Litseen

Who Are You?: Racial Classification and the Census
2019-02-20 12:30 - 13:30 UTC | Freight & Salvage, 2020 Addison St., Berkeley, CA, 94704, United States
Who Are You?: Racial Classification and the Census

Wednesday, February 20, 2019 – 12:30pm to 1:30pm

Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse

How are individuals and groups racially classified, what are the meanings attached to different racial categories, and what impact do these categories have on a range of policies and practices? Taking the U.S. Census as a site of racial classification, we’ll examine shifting state definitions of race and how individuals and groups assert, embrace, reject, and negotiate different racial categories and identities.
Michael Omi is a professor of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley and the co-author (along with Howard Winant) of Racial Formation in the United States (3rd edition, 2015), a groundbreaking work that transformed how we understand the social and historical forces that give race its changing meaning over time and place.
$10 for the general public. Free for OLLI members and UC Berkeley students, faculty, and staff.

Who Are You?: Racial Classification and the Census
2019-02-20 12:30 - 13:30 | Freight & Salvage, 2020 Addison St., Berkeley, CA, 94704, United States
Wednesday, February 20, 2019 – 12:30pm to 1:30pm

Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse

How are individuals and groups racially classified, what are the meanings attached to different racial categories, and what impact do these categories have on a range of policies and practices? Taking the U.S. Census as a site of racial classification, we’ll examine shifting state definitions of race and how individuals and groups assert, embrace, reject, and negotiate different racial categories and identities.
Michael Omi is a professor of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley and the co-author (along with Howard Winant) of Racial Formation in the United States (3rd edition, 2015), a groundbreaking work that transformed how we understand the social and historical forces that give race its changing meaning over time and place.
$10 for the general public. Free for OLLI members and UC Berkeley students, faculty, and staff.

Alan Brennert
2019-02-20 19:30 - 21:00 | Mrs. Dalloway’s Bookstore, 2904 College Ave, Berkeley, CA, 94705, United States
reads from Daughter of Moloka’i, the sequel to his bestselling Moloka’i.

Lyrics & Dirges: A Monthly Reading Series
2019-02-20 19:30 - 21:30 | Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave, Berkeley , CA, 94704, United States
Lyrics & Dirges features a mix of prominent, emerging and beginning writers. Its aim is to highlight various forms of writing in an effort to spotlight the diverse literary community of the Bay Area.
Reading in February:
Jenny Qi is a writer and scientist. Her essays and poems are published or forthcoming in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Rattle, ZYZZYVA, BLR, Atticus Review, and elsewhere. Her poems have been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net, and her first manuscript was a finalist for the Jake Adam York Prize. She has a PhD in Cancer Biology and works in science and health communications. She also co-hosts a storytelling podcast called Bone Lab Radio, now in Season 2. Website: www.jqiwriter.com
Tony Aldarondo Is a Puerto Rican poet who has read his poetry from San Fran to Japan, and in many venues throughout the bay area. He is an actor and a voiceover artist. And a member of the screen actors Guild, and has toured the state of California with the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival. He loves writing Poetry, plays, and music and is super excited to read at Pegasus Books.
Heather June Gibbons was born in Utah and grew up on an island in Washington. She is the author of the poetry collection Her Mouth as Souvenir, winner of the 2017 Agha Shahid Ali Poetry Prize (University of Utah Press) and two chapbooks, Sore Songs (Dancing Girl Press), and Flyover (Q Avenue Press). Her poems have appeared widely in literary journals, including Best New Poets, Blackbird, Boston Review, Drunken Boat, Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, jubilat, New American Writing, and West Branch. A graduate of the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she has been the recipient of a Full Fellowship Residency from the Vermont Studio Center, the Pavel Strut Poetry Fellowship from the Prague Summer Program, and the Harold Taylor Prize from the Academy of American Poets. She lives in San Francisco, CA and teaches creative writing at San Francisco State University, the Writing Salon, and as a Teaching Artist for Performing Arts Workshop, a youth arts education non-profit.
James Cagney is a poet from Oakland. He has appeared as a featured poet at venues throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, Sacramento, Vancouver, and Mumbai. Nomadic Press will publish his first collection Black Steel Magnolias In The Hour Of Chaos Theory in August. Visit his blog at https://thedirtyrat.blog/
Yaccaira Salvatierra is an educator and art instructor living in San José. Her poems have appeared in Huizache, Diálogo, Puerto del Sol, and Rattle, among others. She is a VONA (Voices of Our Nation) alumna, the recipient of the Dorrit Sibley Award for achievement in poetry, the 2015 winner of the Puerto del Sol Poetry Prize, and a nominee for a Pushcart Prize. Although she has lived in over seven cities in California, San José has been home for the past 17 years where she lives with her two sons.
Hosted and Curated by Mk Chavez.

