, but WALK-UPS WELCOME), 7pm, Mrs. Dalloway's (Elmwood). Brooke Warner and Grant Faulkner, memoir enthusiasts, host four memoir writers in conversation who are speaking up and speaking out. Authors are Palestinian-American and West Bay born Elena Dudum (They Told Me Back Home Would Be Beautiful), Oakland writer Judy Juanita who has tried every genre there is, Caroline Paul whose memoir Why Fly followed divorce with flying lessons, and Terria Smith (Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla) who is an original Californian whose travel memoir I Love You So Many takes an Indigenous lens to travel, connecting with people and place from Alaska to Cuba. [sched]
Pitchapalooza, 7pm, Gilman Brewing (West Berkeley). Do you want to be a published author? "Pitchapalooza is American Idol for books (only kinder and gentler)," is what they say about this Litquake event, but even so, it looks like good fun. Writers, selected at random, pitch their (proposed?) books for one minute only, and then judges help improve them on idea, style, marketplace potential, and also whether YOURS is the book that will, in this timeline, turn out to be the thing that cures humanity of its ills and brings about the perfected utopian future where all thrive and live in harmony (or the dystopian one where they don't). [sched.com]
Also: César Vallejo’s TRILCE: A New English Translation at Dwinelle Hall (Cal) / Kupuna 'Āina — with Film Directors Q&A to Follow at Grand Lake Theatre (The Lake-ish) / URGENT COMMUNITY MEETING on Ashby West Transit Lot at Maudelle Shirek Community Room (Berkeley) / West Oakland Book Club: The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride at West Oakland Branch OPL (De Fremery) / KISS & TELL LITERARY SALON at Books Inc. Alameda (The "Island") / Who Owns a Child's Education? at TBD (Oakland) / FLOCK OUT OF BERKELEY: NO TO BIG TECH! at Social Sciences Building (Cal) / The Ring at Davies Symphony Hall (West Bay) / Portals & Pages: Black Fantasy Book Club - Witch Queen Rising at Night Heron (Downtown)
Wednesday, October 21
The Bike Fix, 2:30pm, Martin Luther King Jr. Branch (Deep East Oakland). I learned recently that The Bike Fix exists because there are zero bike repair shops east of The Dimond. There's not a single bookstore east of the lake and south of the hills either now, since the closure of Bandung Books. But the library is stepping in for all your book needs and bike fixes, never fear. [OPL]
Geography Colloquia Series: Salt Lakes: An Unnatural History, 3:30pm, McCone Hall (Cal). Caroline Tracey has her PhD in Geography from Cal and now works as a journalist on the border in the Southwest, but in the meantime also wrote a book about queer bodies and queer bodies of water: Salt Lakes: An Unnatural History, and she will talk about research and the craft of the essay, and brine shrimp, everyone's favorite salty snack (and by everyone, I mostly mean gulls, but not exclusively). [UC]
[West Bay Bonus Event] Vivian Sming: Sming Sming Books: Ten Years of Publishing, 5pm, CCA Campus Gallery (Dog Patch). Vivian Sming makes books of all shapes and sizes, ones with coyotes as die-cut portals, ones that are cassette tapes, ones typeset in glyphs and scripts that never existed before. Ten years of asking what is book and answering it differently every time with new celebrations and archives, publishing a community of writers and artists like Helen Shewolfe Tseng who are chiming in with a howl of wonders. [insta]
Close Reading in the Wake of Philology | A talk by Prof. Frances Ferguson, 5pm, Maude Fife Room (Cal). Close reading is noticing how language is working on you as a reader, noticing not just what is being said by the author, but how it is working on the page and on you, and then writing about it on your way to figuring out the meaning of the text. Ferguson plans to close read John Guillory's recent book on the very topic itself and New Critic WK Wimsatt's mid-century explication of explication. If you missed A Life of Their Own and want to think more about reading, hang out in Wheeler Hall today. And apparently you can do it all again with Ferguson by closely reading Richardson's Clarissa on Thursday for a double down on the double-downing. [UC]
Mrs. Ramsay’s Rêverie, 5pm, Townsend Center (Cal). Writers read books, write other books shaped by the books they read. Get out of your own head and into someone else's mind, come back to the world and the page and make a new thing you couldn't have written before that book got inside you. At least, that's what Joanna Stalnaker's claiming about the impact of Rousseau’s Rêveries du promeneur solitaire on Virginia Woolf's work and ORB agrees: solid position to think about reading from. [UC]
West Oakland Community Meeting, 5:30pm, West Oakland Public Library (De Fremery). "West Oakland Resisting Displacement" invites you to come by the library and learn more about what Musk and Bezos are doing at the American Steel Building, and probably shouldn't be allowed to. [insta]
