Oakland Review of Books calendar of (not just) literary events, September 29–October 4
This calendar is over 7,000 words long and that’s ridiculous, we know. We’re getting to the point in the literary year where even Mondays are worth something. MoAD’s Nexus is happening all week in both the East and West Bay, Litquake is sweating into its month of literary fever with a stage full of queer and BIPOC writers curated by Giovanna Lomanto all day Sunday, the Drunken Film Festival lurches into Oakland this weekend and totters into next week, the Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair refuses to comply with authoritarianism on Saturday at the Humanist Hall in Uptown, and UC Berkeley (according to the brand identity website, “Cal” now only applies to the athletics department which is bullshit and I acknowledge it only to immediately forget it) continues, unstoppably, to Berkeley. There’s even some zine-ing zinging, including the deadline for submitting to the Alameduh Zine on 10/2. I’ve already overcommitted myself on all fronts, have you? We can sleep in November, though that’s probably when the theatre calendar will really take off so just catch winks at the intermissions. Big thanks to Megan, Tommy, and Xander for having so much to say about property, movies, conifers, and Sunday. ORB is a collective, a continuum, a colloquium, a corroboration, a coordination, and occasionally, a book review. —MS, XL, MW, TC
Our friends at Transit Books are hosting a fundraising pizza party with a forest theme on Friday, October 16, 7-10pm, at Donkey & Goat Winery in West Berkeley. You can come for $50 and get two drink tickets and some pizza, or pay more and support even more books. Interpret the theme however you want, there will be a costume contest for those who go all in on sartorial forestry, and real tattoos are on the menu again too, we hear, alongside the natty wine and pizza. (They gave us a little money to tell you about their party, but we would have anyway, because we like them.)
Tuesday, September 29
Matthew Zapruder: Distinguished Visiting Writer Series, 12 noon, Cal State East Bay (Hayward). Ballots get sent out pretty soon, which might be an occasion to read Matthew Zapruder's slightly sentimental ode to the act of voting, and how it may be a means of seizing back some of the sanctity of our own minds. If you enjoyed that, there's plenty more of his work to read—Zapruder has six collections of poetry (most recently I Love Hearing Your Dreams, 2024) and was Editor of Best American Poetry 2022 and of the Poetry Column for the New York Times Magazine. He's usually based in Moraga but has ventured over the hills to Hayward to speak at Cal State. There will be food and free books (for students). [insta]
Maps & More: Zoned for the Future, 12 noon, Earth Sciences & Map Library (Cal). To live in the U.S. is to be within and move between segregation and boundaries that are so pervasive and so seemingly permanent that they become invisible. During the recent racial reckoning (such as it was) one of these boundaries made visible once again was the role of zoning (and specifically, the role of the federal government in drawing lines—literal red lines—around the neighborhoods it would and would not provide mortgages for people to live in) in producing that which is taken for granted today. And, fun fact that there's a book about, Berkeley was one of the first places to do racism without admitting you're doing a racism by leveraging single-family zoning to exclude economic and racial undesirables from the city. This week the University is hosting a pop-up exhibit on this history, and of the role of zoning in the city more broadly. Guest curator Andrew Matsas, Architecture & Design Library, will be your guide. If you can't make it, learn more by reading Richard Rothstein's The Color of Law (or listen to his interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates). [UC]
Robert G. Strand | Nordic Capitalism: Lessons for Realizing Sustainable Capitalism, 12 noon, Philosophy Hall (Cal). Competing with an exhibit devoted to Berkeley zoning is a book talk on the wonders of Nordic capitalism. Maybe you're a little skeptical of the frequent U.S. fetishization of Nordic societies as better than our own. More humane (Nordic prison models are all the rage here in California). Better for babies (Finnish boxes as synecdoche for early parenting social supports). More socialist. Maybe you can't quite ignore how whiteness might play into these social success stories. Or maybe the discomfort arises from the fact that so much of Norway's wealth comes from oil and gas, specifically. Or maybe you're just jealous. In any case, you can learn about what Nordic democracies do (or don't) have to teach us denizens of a failing empire on Tuesday, as Robert G. Strand presents his new book, Nordic Capitalism: Lessons for Realizing Sustainable Capitalism (2026, Cambridge University Press; open access: https://bit.ly/3MSvrOp). Strand has been a business professor in both the U.S. and Denmark and his book is blurbed by Robert Reich, so it promises to make a case grounded in academic economics, for better or worse. [UC]