Meet Author Jasmine Guillory
2019-02-21 18:30 - 20:00 | Oakland Public Library – Main Branch, 125 - 14th Street, Oakland, 94612
Meet Jasmine Guillory, a writer, lawyer and Oaklander who has earned enthusiastic praise for her recent novels The Wedding Date and The Proposal.
New York Times bestselling author Roxane Gay called The Wedding Date “a charming, warm, sexy gem of a novel.”
Entertainment Weekly gushed “Guillory writes with the fizzy effervescence of a glass of champagne, and the entire book goes down just as easily (and quickly). The Wedding Date starts out as a fling, but it makes us want a more long-term relationship with Guillory and her irresistible writing style.”
Kirkus Reviews called The Proposal “A charming book for the modern romance lover.”
You can find her online at @thebestjasmine on Twitter, or at jasmineguillory.com.
Books will be available for sale and signing following the main event, courtesy of East Bay Booksellers.
When:
Thursday, February 21, 2019 – 6:30pm
Where:
Oakland Public Library: Main Library
Bradley Walters Community Room
125 14th Street
Oakland, CA 94612
Phone: (510) 238-3134
See map: Google Maps

Fourth Friday Formal: George Higgins and Charlotte Innes
2019-02-22 19:00 - 21:00 | St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, 1501 Washington Avenue, Albany, CA, 94706
Oakland poet and actor, George Higgins, is a Cave Canem Fellow whose poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, Pleiades, Nimrod, and others. About his collection There, There, Joan Aleshire wrote, “…this book deepens our knowledge of how to live in the world,” and Dan Tobin wrote, “…these are poems of ‘perfect contact’ in which the soul inevitably ascends, even if it’s through a kill hole in the skull.” Charlotte Innes has had poems appear in The Hudson Review, The Sewanee Review, Rattle, Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond, and others. About her collection Descanso Drive, Sarah Maclay wrote, “Urgent, muscular, rapt, distilled—at times like a melding of Plath and Boland—and as unnervingly prescient as it is attentive to and haunted by both the historical and personal past…” and Rick Mullin wrote, “…finely-crafted poems, beautifully voiced, that carry us from her native England to her new home in California.” A limited open reading and a brief interview with the featured poets will be included.

George Higgins & Charlotte Innes
2019-02-22 19:00 - 21:00 | St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, 1501 Washington Avenue, Albany, CA, 94706
George Higgins is an Oakland poet and actor. About his first book There, There (White Violet Press, 2013), Joan Aleshire wrote, “this book deepens our knowledge of how to live in the world,” and Dan Tobin wrote, “these are poems of ‘perfect contact’ in which the soul inevitably ascends, even if it’s through a kill hole in the skull. There, There is an auspicious debut.” His poems have appeared in Best American Poetry (selected by Yusef Komunyakaa), Pleiades, Nimrod, Poetry Flash, Salamander, and Fugue, among others. He has an MFA from Warren Wilson College where he was a Holden Fellow. He is also a Cave Canem Fellow. He performs completely improvised one act plays with the improv troupe the (i)ncidentalists.
(Photo: Jon Rou)
Charlotte Innes is the author of Descanso Drive(Kelsay Books, 2017), a first book of poems, and two chapbooks, Licking the Serpent (2011) and Reading Ruskin in Los Angeles (2009), both with Finishing Line Press. Her poems have appeared in many publications including The Hudson Review, The Sewanee Review, Tampa Review and Rattle. They have also been anthologized in Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond (Beyond Baroque Books, 2015) and The Best American Spiritual Writing for 2006 (Houghton Mifflin, 2006), amongst others. A former newspaper reporter, she has also written on literary topics for the Los Angeles Times, The Nation and other publications. Although she is originally from England, she has lived for almost 30 years in Los Angeles where she has taught journalism at the University of Southern California, as well as English, journalism, and creative writing at high schools throughout the Los Angeles area.
The reading will begin at 7:00 p.m. and end at 9:00 p.m. A limited open reading, and a short interview with the featured readers will be included. This is a free event.