Blaise Agüera y Arcas: What Is Intelligence?, 5:30pm, Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing (Cal). One of the best conversations I've had in my life was when my sister and I were talking about what makes poetry so brain tickly, and her background in neuroscience helped me understand how the mind autocompletes experiences and perceptions of the world and of language with expectations, and having to reorient to surprise costs the brain energy to figure out. The pleasure of rhythm and the comfort of repetition are the brain's little reward system for its predictions being fulfilled. Blaise Agüera y Arcas, who must pull a fat stack from his fellowship at Google, is into the predictive brain hypothesis but writes in his new book on the topic that because computers predict, they also count as intelligences, when I would say it's the leap PAST the predictable that makes our brains into more than machines. [UC]
Poet Melinda Clemmons book launch with Kim Addonizio and Tracey Knapp, 6pm, Local Economy (Rockridge). Oakland's Melinda Clemmons can make a poem from an empty condom wrapper in a churchyard and another one from a hook up at the Elbo Room, so come hear poems that look at this ordinary world with both a wry eye and romantic possibility. Reading alongside her are poets Tracey Knapp from San Leandro, who can turn a moon into the boyfriend who finally made a break-up stick, and the legendary Kim Addonizio, one of those poets I will follow anywhere, and have, since I first read her book Tell Me twenty five years ago (though that one time we were on the same shuttle bus in LA was just a lucky coincidence, I swear; usually I just aim to find her in rooms where she's behind a mic so I can sit anywhere, at the bar, on the floor, and listen). [luma.com]
[West Bay Bonus Event] APAture 2026: Literary Arts Showcase, 6pm, Arc Gallery & Studios (Leather District). This makes twenty seven years of highlighting the incredible Asian American writers that the Bay Area fosters, thank you Kearny Street! Come hear all these emerging writers read their work on the theme of "generation" so you can say you knew them before they were famous: Bianca Datta, Mai-Linh Hong, May-Li Khoe, Monica Korde, Leslie Nguyen-Okwu, Alyson Sagala, Neha M. Sampat, Vina Vo, Brandon Vu, and Rose Wong. [insta]
[West Bay Bonus Event] Rejects Reading Series, 6:30pm, Qua O La (North Beach). Local writers and an open mic! Even with Litquake stuffing all the poets and writers they can into every nook and cranny, with so much programming it spills over to the East Bay, there's still more writers seeping out of the seams in the city. It's uncontainable. Readings by Giovanna Lomanto, Emma Jin, and Wolfgang Mowrey, and whoever else has a tight three minutes. [insta]
Grand Lake Neighbors Meeting, 7pm, Barnett Hall (Grand Lake). Neighborhood meeting to hear about what Charlene Wang's been doing for her home district, an update on the lucky ducks who will get to live directly upstairs from Heart & Dagger once the giant parking lot is made into housing the way that God and YIMBYs intended, and the League of Women Voters are going to share their guide to California's propositions but wouldn't you rather read ORB's instead? We're working on local measures and politicians too, so vote early but not TOO early, and let us know what the vibe is for D2 because this is the one district where there's actually an interesting choice (there are Nate Adams signs all around the neighborhood, so let's see what happens!) [Grand Lake Neighbors]
Haunted Oakland, 7pm, Clio’s Books (The Lake). Courtney Minick and Beth Winegarner tell you spooky stories about how Oakland is haunted by the decisions of racist urban planners past and also ghosts. [eventbrite]
Seth Fleisher's THE FARTHER SHORE, 7pm, Mrs. Dalloway's Bookstore (Elmwood). Local author Fleisher retired from doing NGO work with the World Bank just in time to write a novel imagining a main character who bears a vague resemblance to what would have happened if he had stayed at Harvard studying Buddhism and then gone on epic adventures across time and continents. There's sinister plots, African jungle, and healing from abandoning parents across decades. Living the Berkeley boomer dream, man. [Mrs D's]
SOLD OUT Minnesota Neighbors, 7pm, Grand Lake Theatre (Grand Lake). Minnesota showed us how mutual aid networks can work, how neighbors can rescue each other when state power comes in to disrupt and destroy the social cohesion of a community. A whole theatre full of Oaklanders will get inspired by the strength of community bonding in this documentary by the anti-hate group Not In Our Town about ordinary people living their values together in the face of violent state action—hope you got your ticket already! [eventbrite]