(TIMES TWO!) Book Talk with Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve— Crime Fictions: How Racist Lies Built a System of Mass Wrongful Conviction, 3:45pm, Berkeley Law School (Berkeley, obv) or 6:30 pm, at Books, Inc. Alameda (The Island). Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve will have a busy day on Tuesday as she is doing not one but TWO talks on her new book, Crime Fictions: How Racist Lies Built a System of Mass Wrongful Conviction. Gonzalez Van Cleve is a sociologist who spent years investigating Chicago's Cook County criminal justice system (a jurisdiction with a long and ugly history and present of police torture and forced confessions) and found how police and prosecutors have developed a system for the the production of false confessions and convictions. [UC] and [eventbrite]
In-Person Author Talk: Kristina Wong, 4:30pm, Main Alameda Library (The Island). Listen to your auntie, especially when she wrote Auntie Kristina’s Guide to Asian American Activism. Local AAPI youth activists will come together with author Kristina Wong to talk about how the youths can stand up, speak out, and love themselves along the way. [insta]
Ghost in the Machine: Film Screening and Panel Discussion, 5:30pm, The New Parkway Theater (Uptown). Filmmaker Valerie Veatch says "Technology is both the fabric and the subject of my films," and after initially joining an early test user group on Sora to test out some generative video software and being awed by the ease and magic feeling, became more and more horrified by the reproduction of societal biases, especially misogyny, the way she felt powerless as a creator, and the way her own voice and vision was squeezed out. In this film she labels footage that's AI generated and human made, which, as slop started taking over all content, got progressively harder to do. Start the night with a panel discussion on AI and media hosted by MediaJustice and then watch her movie with that in mind and stick around over drinks to discuss after. [oaklandtechweek.com]
Oakland Review of Book (Club), 6pm, Register for Location (Oakland). Breaking news! ORB is kicking off a book club, hosted by Alex Park and ORB member Stephanie. The first book will be Jenny Xie's Holding Pattern (reviewed by Aaron Bady here). BUT if you didn't sign up during our launchiversary party at Eli's, you're shit out of luck this month. Email us (orb@oaklandreviewofbooks.com) and get on board for the next book that has something to say about Oakland. [luma]
Fundraiser Screening for Love and Justice in the Streets, 6:30pm, Kehilla Community Synagogue (Piedmont [Cancel It, Invade It, Hella Pied Its Mont]). It's sukkot this week, so in honor of the holiday's rituals of shelter and protection, come to the synagogue that's trying hard to be very Oakland despite being slightly on the wrong side of the city border to see Wood Street in a screening whose tickets go to support Love and Justice in the Streets, whose founders have been giving direct support to the Wood Street encampment and other homeless neighbors since the pandemic began. [insta]
Ampersand Organ: A More-Than-Human Lyric Launch Celebration with heidi andrea restrepo rhodes, 7pm, Pegasus Books (Downtown Berkeley). heidi andrea restrepo rhodes will read from their new book of poetry and converse with their editor Chris Martin, whose multiverse series at Milkweed publishes books that center disabled voices and experiences (also the series in which Aster of Ceremonies, by JJJJJerome Ellis, was published: an incredible book). Local poets Tala Khanmalek and Amy Berkowitz (fellow lover of collaborative poems) open! Some snippets from Ampersand Organ to get you in the door: "I cannot bridle my infinity. I seek to be no bride. I bond into bent. I feel, therefore I can be free. I feel & I can be. I feel & I." [Pegasus]
[West Bay Bonus Event of Dreams] fifth month of mugwort, a cinnabar heart: a workshop by xiaowei wang, 7pm, tiat (Union Square). There's some intriguing intersections of Asian cultural practices and ecology happening this week in the Bay. This one is run by a Cal geographer (I can't help but stan) and stars mugwort rituals to fend off national chaos. Mugwort is in the Artemesia genus, along with sagebrush and other beautifully aromatic shrubs and plants like tarragon and wormwood (aka absinthe's herbal flavor). Related species are native here and also in Asia and Europe; the one native to California is green and silvery and the leaves look like little hands with thumbs pressed alongside the palms. It's been used to make beer, induce abortions, prevent malaria and stimulate powerful dreams, as well as burned to release its smoke for health practices and rituals. Rituals are also technologies, and tiat is charging anyone working in AI an extra ten bucks to attend, so I like this direction for the West Bay tech world. [luma]
[West Bay Bonus Event the Oldest] WAITLIST Art & Science at the Nevada Bristlecone Preserve, 7:30pm, The Interval (Fort Mason). The oldest living being on this planet is in California. It's a bristlecone pine and while its precise location is a secret (understandably), it stands somewhere in the Inyo National Forest, in the Great Basin, on the far side of the Sierras. You can't see Methuselah (the named, oldest tree) but you can see other bristlecone pines if you're willing to drive up to 10,000 feet over a harrowing road off I-395 and take a surprisingly challenging walk amidst the oxygen-deprived atmosphere. It's a profoundly moving experience. Short of that, you can (if you get off the waitlist) listen to and experience art by three researchers (Anne Heggli, Jonathon Keats, and Adam Csank) who are studying the bristlecone pine trees and who are attempting to use the tree's incredible longevity as a way of reframing the human relationship to time. Yes, it's put on by The Long Now Foundation (my eyes are only half rolling) and it's all the way in Fort Mason, but the bristlecone pines really are that cool. [Long Now]