THERE 28
2019-02-22 19:00 - 21:00 | The Octopus Literary Salon, 2101 Webster St #170, Oakland , CA, 94612, United States
THERE 28 will be Friday, February 22, 2019, featuring brilliant Oakland memoirist Faith Adiele, equally amazing memoirist Reyna Grande, and poet MK Chavez, also of Oakland. Musical guests TBA.
THERE was featured prominently in the San Francisco Chronicle!
THERE (THe Eastbay Reading Extravaganza) is a reading series showcasing emerging and established writers from Oakland and Berkeley, with the occasional San Franciscan. Doug hosts it on the (usually) third Friday of each month at Octopus Literary Salon in Uptown Oakland. It also features a live original musical performance by a local musical artist at “halftime” of each month’s reading, and Doug’s famous original LitQuiz literary trivia contest. It’s from 7:00-9:00pm. THERE has been putting the there back in Oakland since 2015!

Clearly Meant presents James Cagney
2019-02-23 14:00 - 15:00 | Claremont Branch, Berkeley Public Library, 2940 Benvenue Ave, Berkeley, CA, 94705, United States
James Cagney is a poet from Oakland. He has performed in venues and museums throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. His first book, Black Steel Magnolias In The Hour of Chaos Theory, is available from Oakland’s own Nomadic Press. James will read his poems, then sit for an interview; audience discussion will follow the interview. A month before the reading a free chapbook of James Cagney’s poems will be available at all BPL branches

Rebecca Gomez Farrell at Alameda Authors Series 3
2019-02-25 18:00 - 20:00 | Alameda Free Library, Stafford Room, 1550 Oak Street, Alameda, ca, 94501
For the third year, AAUW Alameda presents a spring series of talks featuring authors who live and write in Alameda and nearby, now co-sponsored by the Friends of the Alameda Free Library. Our February author Rebecca Gomez Farrell will discuss her novel Wings Unseen and her current writing projects.
Biography
Rebecca Gomez Farrell writes all the speculative fiction genres she can conjure up. Her first fantasy novel, Wings Unseen, debuted in August 2017 from Meerkat Press. You can find her short stories in over 20 anthologies, magazines, and websites including Dark Luminous Wings, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Fright into Flight. Becca co-leads the 400-member strong East Bay Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Meetup group and organizes a chapter of the national Women Who Submit writing organization, which encourages female writers to send their work out for publication. She also co-moderates Facebook resource groups for female-identifying writers and is a regular participant in the Bay Area literary reading scene. Becca’s food, drink, and travel blog, theGourmez.com, has garnered multiple accolades and influences every tasty bite of her fictional worldbuilding. Fiction Website: RebeccaGomezFarrell.com. Social Media: @theGourmez.

Mikhail Iossel w/ Matthew Zapruder - - Notes from Cyberground
2019-02-26 19:00 - 21:00 | East Bay Booksellers, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, 94618
Tuesday, February 26
7:00pm

EAST BAY BOOKSELLERS welcomes Mikhail Iossel to discuss his new new book Notes From Cyberground: Trumpland and My Old Soviet Feeling, on Tuesday, February 26th at 7pm. He will be in conversation with Matthew Zapruder.
America under Donald Trump. Russia under Vladimir Putin. Many have ridiculed them. None have done so with such scathing wit as Mikhail Iossel. From a youth spent in the USSR to a life remade in the USA, Iossel shares the brunt of this experience on Facebook, where thousands follow his blistering posts on Trump’s America and Putin’s Russia, and his lyrical, eerily timely reflections on life under totalitarianism. Notes from Cyberground brings together a choice selection of Iossel’s aphorisms, ranging from a few words to a few hundred words. Each chapter covers a month from Election Day 2016 to October 2018. Even when comical, this gem of a book is dead serious. It will bring solace to anyone who feels distressed by today’s surreal politics

