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Audience: Oakland clear filter
Thursday, September 10
 

7:00pm PDT

Changing Gender: Susan Stryker (SOLD OUT)
Thursday September 10, 2026 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
Oakstop California Ballroom
Buy Tickets/RSVP
$15 adv / $20 door

Co-presented with the Bay Area Lesbian Archives

What might our lives look like without the limiting assumptions that gender, as a concept, imposes across the political spectrum? In Changing Gender, the leading trans scholar Susan Stryker invites readers to ride along on her lifelong quest to uncover what gender means and does, tracing the gender concept's roots in grammar and how it transformed into a battleground of the culture wars. From the origins of “Yankee Doodle” to acid trips in Joshua Tree National Park, from nineteenth-century phrenology to present-day anti-trans conspiracy theorists, Stryker finds surprising places to tune in to the origins, idiosyncrasies, and generative possibilities of the gender concept. Along the way, she weaves stories drawn from her lifetime as a pathbreaking historian, filmmaker, activist, and founding figure of transgender studies. In conversation with award-winning filmmaker Cheryl Dunye. Doors at 6:30pm
Moderators
avatar for Cheryl Dunye

Cheryl Dunye

Cheryl Dunye is a Liberian-American filmmaker, director, and producer based in Oakland whose work explores Black queer identity, history, and cultural memory. Her narratives are peppered with deconstructive elements such as characters addressing the camera and making ironic references to the... Read More →
Speakers
avatar for Susan Stryker

Susan Stryker

Susan Stryker’s historical research, theoretical writings, media-making, activism, and academic field-building activities have helped shape the conversation on trans issues since the early 1990s. Stryker retired from the University of Arizona in 2020 and currently holds a distinguished visiting... Read More →
Thursday September 10, 2026 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
Oakstop California Ballroom 1536 Franklin Street, Oakland
  Nonfiction
 
Friday, October 9
 

4:30pm PDT

An Afternoon with Mahogany Browne
Friday October 9, 2026 4:30pm - 5:30pm PDT
Chapter 510
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FREE

Co-presented with Chapter 510

Calling all teens, educators, and families! Take a breather after the busy school week at Chapter 510’s cozy space for creative writing. As part of their Write, Speak, Heal collaborative with Youth Speaks and Divine Radiance, join poet, playwright, organizer, and educator Mahogany L. Browne for an afternoon celebrating young people’s self-expression, resilience, and wellness. Browne will read from her National Book Award–longlisted collection of stories and poems A Bird in the Air Means We Can Still Breathe, which Publishers Weekly calls a “love letter to [a] resilient teen population as they adjust to a changed world.” Joining her will be Chapter 510 teaching artist Belinda Bellinger, with an opening performance by Youth Speaks poets. Followed by a conversation around creativity, healing, and resilience moderated by Alie Jones. Doors at 4pm.


Moderators
avatar for Alie Jones

Alie Jones

Alie Jones is a writer, artist, and Creole mermaid. She is the author of Saltwater Moonshine, a poetry collection that honors her matrilineal Creole heritage through poetry, music, and reflections of love. Alie is passionate about centering our breath work as sacred and hopes to build a legacy of awareness and expression. She is the Director and Co-founder of Black Freighter... Read More →
Speakers
avatar for Belinda Bellinger

Belinda Bellinger

Belinda Bellinger is a writer, poet, and performance artist currently living in Oakland, CA. Their work has appeared in RaceBaitr and is forthcoming in Ebony Tomatoes, among other publications. Belinda enjoys writing about healing the ancestral wounds of our inner child. Their latest residency wil... Read More →
avatar for Youth Speaks

Youth Speaks

Founded in 1996 in San Francisco, Youth Speaks is a leading presenter of Spoken Word performance, education, and youth development programs. Trailblazers of local and national youth poetry slams, festivals, and more, Youth Speaks offers a comprehensive slate of literary arts education programs and provides numerous opportunities fo... Read More →
avatar for Mahogany L. Browne

Mahogany L. Browne

Mahogany L. Browne is a writer, playwright, organizer, and educator is the inaugural poet in residence at Lincoln Center, a 2022 Kennedy Center Next 50 Fellow, the inaugural Distinguished Writer in Residence at Wesleyan University, a MacDowell Arts Advocacy Awardee, a NAACP Image Award nominess and... Read More →
Friday October 9, 2026 4:30pm - 5:30pm PDT
Chapter 510 546 9th St, Oakland, CA. 94607
  Kidquake, FREE
 