Also: Linocut Block Printing with Amor Eterno Arte at West Oakland Branch OPL (De Fremery)
Wednesday, September 30
Geography Colloquia Series—California Agriculture and the Seeding of Silicon Valley, 3:30pm, McCone Hall (Cal). I first talked to Jeannette Estruth in 2019 about her work on the ways in which the agricultural labor regime of the Santa Clara Valley became the map on top of which Silicon Valley built suburbs and semiconductor factories, which is to say, I'll see you at the colloquium. Always go to the geographers' parties, can you hear me yet in the cheap seats? [UC]
A Queer Girl in Modern Japan: Yoshiya Nobuko (1896-1973), 4pm, Dwinelle Hall (Cal). Sarah Frederick sahres the work of early twentieth century queer icon Yoshiya Nobuko, a prolific and successful writer in Japan who earned enough to buy five houses and lived in all of them with her female partner while writing stories about schoolgirl romances with other schoolgirls, which probably paved the way for Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune to be girlfriends. [UC]
Disappearing West Oakland—Cityscapes of Change: Artist Talk, 4pm, 7th West (West Oakland). Local photographer and art critic Malcolm Ryder will tour you through West Oakland via photography that engages the intersection of documentary and artistry, with a particular focus on more recent images made of the neighborhood. Compare them to the archival photos of 1970s Oakland recently published for the first time. [Nexus]
[North Bay Bonus Event] Sharon Weinberger—Valley of Death, 6pm, Book Passage (Corte Madera). From the Valley of Hearts Delight to the Valley of Silicon to the Valley of Death, what a century. According to the PW review, Sharon Weinberger's book's argument for the dire threat posed by the new version of the military-tech industrial complex (as opposed to the old one) all comes down to patent law. The new weapons start ups are keeping their IP, instead of it belonging to the government, creating the possibility of rogue agents I guess. [bookpassage.com]
Lyrics & Dirges: Deena Shihabi, Aja Lenea, and Ashia Ajani and an open mic, 6:30pm, Pegasus Books (Downtown Berkeley). Open mic warm up for the three main acts, which includes fantastic local writer and ecological community activist Ashia Ajani, whose book Heirloom I bought at MoAD in 2024 and fell deeply in love with, and then we later figured out she lives in my neighborhood! Love this local poetry scene guys, Oakland is where it's all at. [facebook]
Also: The Bike Fix at Martin Luther King Jr. Branch OPL (Deep East) / The State of Student Press Freedom in California at Logan Multimedia Center, North Gate Hall (Cal) / Hemming and Mending at Dimond Branch OPL (Fruitvale) / Ping Practice: A different type of journaling practice at Local Economy (Rockridge) / Michael Maltzan: Scales of the City | Architecture Lecture Series at Bauer Wurster Auditorium (Cal)
Thursday, October 1
[West Bay Bonus Event] Nexus Presents: Creators, Culture, and AI: Who Benefits?, 11am, 111 Minna St (SoMa). Three hours on art and AI, moderated by smarty art gal Devon Youngblood and centering people of African descent, which in this case includes Safiya Jihan Adams from Microsoft, Faye-Marie Vassel from Stanford, and Damien McDuffie, "artist and creative technologist." So on the "yes or no on AI" question, I think we know where they're going to land, but maybe Devon will derail the train in some interesting ways. Artists can use algorithms to get weird, instead of using it to save money and time, despite the latter being the main way the gen pop seems to be heading (the event flyer slop is so bad out there). [eventbrite]
Lunch Poems: Rowan Ricardo Phillips, 12:10pm, Morrison Library (Cal). It's back!! The best way to luncheon is on the words of poets and in the heady air of fervent listening. Go inside Doe Library and then go even further in, to the wood-lined, book-lined Morrison. Rowan Ricardo Phillips writes lyrics about violins and Blackness and rowan trees and classical and modern violence and oceans ("A poem is a view of the Pacific / And the Pacific, and the Pacific / Taking in its view of the Pacific"), and nonfiction about sports (his book on the history of Black baseball comes out next year), and translates Catalan, and is launching the new season of munching on poems midday today. [UC]
Black Feminism & The Issue of Practice, 12:30pm, Maude Fife Room, Wheeler Hall (Cal). I guess since Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor and Sarah Haley got brought over from the tri-state area for the Haymarket event, they are sticking around for a little longer. Learn the genealogy of Black feminism and its impact on the practices of freedom finding and movement building if you missed it at Henry J or want to get it for free because this is PUBLIC university, you know. [UC]
Real People’s Organizing Collective: Small Business Canvass, 3pm, Everett & Jones BBQ (The Laurel). Are you interested in hearing what the vast majority of SBOs care about in the Oakland community, and how they're getting by? Go ask them! The Real People’s Organizing Collective is gathering to check in on the Laurel neighborhood, focusing on commercial vacancies and worker ownership. Then sitting down for a beer after to recover from all the talking to strangers. [Restore Oakland]