* * *

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mikhail Iossel, the Leningrad-born author of the story collection Every Hunter Wants to Know (W. W. Norton) and coeditor of the anthologies Amerika: Russian Writers View the United States (Dalkey Archive, 2004) and Rasskazy: New Fiction from a New Russia (Tin House, 2010), is a professor of English/Creative Writing at Concordia University in Montreal and the founding director of the Summer Literary Seminars international program. Back in the Soviet Union, he worked as an electromagnetic engineer/submarine demagnetizer and as roller-coaster security guard, and belonged to the organization of samizdat writers, Club-81. He came to the US in 1986, at the age of thirty, a whole and complete life behind him, and started writing in English in 1988. Among his awards are Guggenheim, NEA, and Stegner Fellowships. His stories and other prose, in English and in translation to several languages, have appeared in NewYorker.com, Guernica, Literarian, AGNI, North American Review, Threepenny Review, Interia, Boulevard, Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere.
MATTHEW ZAPRUDER is the author of four collections of poetry. His poetry, essays, and translations have appeared in publications including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Tin House, and The Believer. An associate professor in the Saint Mary’s College of California MFA program and English department, he is also editor at large at Wave Books and, from 2016 to 2017, was the editor of the poetry page of the New York Times Magazine. He lives in Oakland, California, with his wife and son.

Event date:

Tuesday, February 26, 2019 – 7:00pm

Event address:

East Bay Booksellers
5433 College Avenue

Oakland, CA 94618

Folkland Book Club featuring books from Small Press Distribution
2019-02-27 18:00 - 19:30 | Oakland Public Library – Main Branch, 125 - 14th Street, Oakland, 94612
Join us for a monthly book club featuring titles from Small Press Distribution. Pick up a free copy of our February book at the January Book Club meeting (1/30), or at the Main Library Reference desk starting on January 31 while supplies last.
FEBRUARY’S BOOK CLUB PICK: PRIMITIVITY: STORIES BY AMY SAYRE BAPTISTA
The landscape of Amy Sayre Baptista’s PRIMITIVITY is mapped by cracked asphalt and dark woods, by broken bridges spanning greedy rivers, sunbaked dirt and ghost roads, séances held in gun repair shops, and retribution exacted in long grasses and hog pits and Segway tracks. These nine stories weave together a community borrowed from history and spanning centuries in a re-imagined Pike County, a geographical conundrum found in three different states yet joined by the same hungry river. From strangers to spiritualists to families bound by love and blood, the characters who populate Sayre Baptista’s stories tell tall tales of survivorship in the American south. To enter PRIMITIVITY’s pages is to arrive in a harsh yet beguiling topography of ghosts, thieves, and a hangman’s lament.
Amy Sayre Baptista’s writing has appeared in The Best Small Fictions (2017), Corium, SmokeLong Quarterly, Ninth Letter, The Butter, Alaska Quarterly Review, and other journals. She was a SAFTA fellow (2015), a CantoMundo Poetry fellow (2013), and a scholarship recipient to the Disquiet Literary Festival in Lisbon, Portugal (2011). She performs with Kale Soup for the Soul, a Portuguese-American artist’s collective, and Poetry While You Wait (Chicago). She is a co-founder of Plates&Poetry, a community arts program focused on food and writing. She has an MFA in Fiction from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and teaches Humanities at Western Gov-ernors University. She lives in Illinois.
Our Book Club moderator, Nirvana Shahriar is a senior undergraduate student at the University of California, Berkeley. A lover of language and literature, she studies English and Linguistics. Her love for language, and interest in both the written and spoken word has led her to fa-cilitate classes at UC Berkeley that are structured around liter-ature, like book clubs. Experienced in facilitating and leading discussion, Nirvana is looking forward to more literary reads with new folks and faces.

Jan Steckel and Tom Odegard at #we
2019-02-27 19:00 - 21:00 | The Octopus Literary Salon, 2101 Webster St #170, Oakland , CA, 94612, United States
#we presents Tom Odegard speaking on “Being Intersex” and reading poetry on the subject, and Jan Steckel speaking on “Bi Babes in the Woods” and reading bi poems from her new book Like Flesh Covers Bone. A Q&A will follow. Hosted by Richard Loranger.

James Weeks: Meditations Across the Kings River
2019-02-28 19:30 - 21:00 | Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave, Berkeley , CA, 94704, United States
About the Book
Tens of thousands of spiritual seekers around the world have been touched by James Weeks’s online essays and affirmations. Now in book form for the first time, Meditations Across The King’s River is inspired by James’s travels throughout the Caribbean and West Africa as an Ifa priest. Here, readers will find hope, encouragement, and wisdom to sustain them on their soul’s journey.
About the Author
James Weeks is the producer of the upcoming documentary film, Across The King’s River. He is also a babalawo, or priest in the Ifa spiritual tradition, an award-winning photographer, and a journalist who has published in Parenting magazine, the S.F. Weekly, Reggae Beat, The Virgin Islands Daily News and the St. Croix Avis. James is a native of St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands and currently lives in Oakland with his wife and youngest son. To learn more, visit his website www.acrossthekingsriver.com.