Also: Berkeley Book Chat with Lisandro Claudio—The Profligate Colonial: How the US Exported Austerity to the Philippines at Geballe Room (Cal) / Día de los Muertos Calavera Decorating at Lakeview Branch (The Lake) / Teen Zine Club: Spooky Szn at Main Library TeenZone (Downtown) / Dr. Giovanni Aloi on New Art Eco-models at UC Botanical Garden (Strawberry Canyon) / German Film Club: Die Verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum at German Library (Cal) / Dimond Book Club Reads Happy Land: A Novel by Dolen Perkins-Valdez at Dimond Branch OPL (The Dimond) / Lea Redmond—This is For You: Gift-Giving as a Way of Life at Rockridge Branch OPL (College Ave) / ~Litquake~ California Journeys with Angelica Glass, Irena Smith, and Grant Faulkner at KALW (West Bay) / Marjorie Keller Films at BAMPFA (Downtown Berkeley) / Story Slam: Spirits at Far Leaves Tea (San Pablo Corridor) / The Berkeley Slam ft. Saint at The Starry Plough Pub (Berkeley)
Thursday, October 22
Film Screening: Sunday Beauty Queen, 4pm, Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (Cal). Sometimes a pageant can be ceremony and liberation, and in this documentary the carnaval of glitter becomes escape from servitude for Filipina servants in Hong Kong. Pleasure activism counts for everything. [UC]
Filipino Stories: “Call Her Ganda” Film Screening, 5:30pm, Hearst Field Annex (Cal). Seeking justice for Jennifer Laude, a transgender Filipina woman murdered by a US Marine, three women stand against US imperial power to try to make things right. [UC]
[West Bay Bonus Event] ~Litquake~ California's Diverse Food and Farming Movements, 6pm, Book Club of California (Union Square). Too many times the talk of growing food that's nutritious, delicious, and ecologically sound is not tied in with the work of liberation of those whose labor powers the extractive industrial agricultural system. But today, you can put it all together with Antonio Roman-Alcalá, whose North Stars of Emancipation: California’s Diverse Food and Farming Movements looks at grassroots food movements stepping into their own power, and he's talking to Sara Calvosa Olson (Karuk), author of Chími Nu’am: Native Californian Foodways for the Contemporary Kitchen, from Heyday, who is one of those people whose cooking practice is always toward food sovereignty and decolonizing our minds, hearts, bodies, and land-relationships. And then when you've listened, bought their books and joined the movement, help out the Marigold Fund, who puts land and power directly in the hands of Californians doing agricultural labor in the Valley. [sched.com]
The Philosophy of Huey Newton: Delio Vásquez in Conversation with East Bay Yesterday, 6pm, Local Economy (Rockridge). Mark the 60th anniversary of the foundation of the Black Panther Party at Merritt College's original location in North Oakland on MLK by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale by... going to the tonier part of North Oakland to talk about it. Prof Delio Vásquez will talk with East Bay Yesterday's Liam O'Donoghue about his new book Huey P. Newton: I Am We, a history of Newton's theories for movement building that brought the Panthers into collaborative, cross-cultural solidarity for liberation with all the local rabble-rousers. [luma]
[West Bay Bonus Event] We’re Still Here: Persistence, Resistance, and Environmental Journalism, 6pm, Little Raven Gallery (SoMa). Environmental journalists Jamie Jiang, Ezra David Romero, Sachi Mulkey, Kang-Chun Cheng, and Melina Walling share their work of developing stories from the frontiers of climate change science and disaster. Centering frontline communities and journalists of color, these are the voices that matter when it comes to thinking about how we will adapt, repair, and live in the future in which this is the coolest October of our lives and I was wearing short sleeves in the West Bay all week long at night. [eventbrite]
The Becomers, with special guest A.S. Hamrah, 6pm, Shapeshifters Cinema (JLS). Welcome n+1 film critic A.S. Hamrah to Oakland and he'll welcome you to watch what Zach Clark could do with $100k and the idea for a B movie about aliens who romance each other while wearing skin suits of humans and you'll hear why society loves to throw money at bad ideas but the real art is happening off in the corners where no one is looking—except you today, at the big screen and at the guy telling you about it. [tickettailor.com]
Let The Land Breathe: The History of East Bay Shellmounds, 6pm, West Branch BPL (San Pablo Corridor). Hear the history of the shellmounds that marked territory and memory for the peoples who thrived along the Bay for millennia, becoming archives of memory, graveyards, and sacred sites before they were razed and the organic materials from the bodies of both human and nonhuman kin repurposed by settlers as compost and road paving. Learn what the vision is of the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, who now owns the land that was the West Berkeley Shellmound, is currently a parking lot, and will become a site for Indigenous gathering. [BPL]