Ariel Bierbaum: Schools for Sale—Disinvestment, Dispossession, and the Promise of Reparative Planning in School Building Reuse, 3:30pm, Bauer Wurster Hall (Cal). Oakland is voting on school board members again soon, and that means neighborhood school closures will be up for discussion again as we deal with perpetual budget declines and ratcheting costs, so it seems to me that Ariel Bierbaum's long term research into Philadelphia’s public school closures and how the building are used after are very relevant to Oakland voters today (all too often Oakland has closed a school and then a charter takes over the building). [UC]
[West Bay Bonus Event Again] STIR: Fire Season, 6pm, Arc Gallery SF (Leather District). The Bay has long been a stronghold for Sci-Fi/Fantasy writers and here's a bunch of SF/F folks reading their stories that speculate, envision, imagine, and conjure worlds: Eboni J. Dunbar, Duane Horton, Tina LeCount Myers, Julie Leong, T. K. Rex are your magicians for the evening. [insta]
[West Bay Bonus Event Even More] Celebration: ART/WORK 3: Art Created by SFPL Staff Opening Reception, 6pm, Skylight Gallery, SFPL Main Library (Civic Center). Gregory Hom is featured at this exhibit of the artwork created by West Bay Librarians. Meet the man himself and see the collages in person that he so graciously as allowed us to reproduce as our beautiful ORB backdrops. There will be other artists there too, probably, but we only have eyes for Gregory. [SFPL]
SPUR's Ballots and Brews, 6pm, Local Economy (Rockridge). The West Bay think tank SPUR (whose UR first stood for "Urban Renewal" and still kind of does) has a voter guide and would like to talk you through all the propositions, and sure, you can do that, or you can wait until ORB releases our own voter guide and then argue with us over beers about the impact of the public voting Rose Byrd out in the 1986 general election after her court determined the death penalty was unconstitutional on judges' willingness to take unpopular positions and whether or not we should elect judges at all, or maybe just have full luxury [hyphy] communism. [LE]
Lucille Lang Day's The Cosmos and Me, 6:30pm, Mrs. Dalloway's Bookstore (Elmwood). The Oakland poet, editor of a collection of California eco-poetry, and memoirist about escaping a wealthy, elite, abusive family in Piedmont to get married as a very young teen in the '60s, Lucille Lang Day shares her latest collection of poems, drawn from across fifty years of writing. She's joined in reading and conversation by Denise Low (Munsee and Lenape). [Mrs D's]
Panel Discussion: Water and AI, 6:30pm, Anthropology and Art Practice Building (Cal). This is a great panel which includes two professionals and two students all answering one question, "What is Water?" A Yurok tribal member sees water as family, a wastewater engineer sees it as a matrix full of data, the AI ecosystems guy thinks the chatbot can help us understand water, and an indecisive triple-major sees it at the nexus of all their interests. [UC]
[West Bay Bonus Event This Is Too Much] Sit in on a USF Poetry Class!, 7pm, BookShop West Portal (Very West Bay). There's only a couple of MFA programs left in the Bay now that CCA and Mills have closed, but USF still has one, and you can taste it way out in West Portal tonight with D.A. Powell (I've told you about my love for Doug's "california poppy" poem right? "the grasping / fingers and bloated waxy face of the wildly surviving thing / that once was somebody’s boutonnière, somebody’s flash of light, / trail of phosphorescent streetlamps punctuating the homeless night"). Powell is teaching about West Bay poetics and local poet Ben Gucciardi, whose first book is titled West Portal, will be there to attest they still live and breathe, degree program or not, as will Shelley Wong. [eventbrite]
Italianamerican and American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince, 7pm, BAMPFA (Downtown Berkeley). A pair of Scorsese documentaries from the 1970s that address the major themes of his life and work during that era: the Italian American experience and doing lots of drugs. The first one is a conversation with his parents about their journey from Sicily to the little apartment on Elizabeth Street with the plastic-covered furniture where the film was shot. The second is about his friend Steven Prince, who played the twitchy gun dealer in Taxi Driver and who tells a story in the doc that formed the basis for the overdose scene in Pulp Fiction. Good stuff for the Marty completists among us. [bampfa]
Also: Moritz Pöllath: Are We Living in a 1938 Moment? How Autocracies Threaten the West at Philosophy Hall (Cal) / Garrison Lovely—Obsolete: The AI Industry's Trillion-Dollar Race to Replace Us — and How to Stop It at Book Passage Ferry Building (West Bay)
Friday, October 2
Staging Blackness, 4pm, BAM HOUSE (Downtown). Nexus is celebrating not just Black visual artists but all forms of expression, including playwrights, so this discussion of the Black stage, Black women's voices, and making theatre in the Bay Area today will sling words by Cat Brooks, Edris Cooper, Margo Hall, and ayodele nzinga in the Oakland playhouse dedicated to Black voices and stories. [insta]
[West Bay Bonus Event] Final Poetry in the Alley, 4:45ish pm, Kerouac Alley [North Beach]. Final gathering of poets and poetry lovers around a table, to listen, read, and appreciate. All words are welcome! If you want to write something new to share, check out PROMPT and follow some of the instructions. Marthine will see you there, and then lead you up to Golden Sardine at 6pm.