Children's Storyteller Series
2019-03-01 18:00 - 19:00 | Chapter 510 & the Dept. of Make Believe, 2301 Telegraph Ave, Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
CHILDREN’S STORYTELLER SERIES (6-7pm)
Come enjoy a night with Adonal Foyle (Former Golden State Warriors NBA Player) reading from his children’s book series “Too-Tall Foyle“.
Adonal Foyle – is a retired NBA player, a published author, national speaker, and consultant. Adonal currently serves as the Community Ambassador for the World Champion Golden State Warriors.
Bring your young ones out for an early evening of storytelling, book signing with Adonal, hands on arts activities, tiny bookmaking projects, food, music and more!
IN THE SPACE ALL NIGHT
Music spun by DJ XCAIROCITOSX
Tiny bookmaking activities for all!

What Happened When I Stopped Watching TV Book Release Party
2019-03-01 19:00 - 21:00 | E.M. Wolfman General Interest Small Bookstore, 410 13th Street, Oakland , CA, 94612, United States
***Friday, March 1st, Wolfman Books, Downtown Oakland, 7:00pm*** The “What Happened When I Stopped Watching TV” Book Release Party Featuring Readings By
Alec West
Philip Staley
Lena Nicodemus
Joseph Kim
Alec West is a 26 year old East Bay native. He has worked with incarcerated youth as a mentor and writing instructor. He graduated from the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington with a degree in activism, organic agriculture and creative writing. When he’s not writing you can find him at music events and poetry slams, hiking in the woods, or splitting lanes down Martin Luther King or San Pablo on his bike. He is working on a Master’s in Education as an education specialist and hopes to become a special education teacher. “What Happened When I Stopped Watching TV” is his first book.
“What Happened When I Stopped Watching TV” is a collection of prose poetry based on the author’s experiences growing up in the Bay Area. The work focuses on themes of addiction, rebellion and hope as characters struggle against a world that would grind them up. Through disaster, the book brings the reader into the highs and lows of living life with eyes open, leaping and landing heart-first. Survival comes at a cost, but the lessons learned can bring healing across generations.
Philip Staley is a psychiatric nurse in the Bay Area and a contributor to the Green Windows Writing Anthology.
With over a decade of occult research and perfecting the art of the mental health report, Philip’s writing focuses on the underworld components of emotional landscapes. He manages to weave tension, humor, and a melancholy sovereignty into relatable fiction narratives.
Philip has been a near lifelong writer, cultivating plots and storylines for numerous roleplaying groups. His professional duties have taken him through the most desperate locales of several cities, and these experiences have shaped his writing and polished the neo-noir lens, through which he evaluates the world.
As a Bay Area writer, Philip Staley enjoys field trips to unconventional locations with a laptop, some headphones, and a daring sense of curiosity.
Lena Nicodemus is a writer/therapist/human originally from Baltimore, Maryland and now settled in Oakland. By day she works with children with autism and their families and by night she writes sometimes biting, sometimes gentle works ranging in topics from explorations of the fear about not having enough time to survival humor about rape culture.
Lena’s work has appeared in local publications and performances such as Quiet Lightning, Bay Area Generations, and the Green Windows anthology.
“Lena Nicodemus’ writing expands our own world. She moves through her life with her heart open, curious, and demanding then gifts her listeners by recreating in rich detail on paper the people and places she knows: from unanswered telephones to the variety of expressions possible on a child’s face; handmade bowls to grumpy voices. Her writing can bounce off the walls with anger or deepen a silence with intense love and compassion or demand answers to questions we didn’t realize we had. Her writing is always authentic and always relevant, even to those with a different experience.”
-Peggy Simmons, founder of Green Windows

Teen Poetry Open Mic
2019-03-01 19:00 - 21:00 | Chapter 510 & the Dept. of Make Believe, 2301 Telegraph Ave, Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
Bring your poems, verses, spoken word pieces and prose to share at our Teen Open Mic, hosted by Vice Youth Poet Laureate – Oakland Samuel Getachew!
Special Guest Performance By:
Isha Clarke of Destiny Arts- born, raised, and educated in Oakland, Isha grew up surrounded by the art and culture that permeates this amazing city. Inspired by her surroundings, Isha is a poet who love dance and other art forms. She hopes that her writing inspires and energizes listeners.
Open mic sign up begins at 7pm (must be 19 or under to sign up). First seven poets who sign up are guaranteed a spot in the open mic. Open mic begins at 7:30pm.
IN THE SPACE ALL NIGHT
Music spun by DJ XCAIROCITOSX
Tiny bookmaking activities for all!