Saturday, October 10
 

7:00pm PDT

Claudia Rankine: Triage
Saturday October 10, 2026 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
First Presbyterian Church of Oakland Fellowship Hall
Buy Tickets/RSVP
Pay-what-you-can for guaranteed seating; FREE to walk-ups (space depending)

Sponsored by Alta Journal
Co-presented with First Presbyterian Church of Oakland

Poet Claudia Rankine’s work is unfailingly expansive—broadening readers’ understanding of race, social conscience, and the limits of genre. Triage, Rankine’s first book since the groundbreaking “American” trilogy (whose centerpiece, Citizen, was a 2023 Alta California Book Club selection), again defies boundaries. Here Rankine traces a decades-long friendship between two women—the narrator and the theorist—following their evolving relationship against a backdrop of ever-more-turbulent times. Here Rankine creates a politically urgent, uncategorizable mix of essay, criticism, memoir, and photography that Booklist calls “Startlingly original ... A remarkable, soul-stirring work.” In conversation with Cathy Park Hong, whose award-winning nonfiction book Minor Feelings engages intimately with Rankine’s ideas. The Alta Journal team will be on hand to introduce you to upcoming California Book Club selections, and we’ll kick things off with performances by 2026 Oakland Youth Poet Laureate Isaiah Kahn and Vice OYPL Isabel Shen. Doors at 6:30pm.
Moderators
avatar for Cathy Park Hong

Cathy Park Hong

Cathy Park Hong’s New York Times bestselling book of creative nonfiction, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning, was published in Spring 2020 Minor Feelings was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography, and earned her recogni... Read More →
Speakers
avatar for Claudia Rankine

Claudia Rankine

Claudia Rankine is the author of nine books, including Just Us: An American Conversation, Citizen: An American Lyric and Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric; three plays including HELP, which premiered in March 2020 (The Shed, NYC), and The White Card, which premiered in... Read More →
avatar for Lina Norris-Raman

Lina Norris-Raman

Thirteen-year-old Lina Norris-Raman is an 8th grader at Edna Brewer Middle School. Lina has been writing since she was 7 years old. Poetry is her refuge from the universe. At times, she feels like poetry isn't just something she does, but something she’s made of. It shapes how she thinks, how she feels, how she ex... Read More →
avatar for Isaiah Kahn

Isaiah Kahn

Isaiah Kahn, the 2026 Oakland Youth Poet Laureate, is a sixteen-year-old writer at Oakland School for the Arts. Poetry is his main focus, and what gives him the most confidence. It allows him to not get stuck on small things, at least not by accident—if he ever does, maybe it’s poetic... Read More →
avatar for Isabel Shen

Isabel Shen

Seventeen-year-old Isabel Shen, 2026 Oakland Vice Youth Poet Laureate, is a junior at Head Royce. She is an Oakland poet, oral history advocate, and the daughter of a Hong Kong immigrant. Through her poetry, she aims to amplify the voices of Oakland’s rich and diverse immigrant community and to change the way thei... Read More →
Saturday October 10, 2026 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
First Presbyterian Church of Oakland Fellowship Hall 2619 Broadway, Oakland
  Nonfiction, Pay What You Can
 
Sunday, October 11
 

2:00pm PDT

Lesbians Are Elsewhere: Writing the For All Gaze Archive
Sunday October 11, 2026 2:00pm - 4:00pm PDT
Clio’s
Buy Tickets/RSVP
FREE, $10-$15 suggested donation

This summer, lesbian and queer writers of the Bay wrote in response to the Oakland-based F.A.G. Archive (For All Gaze Archive), a personal collection of queer publications and flyers from 1970–2000s created and run by Sasha Fuentes. Hear our writers perform their responses and hang around to peruse select publications from the archive pulled for this special viewing. Featuring Elena Gross, Sloane Holzer, and curator Jaelynn Walls. Doors at 1:30pm. 
Speakers
avatar for Jaelynn Walls

Jaelynn Walls

Jaelynn Walls is an Oakland-based curator, administrator and author. Their novel The Queer Girl is Going to Be Okay (Levine Querido, 2023) was named a Publishers Weekly Best of the Year YA novel. They have written for Teen Vogue, Artsy, Google Arts and Culture, and was a 2022 Lambda... Read More →
avatar for Sloane Holzer

Sloane Holzer

Sloane Holzer is a writer and artist living in Oakland, California. Her written and creative work has been published in BOMB, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and them. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing and an MA in Visual & Critical Studies from the California College of the... Read More →
avatar for Elena Gross