Friday Nights at OMCA with Shanté | Nexus Black Art Week, 5pm, OMCA campus (The Lake). East Oakland singer-songwriter Shanté takes the stage, and those of us who do not go to OMCA every Friday were interrogated and thoroughly shamed about that failure by quite small children of ORB parents who have committed to the ritual of food trucks and dancing until the rain starts. There's also drag storytime in the garden, crafting for all ages, and a conversation with Mildred Howard herself, so it's a rich Friday. Look out for people wearing ORB hats and having intense conversations about local politics while trailing preschoolers. Say hi between songs. [OMCA]
Clothes hunt, donation, or swap, 5pm, The Pergola (Lake Merritt). Come find some new fits, swap out your old ones, then dress up and dance together as the sun sets. [luma]
“Anti-Muslim Racism and Genocide” Featuring Prof. Sherene Razack , 5pm, Dwinelle Hall (Berkeley). The most Muslims worldwide live in Indonesia, but I'll bet you money that if you (don't do this) asked some Gen AI tool to spit out an image of a Muslim, it would scrape up a bunch of Orientalist stereotypes and collage them together into a racialized vaguely brown portrait, not a Nigerian or an Indonesian or a Uyghur in sight, and Sherene Razack points out that this racializing of religion is exactly what enables genocide against Palestinians, whose religion marks them as "non-white" in the eyes of the world, and therefore disposable. [UC]
St. Vartan Annual Armenian Food Festival, 5:30pm, St Vartan Armenian Church (Cleveland Heights). If you missed the Greek Festival, come out for some more food and music by refugees-from-Ottoman-Empire-oppression and solidarity. Also tomorrow if your Friday night is filled with OMCA or poetry or other Oakland delights. [St Vartan]
Special Guest Gallery Chat: Mildred Howard and Adrian Burrell, 5:30pm, OMCA (The Lake). East Bay artists Mildred Howard and Adrian Burrell share their work and practices as Black artists creating individual artistic expression of community experiences, as featured in recent OMCA exhibitions. [OMCA]
Material as Witness Exhibition Opening, 6pm, Oakland Photo Workshop (Downtown). I've really loved other shows curated by Rena Tom so I encourage you to go explore photography's material formation as art object, not as documentary witness, in her capable and insightful hands. Come back on Nov 6 to hear the artists speak. [insta]
[West Bay Bonus Event Keep Going] First Friday Poetry, 6pm, Golden Sardine (North Beach). Hieu Minh Nguyen, Oakland poet and winner of so many accolades, slam champ and occasional drag queen, reads poems of longing and loneliness, of feeling estranged in the middle of the crowd, from his new book Staying Still (Tin House). Two supporting readers create a stable tripod, as stable as poets can be: Lee Willow Trumpfheller (Black Warrior River from NECK), & Dāshaun Washington ("God said Let there be light / and we became / our blackest selves"). Come say hi to Marthine and the alley folks who will be listening. [insta]
I Was, Am, Will Be Release Party: Book Launch and Artist Showcase, 6:30pm, Discover Community Cafe (West Oakland). Local open mic host and performance poet J.R. Rice releases his new collection, I Was, Am, Will Be, in an immersive night of community, where the audience becomes the performer, there's movies, music, poetry and more, everyone writes, and everyone celebrates. Join in! [eventbrite]
Poetry! 6:30pm, Tamarack (Downtown). Four poets, but zero snacks or drinks due to whatever pest issues they closed down to resolve earlier this month. Readers: Dora Prieto who has an unruly relationship to geography and a debut book of poetry coming out Spring ’27, Daniela Rodríguez Chevalier who co-translated JAWS [tiburón] by Xitlalitl Rodríguez Mendoza with Prieto, Naseem Alavi who makes poetry and puppets, and Alexis Garcia who says “there are 25 ways to say goodbye n I refuse / to do any of them.” [poetry in the bay]
Live from San Quentin: The Imprisoned Voice, 7pm, Clio's Books (The Lake). Tonight's voice from inside is journalist Kevin D. Sawyer, who has been a journalist behind bars for nearly thirty years. He will speak live over the telephone to the audience about the really good newspaper the folks at San Quentin produce, and about censorship, conditions of confinement, and the work to free the mind while the body is caged. [eventbrite]
Book Release: Remaining in the Universal Abyss, 7pm, Bathers Library (Telegraphomania). Bathers Library is starting to publish more books this year, and Remaining in the Universal Abyss, a collection of Grace Iyer's writings on film, is one of them. Grace started writing these regularly in her mailed riso newsletter and in the Bathers minimag, and the thing with writing is that it accretes, and suddenly it's a book. I love the ecosystem Justin is building up to help people see themselves as writers, observers, and readers, listeners. Beatrice Kilat (advice columnist for SF Review of Whatever), Carvell Wallace (Another Word for Love), and Quinn Edlin (Unburdened) will read as a supportive chorus—or maybe they'll take turns, go and find out. [insta]