BAPC Open Poetry Reading
2019-03-02 15:00 - 17:00 | Strawberry Creek Lodge, 1320 Addison Street, Berkeley, CA, 94702, United States
STRAWBERRY CREEK LODGE
1320 Addison St., Berkeley, CA

Addison is one block south of and parallel to University Ave.
between Acton & Bonar St.
Parking on the street (NOT in the S.C.L. parking lot)
Check in at the front desk and you will be directed to the meeting location
(usually Movie Room, or backyard garden)

All Ages Welcome

Come and enjoy a friendly and informal read-around —
3-5 minutes per poet/reader, or “just listening” is fine too 🙂

After the reading, join us for dinner if you’d like at a nearby restaurant

Poetry Flash presents a reading by Keith Emmons, Moondrifter Reverie, and Lisa Rosenberg, A Different Physics
2019-03-03 15:00 - 17:00 | East Bay Booksellers, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, 94618
Poetry Flash presents a reading by Keith Emmons, Moondrifter Reverie, and Lisa Rosenberg, A Different Physics, East Bay Booksellers, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, wheelchair accessible, 3:00 (510/653-9965, ebbooksellers.com)

Morgan Parker
2019-03-05 17:30 - 19:30 | Mills Hall Living Room, Mills College, 5000 MacArthur Blvd, Oakland , CA, 94613, United States
Tuesday March 5, 2019 | 5:30 pm | Mills Hall Living Room

Morgan Parker’s latest poetry collection Magical Negro delves into issues of ancestral trauma, loneliness, sexuality, racism, and objectification. Parker is the author of There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé and Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night. Her poetry and essays have appeared in Tin House, The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip Hop, Best American Poetry, the New York Times, the Nation, and more. She is a Cave Canem graduate fellow and the recipient of a 2017 NEA in Literature Fellowship.

On the Road Again: Rich With Possibilities
2019-03-06 19:00 - 21:00 | The Octopus Literary Salon, 2101 Webster St #170, Oakland , CA, 94612, United States
Featured readers: Bruce Bagnell, Jan Steckel, Andrew O. Dugas, Kathleen McClung. Late Night Open Mic follows the featured readers. Sign-up now. Book & Broadside Giveaway. Free, 7-9 pm. The Octopus Literary Salon, 2101 Webster St., Oakland.

Elinor Lipman
2019-03-06 19:30 - 21:30 | Mrs. Dalloway’s Bookstore, 2904 College Ave, Berkeley, CA, 94705, United States
Elinor Lipman

returns to Mrs. Dalloway’s to celebrate the publication of her latest novel, Good Riddance, in which one woman’s trash becomes another woman’s treasure, with deliriously entertaining results. A pitch-perfect, whip-smart new novel from an “enchanting, infinitely witty yet serious, exceptionally intelligent, wholly original, and Austen-like stylist” (Washington Post).

Wednesday, March 6, 2019 – 7:30pm

In this delightful new romantic comedy, Daphne Maritch doesn’t quite know what to make of the heavily annotated high school yearbook she inherits from her mother, who held this relic dear. Too dear.The late June Winter Maritch was the teacher to whom the class of ’69 had dedicated its yearbook, and in turn she went on to attend every reunion, scribbling notes and observations after each one–not always charitably–and noting who overstepped boundaries of many kinds. In a fit of decluttering (the yearbook did not, Daphne concluded, “spark joy”), she discards it when she moves to a small New York City apartment. But when it’s found in the recycling bin by a busybody neighbor/documentary filmmaker, the yearbook’s mysteries–not to mention her own family’s–take on a whole new urgency, and Daphne finds herself entangled in a series of events both poignant and absurd.
Elinor Lipman is the award-winning author of eleven novels, including The View from Penthouse B and The Inn at Lake Devine; one essay collection, I Can’t Complain; and Tweet Land of Liberty: Irreverent Rhymes from the Political Circus. She lives in New York City.