Elena Gross

Elena Gross (she/they) is an independent writer and curator living in Oakland, CA. She specializes in representations of identity in fine art, photography, and popular media. Her research has been centered around conceptual and material abstractions of the body in the work of Black... Read More →
Sunday October 11, 2026 2:00pm - 4:00pm PDT
Clio’s 353 Grand Ave, Oakland
  Nonfiction, FREE
 
Saturday, October 17
 

7:00pm PDT

An Evening Spell: Trans Poetry & Hardware Hang
Saturday October 17, 2026 7:00pm - 9:00pm PDT
The Crown
Buy Tickets/RSVP
FREE, $10-$15 suggested donation

An evening time experimental live hardware performance, reading, and party featuring trans hardware musicians and poets. Featured musicians Cat Laugian and Daria Lourd. Curated by Jaelynn Walls. 
Moderators
avatar for Jaelynn Walls

Jaelynn Walls

Jaelynn Walls is an Oakland-based curator, administrator and author. Their novel The Queer Girl is Going to Be Okay (Levine Querido, 2023) was named a Publishers Weekly Best of the Year YA novel. They have written for Teen Vogue, Artsy, Google Arts and Culture, and was a 2022 Lambda... Read More →
Speakers
CL
avatar for Daria Lourd

Daria Lourd

Daria Lourd is an Oakland-based audio producer, DJ, and hardware musician. Lourd is a trailblazer in the Bay Area electronic music scene as of the last decade, originally hailing from Memphis, TN. She is best known for her prolific catalogue of energetic, emotional and sample-heavy... Read More →
Saturday October 17, 2026 7:00pm - 9:00pm PDT
The Crown 2523 Broadway, Oakland
  Poetry, FREE
 
Tuesday, October 20
 

7:00pm PDT

Celebrating 50 Years of Publishers Group West
Tuesday October 20, 2026 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
Clio’s
Buy Tickets/RSVP
FREE, $10–15 suggested donation

Sponsored by Publishers Group West

From a shoestring investment of $500 in 1976, Berkeley-based Publishers Group West grew, by the turn of the century, into the US’s largest distributor of independent presses. Since then, it’s maintained its focus on resilience, innovation, and a passion for independent publishing—not to mention the value of throwing a really great party. We’ll toast to a half-century of PGW, which continues to distribute books for 150 publisher clients, including some beloved local presses. How does PGW’s history reflect the larger story of Bay Area publishing? And how can lessons learned over the past fifty years inform its future? Join PGW founder Charlie Winton, executive VP Sean Shoemaker, VP of field sales Elise Cannon, and Litquake co-founder Jack Boulware for a walk down memory lane—and stick around to buy a beverage or two from Clio’s on-site bar. Doors at 6:30pm.

Moderators
avatar for Jack Boulware

Jack Boulware

Jack Boulware co-founded the Bay Area’s Litquake literary festival and was director for 24 years. He is author/co-author of "San Francisco Bizarro" (St. Martin’s, 2000) and the punk oral history "Gimme Something Better" (Penguin, 2009). He currently works on book projects and... Read More →
Speakers
avatar for Sean Shoemaker

Sean Shoemaker

Sean Shoemaker is a vice president at Ingram Publisher Services and oversees Publishers Group West, where he has worked for 31 years. Sean started at PGW in customer service and worked his way up to VP of Operations before his promotion to President in 2015. Prior to his time at PGW, Sean worked... Read More →
avatar for Elise Cannon

Elise Cannon

Elise Cannon, VP of Field Sales for Ingram Publisher Services and Publishers Group West, has been working with independent booksellers and publishers for nearly 35 years, first at PGW, and then for Perseus Books Group and Ingram Content Group. She’s been fortunate to work alongside the best i... Read More →
avatar for Charlie Winton

Charlie Winton

In 1976, Charlie Winton founded Publishers Group West (PGW), and served as Chairman & CEO for 25 years. In 1992, a sister corporation, Avalon Publishing Group was created to encompass what would eventually become the organization’s seven publishing imprints. Winton also served as Avalon’s Chairman & CE... Read More →
Tuesday October 20, 2026 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
Clio’s 353 Grand Ave, Oakland
  Party, FREE
 
Friday, October 23
 

7:00pm PDT

Lift Every Voice: A Festival Finale in Verse
Friday October 23, 2026 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
First Presbyterian Church of Oakland Fellowship Hall
Buy Tickets/RSVP
Pay what you can to guarantee a seat; FREE to walk ups space depending

Coming to us from Chicago, Phillip B. Williams brings us his newest collection Lift Every Voice, a staggering tribute to personal and collective evolutions, a vital chorus that answers only to God, community, and the empowered self. What better way to ground us on the penultimate night of Litquake 2026? Litquake invites you in alongside poets Fatimah Asghar, Stephanie Horvath, D.A. Powell, D.M. Spratley, and Phillip B. Williams to bear witness to the beauty and resiliency of our words and community.. Hosted by Litquake’s Artistic Director Graham Todd. Doors at 6:30pm. 