High Fidelity Radio Panel Discussion , 6pm, Tarea Hall Pittman South Branch BPL (South Berkeley). Public libraries are bringing culture to the people in so many ways! Pendarvis Harshaw writes in Berkeleyside about the Berkeley Library program In the Stax collaborating with Black American Sound System (B.A.S.S.), and today the program features current local radio stations and discussions of radio's community work to broadcast and create simultaneous listening experiences. Lower Grand Radio, Youth Radio, Hyde FM and Dregs One who does the History of the Bay podcast will all be speaking! [BPL]
Black Film: Unscreened & Unstreamed, 6:30pm, Oakstop (Downtown). Some local short movies! Taja Dominique's BLEEDING and YOURS TRULY, ARTISTRY; Cheryl Fabio's movie about her mother who was also the mother of Black Studies in the East Bay, RAINBOW BLACK: SARAH FABIO; and in sync with the exhibit at OMCA, MYL3Z Brown on his grandmother's artistic work and life: MEMORIES IN MOTION: MILDRED HOWARD [eventbrite]
Donna Miscolta in conversation at Womb House Books, 6:30pm, Womb House Books (Temescal Alley). Donna Miscolta comes to town with her new novel, Ofelia & Norma. What is a twin bond other than looking alike, and if you no longer look alike, does that mystical sense of a doubled self disappear, is one of the questions this novel circles around. Twins, estrangement, fat bodies, shocks, secrets, and revenge! Sounds positively gothic. In conversation with Oakland’s Margaret Juhae Lee. [eventbrite]
Celebrate Lucille Clifton!, 6:30pm, Books Inc. Alameda (Current Island, Former Oakland Peninsula). Hurrah for Lucille Clifton, and happy birthday to the iconic poet whose hips were magic, "i have known them / to put a spell on a man and / spin him like a top!" Her daughter Sidney Clifton will share her mother's work and life on the occasion of a new publication of previously uncollected poems. [eventbrite]
[West Bay Bonus Event] ~Litquake~ Ben Ehrenreich: Hold Still, 7pm, City Lights (North Beach). We love us some City Lights, and they have just published a book of animal stories by Ben Ehrenreich made as he wandered through the utterly changed yet always continuing world with his young daughter in the wake of the death his mother, the influential writer Barbara Ehrenreich. He turns a personal grief practice into an homage to the power of language to make sense from what life brings us. In conversation with Daniel Gumbiner, editor of The Believer! [sched]
Kristen Millares Young: "Desire Lines" with Kim Addonizio, 7pm, Pegasus Books (Downtown Berkeley). Cuban-American writer Kristen Millares Young made a memoir out of essays in which she considers being a woman and becoming a mother, published by Red Hen (who has been going through it with the slashing of NEA funding but seems to have come out ok) and bristling with good blurbs from writers you know and love like Melissa Febos and Elissa Washuta. And she's in conversation with Kim Addonizio (YAY! AGAIN!), whose poems were some of the first I ever read that took women's sexuality and emotions seriously, and who continues to deliver the goods as she mothers and writes and womans and writes and makes a poet's life work here in the Bay. [Pegasus]
Breathless, 7pm, BAMPFA (Downtown Berkeley). A French classic! A.O. Scott says, "Still nothing like it. Still cool. Still entirely original," and he's seen a lot of movies, so there you go. [bampfa]
[West Bay Bonus Event] Baratunde Thurston & Blaise Agüera y Arcas: On Interdependence, 7pm, Cowell Theater (For Mason). Baratunde Thurston is a writer who has been hosting a show about people going into nature on PBS lately, and as we established above, Blaise Agüera y Arcas is sure that computers are genuine intelligences now. They'll be talking about symbiosis, which Octavia Butler thinks is sexy, but Ed Yong's I Contain Multitudes reminds us is not necessarily beneficial, and I don't know how we're going to discuss interdependence and intelligence with computers and cells, other than thinking about how we collectively make the world through our imaginations. See you there and let's figure it out. [longnow.org]
Also: Can Countries Be Held Liable for Climate Change? Inside the ICJ’s Landmark Advisory Opinion at Berkeley Law (Cal) / Fireside chat: Inside CalPERS with Mullissa Willette and Brian Judge at Berkeley Economy & Society Initiative (Cal) / The Poet’s Bookshelf Discusses Natalie Diaz's Postcolonial Love Poem at Nomadic Bookshop (Uptown) / SOLD OUT Fire, Earth, Air & Water: Nik Sharma on the Science of Better Cooking with Soleil Ho at Book Society (Elmwood) / Hieu Minh Nguyen & Friends at The Stud (West Bay) / ~Litquake~ Chad Harbach: The Brightness with Eirinie Carson at The Lost Church SF (West Bay) / Black Fae Movie Night Meet Up: Spooky Island Scooby Doo at The New Parkway Theater (Uptown)