Also: Vaṭivam: The Work of Form in Tamil Narrative Cultures | A Conference in Tamil Studies at Institute for South Asia Studies (Cal) / October Mending Circle at Oakland Asian Cultural Center (Chinatown) / Labor Lunch: Silvia Barbareschi - “Humans, AI, and Ethnic Gaps” at Evans Hall (Cal) / Roundtable: Transportation Opportunities and Priorities for a New California Governor at Bauer Wurster Hall Auditorium (Cal) / Blueprints for Belonging: Launch Event at Local Economy (Rockridge) / Opening reception, The Joyful Body of the Word: the Books of Betsy Davids at San Francisco Center for the Book (West Bay)
Saturday, October 3
Snowy Plover Habitat Enhancement Day, 8:30am, Eden Landing Ecological Reserve (Union City). Helps the endangered snowy plovers hide their speckly eggs from ravens and crows by scattering oyster shells on what was a former salt pond being reclaimed as wildlife preserve. Eggshells are full of calcium carbonate, and that calcium comes from the bird mother's diet, which in the case of plovers is small sand dwelling creatures, and oyster shells are so full of calcium carbonate, so putting more calcium into their food web will also be helpful down the line. [eventbrite]
Oakland Black Cowboy Association 52nd Annual Parade & Festival, 9am, De Fremery Park (West Oakland). The cowboys are riding again, restoring the Black rangerider to the place they hold in our hearts, history, and the city of Oakland, where we like to see horses clippity clopping down the street. For more fancy people on fancy horses, check out The New Black West by photographer Gabriela Hasbun. [Oakland BCA]
Oaktoberfest in the Dimond, 11am, Fruitvale Avenue and MacArthur Boulevard (Dimond District). Oompahpah with some steins and your neighbors, and you can bring your dog on a leash. It lasts all weekend: pace yourself. [oaktoberfest.org]
Walking Waterhoods Strawberry Creek at Aquatic Park, 11am, Aquatic Park (Berkeley). Strawberry Creek wends down through campus and West Berkeley, and spills out into the Bay, where everyone will gather today to learn about the rich ecotones at deltas and creek mouths, the way people depended upon and then buried local creeks, Indigenous history, settler history, landfill, and freeways at sea level. Get to know how this place was formed by where water wants to go. [zeffy]
Santa Fe Trackbed to Park Milestone Celebration, 11am, "Meet at the block between Carleton Street and Derby Street" (Berkeley). Soil contamination: fixed! Old railroad set-aside: a new park! Get energized to do it again somewhere else, and keep greening the city. [City of Berkeley]
CANDIDATE FORUMS, 12pm, City Hall (Downtown). Come hear from the people who want to represent you and make decisions about your city, except for Janani, whom no-one is opposing, so she can use the evening to work on her next music video instead. [League of Women Voters Oakland]
Book Event with Mahmoud Khalil, 12:30pm, First Congregational Church of Oakland (Adams Point). Jennifer Szalai in the book review section of the same paper that juiced up support for Israel's genocide in Gaza says Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil's book is "a frightening, important book" about what happens when no one stops the president's militia from deciding freedom of speech doesn't apply any more. Held as a political prisoner, he's now released but still fighting the state's deportation efforts. In conversation with the teams of constitutional lawyers who helped him get out of ICE detention and back to his family. [Tally Ho!]
Some Like It Hot, 12:30pm, The New Parkway Theater (Uptown). The best movie ever is on the big screen for a matinee so make a special date, put on your wiggle dresses, grab a trombone, and fall in love: after all, nobody's perfect! [TNP]
West Oakland Community Archiving, 1pm, West Oakland Library (De Fremery). Join artist Ellena Ruiz and the 7th Street History Museum for some community archiving! Bring a laptop and some paper to digitize so we can all add to the collection of stories about West Oakland. Yearbooks, magazines, business cards, your auntie's stories. It's all ephemera until it's in the archive. [insta]
ይስከን: Yeskèn: Coffee Ceremony, 2pm, Kala Art Gallery & Community Classroom (San Pablo Corridor). What is an archive anyway? Sometimes it's paper in a folder or a set of scans, sometimes it's a coffee pot, a restaurant, the secrets your mother kept. Intergenerational memory coheres and dissolves, and in the time it takes for the grounds to brew and settle, Ainslee Alem Robson shares her practice of contemplating history through multimedia forms of witness and memory. Also, coffee. [eventbrite]
Celebration of Dioramas!, 2pm, Main Oakland Library (The Lake-ish). It's absolute genius of the library to rescue dioramas from the doldrums of the moribund 4th grade Mission curriculum that required Californian students to build sugar cube and sculpey homages to Indigenous enslavement. Now local dioramadorians can get into miniatures for a much better cause: local history nerdery, with a competition judged by "surprise celebrity judges." It is such a surprise that the names on the library event listing itself are incorrect, but thanks to an actual librarian we're learned the judges are local history nerds Dorothy Lazard (Behind the Desk at the Main) and Gene Anderson (Legendary Locals of Oakland). Azucena from Oaklandside will run Oakland trivia too! [OPL]