Event address:

2904 College Avenue

Berkeley, CA 94705

Tarfia Faizullah
2019-03-07 12:10 - 12:50 | Morrison Library, UC Berkeley, 2000 Carleston Street, Berkeley, CA, 94720, United States
Tarfia Faizullah is the author of REGISTERS OF ILLUMINATED VILLAGES (Graywolf Press, 2018), and SEAM (Southern Illinois University Press, 2014), winner of a VIDA Award, a GLCA New Writers’ Award, a Milton Kessler First Book Award, Drake University Emerging Writer Award, and other honors. Her poems are published widely in periodicals and anthologies both in the United States and abroad, including Poetry Magazine, Guernica, Tin House, and The Nation, are translated into Persian, Chinese, Bengali, Tamil, and Spanish, and have been featured at the Smithsonian, the Rubin Museum of Art, and elsewhere. In 2016 she was recognized by Harvard Law School as one of 50 Women Inspiring Change. In Fall 2018, she will join the School of the Art Institute of Chicago as a Visiting Writer in Residence.

Second Sunday Poetry series presents a reading by Meryl Natchez, Francesca Bell, and William Brewer, curated by Barb Reynolds
2019-03-10 15:30 - 17:00 | Brit-Marie’s Restaraunt, 1369 Solano Avenu, Albany, CA
Second Sunday Poetry series presents a reading by Meryl Natchez, Francesca Bell, and William Brewer, curated by Barb Reynolds, Britt-Marie’s Restaurant, 1369 Solano Avenue, Albany, free, 3:30-5:00 (510/527-1314, brittmariesolano.com)

Second Sunday Poetry series
2019-03-10 15:30 - 17:00 | Brit-Marie’s Restaraunt, 1369 Solano Avenu, Albany, CA

H O L L O W A Y : R E A D I N G : S E R I E S presents Aditi Machado with Lindsay Choi
2019-03-13 18:30 - 20:30 | Maude Fife Room, UC Berkeley, 2000 Carleston Street, Berkeley, CA, 94720, United States
Aditi Machado with Lindsay Choi
READINGS ARE FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
Readings begin at 6:30pm unless otherwise noted. 2018-2019 Holloway events will be held in the MAUDE FIFE ROOM (315 Wheeler Hall)
For updates and event announcements, join the Holloway Facebook group

In Common Writers Series: Maryam Ivette Parhizkar and Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle, reading from their work
2019-03-15 19:00 - 21:00 | University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Avenue, Berkeley, CA
Friday, March 15 – 7:00 pm

University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Avenue, Berkeley

I am always haunted by the wise words of my great great Uncle Tony when a family heirloom was lost. He said, “You got to look where it ain’t.”… I make work that allows the dead to talk.
—Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle, KACH Studio

The Poetry Center’s In Common Writers Series presents Maryam Ivette Parhizkar and Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle, in the second event of a two-evening program, reading their work at amazing University Press Books on Bancroft Avenue in Berkeley. Supported by the Walter & Elise Haas Fund, this event is free and open to the public.
Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle is an interdisciplinary visual artist, writer and performer. Her artwork and performances of experimental texts have been reviewed by the LA Times, Artforum, The Huffington Post and The New York Times. Her writing has appeared in Not That But This, Obsidian Journal, and Among Margins: Critical & Lyrical Writing on Aesthetics. She is the author of an artist book, Kentifrications: Convergent Truth(s) & Realities, published by Occidental College and Sming Sming Books. SIR, a relection on naming as a tool for undefining the defined, is her first book of poetry, and is newly published by Litmus Press. Hinkle is currently Assistant Professor of Painting at UC Berkeley’s Department of Art Practice. Her visual art and performance works are on view at kachstudio.com.
Maryam Ivette Parhizkar is a writer, scholar, occasional musician, and author of the chapbooks Pull: a ballad (The Operating System, 2014) and As For the Future (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, 2016), the latter originating from a talk at Naropa speculating on Clarice Lispector and Sun Ra. Her recent writings have been published by Omniverse, Social Text Online, Amerarcana/Shuffle Boil (on musician/composer Matana Roberts — check Coldfront for a prefatory note to Roberts’ Coin Coin project), The Daily Gramma, and the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in American Studies and African American Studies at Yale University. Born and raised in Houston, Texas by Iranian and Salvadoran immigrants, she lives in Jersey City, New Jersey. Her current poetics circles around diasporic myth-making, family histories, the sociopolitical entanglements that bring people together, and the relationship between spirit(s), possession, and American history and identity. More here.
In Common Writers Series Thanks to a generous grant from the Walter & Elise Haas Fund, The Poetry Center will present six double-programs (twelve events in all) during 2018–19, featuring a series of remarkable writers from across the US, paired in conversation and performance with (for the most part) local area writers with whom they share strong affinities. Each featured guest writer appears at The Poetry Center—we’re doing outreach in particular to students and faculty in SF State’s College of Ethnic Studies—reading and in conversation with their paired guest writer and the audience. Then, moving off-campus, both writers read their work at one of the Bay Area’s local bookstores. We want to recognize our bookstores as crucial cultural centers and, paradoxically maybe, among the most long-lived and durable cultural sites in this violently gentrified region. Details on our six 2018-19 programs and featured artists here.

