Ideas behind the Oakland Book Festival
The longtime staffers of Lapham’s Quarterly rooted the festival in a theme — cities — and, with the help of partner organizations like the Before Columbus Foundation, PEN/Oakland, Litquake and the Oakland Public Library, curated a series of panels and readings to examine that theme via its polar opposites: utopia and dystopia.
“What we want to do every year,” Don said over coffee, is choose a theme that has a lot of local, specifically Oakland-based urgency to it, but also has a much wider sort of global valence, and international valence, so that we can really embed our panels and our work in the concerns that face Oakland, but also make Oakland a part of a much wider national-international debate, conversation, exploration of ideas.
The festival abounds in authors and non-writers alike, with more than 200 appearances by a range of historians, poets, writers, sociologists and activists.
There’s a full day of youth programming — Children’s Fairyland presents storytelling, and Chapter 510 and the Department of Make Believe is building a pop-up shop where kids can fill out applications for permits to make-believe.
Local booksellers and publishers will have booths in Frank Ogawa Plaza, and a Nomadic Press-organized marathon in the amphitheater will feature three-minute readings by authors.
An opening-night gala on Friday will be free for the 100-plus volunteers and the presenters; it’s ticketed for the public, in the hopes of bolstering OBF’s crowdfunding campaign to cover temporary staff wages and visiting presenters’ accommodations.
A young poet at the time, Murguía gave one of his first big readings at the festival and shared the stage with legends like Alurista and Oscar Zeta Acosta, who treated him with respect and imbued in him a sense of community among poets.
Saturday, May 21, features a children’s workshop for young poets, and, during brunch at Precita Eyes, the premiere screening of recently acquired archival footage from the 1973 Flor y Canto, which in addition to a young Murguía shows a young U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera.
The festival concludes with an all-star reading at the Mission Cultural Center featuring American Book Award winners Cherrie Moraga, Maceo Montoya and Murguía; Lambda Award-winning poet, author and translator Achy Obejas; and special guest Fernando Alarriba, from Mexico.
Paul Madonna celebrates a limited hand-bound release of his new illustrated novel “Close Enough for the Angels” at the opening reception for his first solo exhibition in five years, featuring framed original drawings and text panels from the book (7 p.m. Thursday, May 19, the Dryansky Gallery, 2120 Union St., S.F. Free). www.facebook.com/events/1736193136626018
Radar Productions continues its popular series Hella Close with the theme “Stories of Black Queer Intimacy,” curated and hosted by Arisa White and featuring Joshua Merchant, Jezebel Delilah X, Brontez Purnell and Ramona “Mona” Webb (7 p.m. Friday, May 20, Strut, 470 Castro St., S.F. Free). www.facebook.com/events/720702568032780
Writers With Drinks presents International Goliardos Prize and World Fantasy Award-winning Guy Gavriel Kay, Yangsze Choo (“The Ghost Bride”), David Lau (“Virgil and the Mountain Cat”), Kwan Booth (“Black Futurists Speak: an Anthology of New Black Writing”) and Ariel Waldman What’s It Like in Space?
Literary Death Match returns for its 61st S.F. show, featuring Janis Cooke Newman (“A Master Plan for Rescue”), Lambda Literary Fellow Baruch Porras-Hernandez, Na’amen Tilahun (“The Root”), and Sarah Ladipo Manyika (“Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun”) (7:15 p.m. Saturday, May 21, Elbo Room, 647 Valencia St., S.F> $7-$10). www.literarydeathmatch.com/upcoming-events/may-21-elbo-room.html