[South Bay Bonus Event] A Tour of AI, 2pm, Institute of Contemporary Art San José (San Jose [shuttle from Berkeley]). As insubstantial and hidden behind interfaces as digital creation seems, it's always here in material reality and using up material resources, which is why the "No Data Center" resistance is so powerful and exciting: we're finally moving away from the idea of the internet as existing in formless clouds into seeing the extractive demands of software and electronic communication and its local impact. Be a tourist of the Santa Clara Valley's industrial corridors and see for yourself what Dr Estruth was talking about on Wednesday. Look at all the places you're supposed to gloss right over while the AI guys wave jazz hands at you. You won't get back to the East Bay until 8pm but this will be worth it to look at AI geographically and through the eyes of artists as a closing to the Hidden Layers: AI Infrastructures and Hallucinations show. [UC]
Join or Die: Fall Join-Up + Good Neighbor Week Screening, 7pm, Two Pitchers Brewing Company (Uptown). A quarter of a century ago, political scientist Robert Putnam's book Bowling Alone sounded the alarm about a collapse in civic life and social connectivity in the United States. While I remain somewhat iffy on the concept of "social capital" that he helped bring from academic sociology to wider public recognition, his basic argument has seemingly been vindicated, with catastrophic political consequences. "Join or Die" is a 2023 film that encourages YOU to go to the next ORB happy hour, or at least join a club of some sort. You could watch it on Netflix, but that would kind of make you part of the problem, you know? Come watch this screening at Two Pitchers with your neighbors instead. [luma]
Also: Tree Planting Event at Aquatic Park South End at Aquatic Park (Berkeley Marina) / Sick Plant Clinic at UC Botanical Garden at Berkeley (Strawberry Canyon) / Cafecito & Crafts: espooki edition at café con cariño (Old Oakland) / Art is Resilience: Community Art Show at Studio One Art Center (Temescal) / Food for Peace: Kamdesh Afghan Cuisine at Kamdesh Afghan Cuisine (Downtown) / Fall Plant Swap at Piedmont Avenue Branch OPL (Piedmont Ave) / Stand for Reparations! Justice for African & Indigenous People at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalist Church (Berkeley) / Savour Supper Club: Autumn Equinox Edition at Bancroft Community Garden (Berkeley) / Making Music: Tape Op publisher John Baccigaluppi in Conversation with Sasami at Book Passage (Corte Madera).
Sunday, October 4
The Oakland Join-Up: Fall Activity Fair, 10am, Lot 2270 (Northlake If Such A Place Exists Outside the Minds of SBOs and Realtors). ORB has a table because we think you should join a local literary outlet with regular happy hours (next one is at Portal on 10/7 at 4pm!). We do this whole thing to show Oakland to itself so join in, joiners, and say hi to Konnor. [luma.com]
Writing Days at Winslow, 10:30am, Winslow House (Vallejo). The Writing Day retreat at Winslow House is FULL! You dutifully read the ORB calendar each week but that isn't enough, nothing is ever enough, the other writers are still faster and leave you in their dust. You may still hop on the waiting list and hope, yet hope alone cannot quench your desire for certainty. What is to be done? You must cast your gaze into the far future. You must rely not upon instagram to fill your book of hours. You must hew your own ORB, subscribing to email lists for literary institutions from across the Bay Realm. [google.com]
[West Bay Bonus Event] Small Press Book Fair, 11am, Yerba Buena Gardens (San Francisco). A few important facts to keep in mind about the number 28: A polygon with twenty eight sides is called a "icosikaioctagon" :: A traditional European domino set contains twenty eight tiles :: Under international law, upon turning twenty eight you are forgiven for anything really cringe you've done up to that point and you don't need to feel embarrassed about it anymore :: There will be TWENTY EIGHT small presses and literary magazines represented at Litquake's Small Press Book Fair, including local legends like Heyday, Last Gasp, PM, and Locus! All while your fave queer poets take the stage. [litquake]
Band of Outsiders, 1pm, BAMPFA (Downtown Berkeley). Godard's finest: a caper-gone-wrong number that is at once lyrical and despairing and funny and very silly. The scene where Anna Karina and the two guys do the Madison in a café remains, for my money, the coolest dance sequence ever put to film. Not to be missed. [bampfa]
Wayne Harris in America: A Dream Deferred, 2pm, Douglas Morrisson Theatre (Hayward). Wayne Harris is a longstanding fixture in Bay Area theater, boasting over half a dozen produced scripts including his award winning Train Stories. In his new solo show, Harris asks the same question that Langston Hughes asked back in 1951: What happens to a dream deferred? "Maybe it just sags / like a heavy load. / Or does it explode?" [humanitix]
Forest Ink: Natural Ink & Pen Making, 2pm, Now Place 此间 (SF Chinatown). Galls, often called "oak apples," are unique bulbous growths on trees (especially oaks, obviously) created by the trees in response to chemicals released by insects such as cynipid wasps. But in addition to being precious ecological curiosities, they are also a centuries-old source of ink (because tannins). This workshop teaches you how to make your own ink pen with iron gall ink, extracted from local sources—live oaks don’t host too many galls but black and blue oaks do: head to the hills for all your gall needs. [luma]