Event contact:

The Poetry Center

Event email:

poetry@sfsu.edu

Event phone:

415-338-2227

Event sponsor:

The Poetry Center and University Press Books

Helen Oyeyemi - - Gingerbread
2019-03-16 19:00 - 21:00 | East Bay Booksellers, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, 94618
EAST BAY BOOKSELLERS welcomes Helen Oyeyemi to discuss Gingerbread, on Saturday, March 16th at 7pm.
Influenced by the mysterious place gingerbread holds in classic children’s stories, beloved novelist Helen Oyeyemi invites readers into a delightful tale of a surprising family legacy, in which the inheritance is a recipe.
Perdita Lee may appear to be your average British schoolgirl; Harriet Lee may seem just a working mother trying to penetrate the school social hierarchy; but there are signs that they might not be as normal as they think they are. For one thing, they share a gold-painted, seventh-floor walk-up apartment with some surprisingly verbal vegetation. And then there’s the gingerbread they make. Londoners may find themselves able to take or leave it, but it’s very popular in Druhástrana, the far-away (or, according to many sources, non-existent) land of Harriet Lee’s early youth. The world’s truest lover of the Lee family gingerbread, however, is Harriet’s charismatic childhood friend Gretel Kercheval —a figure who seems to have had a hand in everything (good or bad) that has happened to Harriet since they met.
Decades later, when teenaged Perdita sets out to find her mother’s long-lost friend, it prompts a new telling of Harriet’s story. As the book follows the Lees through encounters with jealousy, ambition, family grudges, work, wealth, and real estate, gingerbread seems to be the one thing that reliably holds a constant value. Endlessly surprising and satisfying, written with Helen Oyeyemi’s inimitable style and imagination, it is a true feast for the reader.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Helen Oyeyemi is the author of the story collection What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, along with five novels– most recently Boy, Snow, Bird, which was a finalist for the 2014 Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She received a 2010 Somerset Maugham Award and a 2012 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. In 2013, she was named one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists.

Event date:

Saturday, March 16, 2019 – 7:00pm

Event address:

East Bay Booksellers
5433 College Avenue

Oakland, CA 94618

Lea Kirk at Alameda Authors Series 3
2019-03-18 18:00 - 20:00 | Alameda Free Library, 1550 Oak Street, Alameda, 94501
For the third year, AAUW Alameda presents a spring series of talks featuring authors who live and write in Alameda and nearby, now co-sponsored by the Friends of the Alameda Free Library. Our March author Lea Kirk will discuss her Prophecy series novels Prophecy, Salvation, and Collision, and her current writing projects.
Biography
USA Today Bestselling Author Lea Kirk loves to transport her readers to other worlds with her science fiction romance Prophecy series. She’s an avid Trekkie, Gryffindor, and wannabe space explorer. She’s made one foray into paranormal romance with her vampire novella, Made for Her, part of S.E. Smith’s Worlds of Magic, New Mexico series. When she’s not busy writing, she’s hanging out with her wonderful hubby, their five kids (aka, the nerd herd), and their seriously spoiled Dobie mix pup.

Shobha Rao
2019-03-19 17:30 - 19:30 | Mills Hall Living Room, Mills College, 5000 MacArthur Blvd, Oakland , CA, 94613, United States
Tuesday March 19, 2019 | 5:30 pm | Mills Hall Living Room

Shobha Rao’s novel Girls Burn Brighter, longlisted for the 2018 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, appeared on many “best of” 2018 lists including the Washington Post, NPR, Shelf Awareness, Paste, LitHub, and Real Simple. Her debut short story collection An Unrestored Woman illuminated how the division of India and Pakistan into two countries violently disrupted the lives of the region’s citizens for years. Rao is the winner of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Fiction, and her story “Kavitha and Mustafa” was chosen by T.C. Boyle for inclusion in Best American Short Stories 2015.