Moderators
avatar for Graham Todd

Graham Todd

Graham Todd is a fiction writer and the Artistic Director of Litquake, San Francisco's Literary Festival. He studied literature and religion at Stanford and received his MFA from Bowling Green. His writing has appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Southampton Review, Notre Dame Review, Epiphany... Read More →
Speakers
avatar for Phillip B. Williams

Phillip B. Williams

Phillip B. Williams is the author of the novel Ours and three collections of poetry: Thief in the Interior, which was the winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and a Lambda Literary Award, Mutiny, which was a finalist for the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry and the winner of a... Read More →
avatar for D. M. Spratley

D. M. Spratley

D. M. Spratley is a writer from the American South. A Wallace Stegner Fellow, Cave Canem Fellow, North Carolina Arts Council Fellow, and William C. Friday Fellow for Human Relations, she graduated from the MFA program at Hollins University and studied comparative literature and creative... Read More →
avatar for D A Powell

D A Powell

D A Powell is the author of numerous collections of poetry including Low Hanging Fruit (Foundlings Press, 2022) and Atlas T (Rescue Press, 2020). His honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry, and the John Updike Award from the American... Read More →
avatar for Fatimah Asghar

Fatimah Asghar

Fatimah Asghar, author of If They Come for Us, is a poet, filmmaker, educator, and performer. They are the writer and co-creator of Brown Girls, an Emmy-nominated web series that highlights friendships between women of color. They also were a co-producer on Ms. Marvel for Disney... Read More →
avatar for Stephanie Horvath

Stephanie Horvath

Stephanie Horvath is the author of Field of Vision, winner of the 2025 National Poetry Series, published by Penguin in October 2026. She lives in Northern California and teaches at Stanford University.
Friday October 23, 2026 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
First Presbyterian Church of Oakland Fellowship Hall 2619 Broadway, Oakland
  Poetry, Pay What You Can
 
Thursday, November 12
 

6:30pm PST

And If I Die Before I Wake: George M. Johnson with Maggie Tokuda-Hall
Thursday November 12, 2026 6:30pm - 8:00pm PST
Marcus Books
Buy Tickets/RSVP
FREE, $10–15 suggested donation

Co-presented with Marcus Books
Journalist and activist George M. Johnson’s All Boys Aren’t Blue, their bestselling, critically acclaimed YA “memoir-manifesto” about growing up Black and queer, has been, since its 2020 publication, a source of solace and support for young people. It’s also consistently been at or near the top of the ALA and PEN America’s lists of the most challenged and banned books. Undeterred, Johnson continues to practice their fearless form of truth-telling, this time in their first memoir for adults, And If I Die Before I Wake. Here Johnson relates a traumatic 15 years in their life—navigating an HIV diagnosis, alcoholism, loss, and those disheartening and frightening book bans—while relying more than ever on the love of friends, family, and community and finding, against the odds, their most authentic self. In conversation with children’s and young adult author Maggie Tokuda-Hall, co-founder of the national advocacy group Authors Against Book Bans. Doors at 6:00pm.


Moderators
avatar for Maggie Tokuda-Hall

Maggie Tokuda-Hall

Maggie Tokuda-Hall is not a scientist, but she does have a lot of questions. She grew up going to the Lawrence Hall of Science, the La Brea Tar Pits, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, the Steinhart Aquarium, and the Los Angeles and Oakland Zoos. Once, when she was 12, she even got to vi... Read More →
Speakers
avatar for George M. Johnson

George M. Johnson

George M. Johnson (they/them) is an Emmy nominated, award-winning, and bestselling Black nonbinary author and activist. Their debut memoir, All Boys Aren’t Blue, was a New York Times bestseller and garnered many accolades. It was the #1 most banned book of 2024 in the United States, according to the American Library Association. For their work fighting book bans and challenges, the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) honored George with its Free Speech... Read More →
Thursday November 12, 2026 6:30pm - 8:00pm PST
Marcus Books 3900 Martin Luther King Jr Way, Oakland, CA 94609
  Storytelling/Memoir, FREE
 

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