[West Bay Bonus Event the Oaklandest] 60th Anniversary of the Black Panther Party, 2pm, Museum of the African Diaspora (SoMa). It's a cross-bay museum crossover event! Dr. Xavier Buck, Founder and Chief Curator at the Black Panther Party Museum in Oakland comes to the West Bay to talk with artists and former Party members Malik Edwards and Gayle “Asali” Dickson, about the role of visual iconography in defining and carrying the message of Black power, style, and community. [sched.com]
[North Bay Bonus Event] No Land to Stand On, 4pm, Book Passage Corte Madera (Corte Madera). Mahmoud Khalil—the former Columbia student illegally incarcerated by ICE in retaliation for his activism in solidarity with Palestine—is finally free, infuriating some of the worst people on the planet. His new book weaves his own story of incarceration with the longer saga of his family's expulsion from Palestine into Syria. This conversation will be moderated by Oakland writer, host of Law &Disorder on KPFA, and Anti-Police Terror Project founder Cat Brooks. [book passage]
[North Bay Bonus Event] Doreen Stock and Marcelo Hernandez Castillo—La Cuento-Mundo / The World Counting, 4pm, Book Passage (Corte Madera). Doreen Stock is known in the Great White North (Fairfax) as a memoirist and a poet, but her new translation of poetry by Chilean Nobel Prize winner Gabriela Mistral is sure to... wait, wait, hold up. This event is listed at the exact same time and place as the Mahmoud Khalil event listed above. Is Corte Madera an inter-dimensional literary anomaly? In any case, show up at 4 and you're pretty much guaranteed to see SOMEONE talk about a book. [bookpassage.com]
La Gradiva, 4pm, BAMPFA (Downtown Berkeley). Some French teenagers go to Naples on a class trip and do the things teenagers have been doing in French movies since half past Éric Rohmer: have sex, negotiate class hierarchies, and wrestle precociously with the arrival of adulthood. I haven't seen Marine Atlan's feature debut, and everyone who has seems to have loved it. [bampfa]
Formation Open Mic, 4 pm, Nomadic Books (Uptown). Hosted by Aya de Leon, this monthly open mic celebrates poetry for the people, by the people, and song, and centering black women leaders and artists. [Nomadic]
Andrew Boryga and Ingrid Rojas Contreras on the trauma plot, 5pm, Local Economy (Rockridge). One of my favorite bits in Julio Torres's "Fantasmas" has the fictionalized version of the gay Salvadorian comedian struggling with the entertainment industry's disinterest in his creative work, forcing him to pitch a show that is humiliating but appealing to white industry executives: "How I Came Out to My Abuela." In interviews about his 2024 novel Victim, author Andrew Boryga has described the bind he found himself in a decade ago when a genre of trauma-oriented essays by writers of color became popular in publications like Buzzfeed: "I finally reached a point where I was like, do you really want diversity, or you just want the trendy version of it?" This conversation between Boryga and Ingrid Rojas Contreras (whose amnesia and ancestry memoir The Man Who Could Move Clouds was a runner up for the Pulitzer Prize) picks up where Victim left off, asking why trauma narratives are so marketable and what to do about it. [luma]
Sex Writing Workshop, 7pm, Bathers Library (Televerygraphic). As the Bay Area suffers through the nauseating one-two punch of Dreamforce/SlutCon, it is time to resuscitate our collective libidinal health by any means necessary, including literature. This generative writing workshop explores the prose of sexual blatancy, drawing from the work of some of our horniest literary scions from Audrey Lorde to Dodie Bellamy. Make sure to re-read Macho Sluts to get into the mood beforehand. [insta]
[West Bay Bonus Event the Last] I Like China and China Likes Me, 7pm, tiat (Union Square). In this performance piece, artist Dann Disciglio is enclosed a dog crate with a budget version of one of those creepy Boston Dynamics robot dogs "for an extended period of time." It's clearly riffing on Joseph Beuys' famous 1974 piece in which the German artist locked himself in a gallery with a live coyote for three days, though while Beuys was making some sort of commentary about America, Disciglio is avowedly exploring our relationship with China, as part of tiat's new group exhibition on "Chinamaxxing." I'll be honest: my eyes are very primed to roll out of my head over this one, in part because Beuys was a dipshit racist and a liar who maintained close ties with his former Nazi comrades for his entire life. Even so, I'm giving this work the preliminary benefit of the doubt because it at least isn't wasting three days of a coyote's life on mid art that is best remembered as the namesake of an equally mid song by the 1975. [luma]
Also: Gathering of Ohlone Peoples at Coyote Hills Visitors Center (Fremont) / Hands in the Soil, Legs on the Pole: Queerness in the Material Realm at Great Lawn, Yerba Buena Gardens (West Bay) / October Tatreez Circles at Jaffa Coffee Roasters (Berkeley) / Opening Reception for Many Struggles, One Fight: A Print Exhibition With SF Poster Syndicate and Ancestral Dreams Collective at OACC (Chinatown)