Friday, October 23
Symposium: Divestment Now! Student Activism and the Anti-Apartheid Movement at UC Berkeley, 10am, Morrison Library (Cal). Turns out Jeff Chang was an anti-apartheid activist in 1985, and so he and three others who were part of the call for UC divestment from South Africa will talk about it, and take you on a tour of being a Gen Xer. [UC]
Labor Lunch: John Mondragon & Jordan Rosenthal-Kay—“Does a rising tide lift all boats? Evidence from the Bay Area tech boom”, 12:10pm, Evans Hall (Cal). John Mondragon & Jordan Rosenthal-Kay, two economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, answer the question that most of us can probably intuit the answer to. But sometimes it's good to see the data that backs up the vibes. [UC]
Company Towns, 3:30pm, Social Science Matrix (Cal). An interesting take on the perennial "What's wrong with [Appalachia]?" genre, the argument in Elizabeth Mitchell Elder's Company Towns:Industry Power and the Historical Foundations of Public Mistrust is that mining-company dominance created a particular form of political dysfunction, patterns of corrupt and low-capacity local governments that taught people not only to expect less and less from their government, but continues to fuel a kind of cynicism with public institutions that continues to shape how people understand their relationship to society. I have already convinced myself that she's right, just from writing this description. [UC]
Oakland Delivers Resistance, 6pm, Understory (Fruitvale). Oakland People's Arms Embargo points out that FedEx has planes with heavy payloads bringing pieces of bombs to Israel from Oakland. Local grassroots organizations dedicated to liberation all over the world will coalesce to support Palestinian freedom and the end of the genocide in Gaza. [instagram]
Three Years of Ongoing Genocide: A Conversation with Ali Abunimah, Lara Kiswani, and Cat Brooks, 6:30pm, First Congregational Church of Oakland (Adams Point). There are so many ways to express your solidarity with Palestine from Oakland. You can buy coffee at the newly reopened Jerusalem Coffee, you can plan blockades at Understory, or you can come learn about the news from Palestine and support the work of artisans and the needs of children through established nonprofits. No matter where you fall on the spectrum from bougie to black bloc, use your wallet or your voice, your body or your time to say all children should be safe and all people should be free. Tonight you can hear journalist Ali Abunimah on what's really happening in Gaza and Lara Kiswani whose support for Palestinian freedom is part of her Third World liberation work more broadly. In conversation with Oakland's Cat Brooks. [humanitix.com]
Poetry! 6:30pm, Tamarack (Downtown). It’s Roof Books’ 50th Anniversary Celebration because the ‘70s were good for small presses. Featuring Bob Perelman, Jean Day, David Buuck, Norman Fischer, Robert Glück, Carrie Hunter, Elizabeth Robinson, Laura Moriarty, Jocelyn Saidenberg, Evan Kennedy, Sara Larsen, Jacob Kahn, Diane Ward—guest hosted by Kit Robinson. Look them up yourselves, or just come out and hear them, they’re all great and I think we’re past 7500 words by now on this here calendar. [docs]
Litquake's Finale in Verse: Phillip B. Williams, Fatimah Asghar, Stephanie Horvath, D.A. Powell, D.M. Spratley, 7pm, First Presbyterian Church of Oakland (Uptown). Poets from the East Bay, the West Bay, and even Chicago wrap up the Oakland wave of Litquake events tonight! Hear from Fatimah Asghar, Stephanie Horvath, D.A. Powell, D.M. Spratley, and Phillip B. Williams. SO MANY POETS EVERYWHERE.[pegasusbookstore.com]
Also: Día de Los Muertos Calavera Decorating at Temescal Branch OPL (Temeskull) / A.S. Hamrah in conversation with Adina Glickstein at et al (West Bay) / computational poetry reading group: game poems co-presented with Culture Slop at tiat (West Bay)
Saturday, October 24
Create your own Field Guide to the Birds of Lake Merritt, 9am, Junior Center Of Art & Science (The Lake). Learn to sketch birds at Lake Merritt, with Heyday author/artist/noticer of the living world John Muir Laws. About four hours, during which you'll be at the lake and sketch birds, what more do you need to know? Make friends with birds and people and make zines with birds and people. [eventbrite]
Bulky Block Party, 9am, 7101 Edgewater Drive (MLK Shoreline). These are fun. You have junk. Drop it off and then you won't have it. [oaklandca.gov]
Cafecito in Nature con las Mariposas Monarcas, 11am, Atlas Bridge (Point Pinole). A gentle naturalist-led walk to look at butterflies at Point Pinole, led by Martha Cerda, and a lot of the description is in Spanish without really clarifying whether that means it's meant to be in Spanish. That's probably what it means? Monarchs migrate from the East Coast and midwest to Michoacan (where their roosting forests are being cut down to grow avocados for our guac needs up here) and are associated with Dia de los muertos due to their migratory, transformative nature, but the ones here in the Bay never go to Mexico at al. Ours move east and west from the uplands of the Sierra to the West coast nooks and crannies for our fair coastal winters. Diff'rent strokes. [EBRPD]
Restorative Economics in Action!, 11am, Revival Hall—formerly Omni Commons (Temescal). Instead of Tony! Toni! Toné! singing "If I Had No Loot," we've got Noni, Nia, and Nina, and they're singing the siren song of restorative economics. Hear about local and east coast efforts to create shared land ownership for collective power and economic sovereignty, especially for BIPOC communities. Feels Good! [eventbrite]
What DO People Do at the Science Museum?, 11:30am, Central Berkeley Library (Downtown Berkeley). Two UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology scientists come to answer the question that author Maggie Tokuda-Hall has also answered in her picture book that is surprisingly full of words too, for all your children who love fossils and feathers and gemstones. [BPL]
Open House & Screening and Book Launch, 1pm, Parapraxis Books—1736 Franklin St (Downtown). Are you into thinking about thinking? So is Parapraxis! The only psychoanalytic bookstore anywhere in the US is now OPEN in downtown Oakland! Come peruse books and I suppose, buy some, and then listen to the marathon reading that starts at 5 pm and has everyone in it: Ussama Makdisi, Ramsey McGlazer, Noor Asif, Brittany Newell, Francisco González, Geoffrey G. O’Brien, Perwana Nazif, Samiha Khalil, Wendy Trevino, David Buuck, Hannah Zeavin, Amy R. Wong, Matthew Shutzer & more. [insta]
a READING of the NOITUTITSNOC, 1pm, Central Berkeley Library (Downtown Berkeley). What does that title mean? Well, it means Christy Chan will read the Constitution backwards, followed by a panel discussion with Michael Schulze-Oechtering and Nicole Ozer, moderated by Jeff Chang (who is Octobering hard this week), about what that document means to us, and should, and could. (Apparently, also, Paul McCartney is dead). [BPL]
Casual Puppet Making Meetup, 2pm, Drake's (Uptown). Do you dream in puppets? In very large puppets? Come meet your people, your puppet people, and plan something to rival the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, casually. [insta]
BABF Boo-k Fair, 2pm, Two Pitchers Brewery (Uptown). There will be book swapping, book selling, silent reading, and lots of local independent presses excited to show you their wares. Choose your bookish entry point, there's one for everyone. [luma]
Black Panther Party Film Series, 2pm, African American Museum and Library (Old Oakland). Ain't no party like an old film that's been digitized party! Come see what's in the video archives of AAMLO documenting the rise of the BPP to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Panthers. [OPL]
Launch of Rainer and Violet's Spunk editions work, This Reasonable Habit, 2pm, Both/And (Berkeley). It's hard to overstate how excited I am about this one. Rainer Diana Hamilton (of Lilacs) and Violet Spurlock (of In Lieu of Solutions) are releasing their collaborative poem This Reasonable Habit, in which they become hosts of an imaginary literary summit. The snippets I've heard from this at readings here and there have been funny, clever, and incisive to a degree that almost feels unfair at times. Our emcee: Oakland poet and translator Paul Ukrainets. [insta]
Oakland Star Special Collection Exhibition: From the Archives The Black Panther Party Original Newspapers 1967-1971 Opening Reception, 5pm, African American Museum and Library (Old Oakland). Most people know about the Black Panthers' community patrols and survival programs, but the Panthers were also among the most successful independent publishers in the United States through the 1960s and 70s. The The Black Panther Party Newspaper alone had an international circulation of hundreds of thousands of copies weekly, with a politically-informed distribution strategy that subsequent organizations have struggled to replicate. We don't know much about the opening reception for the exhibition of archival Black Panther Party newspapers from 1967-1971, but we suspect that the crowd it gathers alone will be worth the trip to Old Oakland. [OPL]
Litcrawl!!, 5pm, Everywhere along Valencia Street (The Mission). Litcrawl existing made me feel like I was doing something right with my life when I moved back to the Bay in 2011. How lucky we are to have a night when all the writers are right here, reading to you, workshopping with you, hanging out on sidewalks and concentrating us into knots of writerly, readerly energy. Get your words into the world for four hours, then crawl home, very lit, after the night is over. [sched]
Bad Energy, 5:30pm, Nomadic Bookshop (Uptown). Joshua Frank and Scott Parkin will be at Nomadic to talk about Frank's green transition bummer book, Bad Energy: The AI Hucksters, Rogue Lithium Extractors, and Wind Industrialists Who Are Selling Off Our Future. File this under "degrowth books about how endless capitalist growth, and not the specific bad form of energy, fossil fuels, is the main problem fueling climate change" and decide whether that's your jam or not. [Nomadic Bookshop]
Jerusalem Coffee House Grand Re-Opening (Plus Harakat!), 6pm, Jerusalem Coffee House (Shafter/Temescal). I guess they're back? Hopefully for good. It's not clear from this what the state of play in their legal situation is—which led them to briefly close—but "an evening of coffee culture and community, featuring cars (and possibly vendors)" sounds like a lot of fun, and if you can support them, do! [insta]
[West Bay Bonus Event] ~LitCrawl~ Mesa Refuge Presents: In the Spirit of Kapwa, 6:30pm, Medicine for Nightmares (The Mission). There are a million literary happenings during LitCrawl, but this one is gathering voices of Filipina writers around the concept of kapwa, a Tagalog word that encompasses interconnection with all living things. The local writers are Isa Borgeson, Christine Cordero, Rona Fernandez, Jassmin Poyaoan, Aileen Suzara, Aimee Suzara, and Angel Trazo, who all have been supported by the Helen Toribio Kapwa Fellowship at the West Marin writing retreat, Mesa Refuge. [litcrawl]
[West Bay Bonus Event] ~LitCrawl~ POLY AF: A Literary Reading, 6:30pm, Teeth Bar (Mission). This is barely a West Bay event, all the authors talking will be coming over from the East Bay, which is I am guessing is where most of the polycules are anyway. Hear about characters with calendaring kinks and how to be non-monogamous in that "we have clear boundaries and talk about them, check in with each other, and know how to deal with jealousy and inevitable conflict" kind of way instead of the DM-sliding with deniability kind of way. East Bay favorites on stage are: memoirist Carvell Wallace, YA author Shanthi Sekaran, novelist Tomas Moniz, and memoirist Minna Dubin. Get the good East Bay gossip in the West Bay tonight. [litcrawl]
Also: Lend a Hand to the Land, with Good Guest Dimond at Joaquin Miller Park (The Hills) / Floating Pumpkin Patch at West Campus Pool (Berkeley) / A Tribe Called Queer Book Club Reads All Boys Aren't Blue by George M. Johnson. at Oakland Main Library (The Lake-ish) / California Writers Club at Rockridge Branch OPL (College Ave) / Beyond Godolphin: The Hank Jones Story at San Leandro Public Library (Far Eastern Oakland) / Samples and Scrapers Car Show and DJ Set at Tarea Hall Pittman South Branch BPL (South Berkeley) / The Music of the Word/ La Palabra Musical at Fruitvale Branch (Valle del frutas) / Latinx Heritage Forum at 3289 Mission St (West Bay) / Seen & Heard: A new active-storytelling experience—with Tanna Samone at 3235 Grand Ave (Grand Lake) / ~LitCrawl~ On Poems, Cookbooks, and Flock Cameras with Andrew Brobst, Bryant Terry, and Natasha Huey. at Teeth Bar (West Bay)
Sunday, October 25
Oaks, Acorns, and Friends: Huckleberry, 9am, Huckleberry Botanic Regional Preserve (The Hills). "Oaks, Acorns, and Friends" is kind of a redundancy if you are a true plant lover. This walk with unlimited openings will heavily feature the Golden Chinquapin (Chrysolepis chrysophylla), Quercus's cool goth cousin. Consider taking the bus up (e.g. the 642) because, in my experience, Huckleberry parking can get tight on the weekend. [EBRPD]
32nd Annual Día de los Muertos Community Celebration, 11am, OMCA (The Lake). Clive Barker once wrote that ultimately, "we are all our own graveyards," but maybe he didn't go far enough. This year OMCA is hosting its 32nd annual Día de los Muertos celebration. Thirty-two!! Life (and thus, death) looked so different back in 1994. Dale Earnhardt won his seventh and last Winston Cup, tying the record. A little-known young racer named Jeff Gordon won his first cup series race at the Coca-Cola 600, the first of 93 in his long career. Neil Bonnett and Rodney Orr both died in horrific accidents at Daytona. A bunch of non-NASCAR stuff probably happened that year too, I wasn't really paying attention back then. Anyway this looks fun and you should go. [OMCA]
But What Will People Say? Book Discussion Event, 11am, Nomadic Bookshop (Uptown). How can immigrant communities find the care they deserve in a mental health landscape that was not always designed with them in mind? Oakland therapist Alisa Jacobo will be leading a small group discussion for adult children of immigrants on But What Will People Say, the recent book by author, and founder of the mental health organization Brown Girl Therapy by Sahaj Kaur Kohli. [kit.com]
[North Bay Bonus Event] Light Sensitive: Lumen Printing Workshop & Tea Tasting, 12 noon, Headlands Center For the Arts (The Headlands). We love an art workshop that involves drinking fermented folk beverages with names like "Nuclear Tea." Come jam with current Headlands Artists in Residence Aleksandra Wałaszek & Samuel Stevens, creating lumen printing photos of Marin flora (I won't tell the rangers you picked flowers on federal land if you don't tell either) and chill at the infamous INTERSECTION OF ART AND ECOLOGY. [eventbrite]
Special Screening: Maintenance Artist, 12:30pm, The New Parkway Theater (Uptown). After the revolution, who is in charge of picking up garbage? This documentary tells the story of “maintenance art” pioneer Mierle Laderman Ukeles, who has been an artist in residence at the New York Department of Sanitation for nearly half a century. This special screening doubles as a fundraiser for Woman Eco Artists Dialog (WEAD) as they celebrate their thirtieth anniversary. [insta]
Special Guest Gallery Chat with Traditional Medicine Practitioner Batul True Heart, 1pm, OMCA (The Lake). Day of the Dead is about more than just candy skulls on Giants sweatshirts! What better way to prepare for Día de los Muertos than to attend this talk by Oakland-based death companion Batal True Heart on grief, flowers, and ancestral medicine? [OMCA]
[West Bay Bonus Event] Filipina/x Poetry+Poetics #PinayLit with Barbara Jane Reyes, 2pm, Medicine for Nightmares (The Mission). “The Filipina is the total package,“ writes Manilla-born West Oakland poet Barbara Jane Reyes in her poem “To Love as Aswang,” but it remains to be seen whether this poetry workshop is the bow or something else. Reyes will lead attendees through readings, writing sessions, and discussions of Filipina/x poetics against patriarchy in one of our favorite West Bay literary venues. [insta]
Jon Klassen at Womb House Books: Children's Storytime, 2pm, Womb House Books (Temescal Alley). Ludicrously-acclaimed Angeleno, author, and illustrator Jon Klassen is in Oakland just in time to watch the seasons change, feel the thinning veil between the living and the dead, and read his “gently spooky” new book The House With Nobody In It to you and the children in your life. Tickets include cozy floor seating for three and a copy of the book. Costumes are not explicitly encouraged, but surely that’s implied? [eventbrite]
Ran 5pm, OTP (Downtown). This is one of the adaptations of Shakespeare that everyone mentions—if they're cool and smart and have good taste—as one of the best ones. Also Ten Things I Hate About You, which, ironically, was originally the title Kurosawa wanted to use for Ran. [OTP, scroll down]
An Evening with Jon Klassen at Womb House Books, 5pm, Womb House Books (Temescal). About five months ago, Oakland author and federally recognized children’s book ambassador Mac Bennett ignited a firestorm of debate and soul-searching in the youth lit community with his book Make Believe. After a heated summer of discourse and Barnett putting his newsletter (written with frequent collaborator Klassen) on hold, Klassen, who stayed the fuck out of things, will sit down with Womb House Books’ Jess Ferri for what is perhaps pointedly being described as “an adult conversation on children’s books.” The event is technically ticketed, but your ticket also gets you a copy of Klassen’s The House With Nobody In It, which you may have already fallen in love with if you came to his Children’s Storytime event just a few hours earlier. Come for the tea, stay for the cookies. [eventbrite]
After Hours, 7pm, BAMPFA (Downtown Berkeley). One of the funniest entries in the forgotten wave of films about yuppies getting their shit rocked (Demme’s Something Wild, Lyne’s Fatal Attraction, Donner’s Scrooged, etc.), Scorsese’s After Hours is a retelling of The Book of Job for the Reganesque Dark Ages. “What do you want from me? What have I done?” our upwardly mobile protagonist asks his Creator after his attempted one-night-stand draws him into an unending parade of peril and horror. “I'm just a word processor, for Christ sake!” That’s exactly right you stupid piece of shit, the Cosmos replies. [bampfa]
Also: Cycles of Change Bike-A-Thon at Albany Beach (Albany Bulb) / Blk Ghouls Scream House Halloween Event at Prescott Market (West Oakland) / Tax Release: Art Installation and Public Shredding Event at Local Economy (Rockridge) / think of others: qtbipoc revolutionary poetry reading on poetics of water with Maiden Wofford at Near Lake Chalet (Lake Merritt) / TRUTH BURIAL: text it from the tub Open House at Winslow House Project (Vallejo) / S.T.E.A.M. Against Violence Fundraising Open Mic Showcase featuring Tera Da Poet at Chemaki (Uptown)