Upcoming events.
BFP Book Club: March
Join us March 19th for the first discussion of the BFP Book club featuring We Live For The We by Dani McClain. Discussion will be led by Black Freighter author Raina J .León. Check it out from your local library or support two of our favorite bookstores in Oakland Marcus Books & Bandung Books by using Bookshop
BFP Book Club: April
Join us April 16th for the second discussion of the BFP Book club featuring black god mother this body by Dr. Raina J .León. Discussion will be led by the author's mother Norma Thomas.
Virtual Book Release: black god mother this body
imagine a deeply rooted tree that rises to entwine its branches with the curls of a descending universal and celebrated blackness. black god mother this body explores the divine, the ancestrally aligned, the natural rhythmed black woman in her embodied reality, particularly as mother. glorification of whiteness is death. this is a healing meditation, an extended song, an experimentation in augmenting reality that constantly threatens black mothers and children. it is also a covert communication in the hidden ways of trees. did you know that some can determine how to share resources through their roots and even support a cluster community in the dying of one tree so that others might be able to grow?
Virtual Celebration: Gente, Folks
This is a Virtual Black Freighter Press celebration for Norman Antonio Zelaya's book Gente, Folks with readings from May-lee Chai, Joseph Rios, Willie Perdomo, and Norman Antonio Zelaya.
This event is online at 6pm PST
Book Launch: Gente, Folks
Come celebrate Norman Antonio Zelaya and the release of his new book, Gente, Folks, a collection of stories in prose. Norman will be joined by Vero Majano, Felipe Velez, and Cathy Arellano. Also, featuring Deuce Eclipse and Wonway Posibul.
This event is in person at Medicine For Nightmares in San Francisco.
Virtual Book Launch: No Bedtime Stories of Soil
This is a Black Freighter Press virtual celebration for Landon Smith's book No Bedtime Stories Of Soil.
Hosted by Alie Jones with readings from Tureeda Mikell, Nia McAllister, Daniel B. Summerhill, Suzi Q. Smith, and Landon Smith.
Book Launch: No Bedtime Stories of Soil
This is a Black Freighter Press celebration for Landon Smith's book No Bedtime Stories Of Soil.
Hosted by Alie Jones with readings from Meilani Clay, James Cagney, Tongo Eisen-Martin, and Landon Smith at Bandung Books
Home in the Bay
Home in the Bay is a reading series centering experiences and themes of houselessness, gentrification, migration, and colonization.
Aunt Lute Books is pleased to present Home in the Bay, a reading series centering the voices of those impacted by houselessness, gentrification, migration, and colonization. We are partnering with Sogorea Te' Land Trust, POOR Magazine, Poets Reading the News, Black Freighter Press, and the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, organizations doing radical work around our relationships to place and location as well as to each other.
Join us for the second event in the series, a virtual reading June 29th at 5 pm PT. We are pleased to present a virtual evening with talented writers, storytellers, and folklorists ranging from indigenous culture bearers to previously unhoused authors to Bay Area transplants.
This event will be free and include closed captioning. Please reach out to Aunt Lute Books if you have any further accessibility needs; we are happy to accommodate.
RAISE YOUR VOICE: SPRING SHOWCASE
Raise Your Voice is a free monthly workshop exploring connection, healing, and empowerment through creative writing and expression. The goal is to illuminate the stories of Black writers in the Bay Area and the dynamic power of writing. Authentically presenting our communities with additional tools to reimagine, cultivate, and create.
The Docks: December Reading
The Docks is the Black Freighter Press monthly reading event that takes place on Zoom every fourth Friday of the month with six writers we admire.
Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMtc-urqjIpGdPSF3vdlKW60b1Qbxpwuepm
These Poems: A Celebration of June Jordan
Join us as we celebrate the prolific poet, playwright, and essayist June Jordan.
Hosted by Alie Jones, featuring Thea Matthews, Yv. Etaghene, and London Pinkney.
Speaking truth to power we honor her legacy with readings & performances.
This event is part of a month-long series of poetry and music events as part of the Alterverse: San Francisco’s Celebration of Poetry and Light. This event is part of a month-long series of poetry and music events as part of the Alterverse: San Francisco’s Celebration of Poetry and Light. Learn more about the full schedule of events in Golden Gate Park at https://thealterverse.org/
The Docks: October Reading
The Docks is the Black Freighter Press monthly reading event that takes place on Zoom every fourth Friday of the month with six writers we admire.
Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMtc-urqjIpGdPSF3vdlKW60b1Qbxpwuepm
The Docks: September Reading
The Docks is the Black Freighter Press monthly reading event that takes place on Zoom every fourth Friday of the month with six writers we admire.
Our authors for September are
Nia McAllister, F. Douglas Brown, Lauren Ito, F.G. Manos, Kimi Sugioka, Nicia De’Lovely
Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMtc-urqjIpGdPSF3vdlKW60b1Qbxpwuepm
Tongo Eisen-Martin & Sonia Sanchez | Authors in Conversation | BLOOD ON THE FOG
Join us for the launch of Blood on the Fog by San Francisco’s Eighth Poet Laureate, Tongo Eisen-Martin, in conversation with poet, activist, and scholar Sonia Sanchez.
Politically astute, filled with wisdom and great humanity, this is poetry meant to conjure a healing and provoke a confrontation, an invitation to a journey through Black America.
A rhapsodic follow-up to Tongo Eisen-Martin’s Heaven is All Goodbyes, this collection further explores themes of love and loss, family and faith, refracted through the lens of Black experience. These poems honor intellectual tradition and ancestral knowledge while blazing an entirely new path, recording and replaying the poet’s sensory travels through America, from its packed metropolises to desolate anytowns. Radical, outraged, knowing, wry, and deeply humane, these are poems of survival that soar with a vision of collective liberation.
Blood on the Fog is available from the MoAD Bookstore or from City Lights Bookstore
Praise for Blood on the Fog:
Continuing the lofty tradition of Langston Hughes, June Jordan, and Amiri Baraka, Tongo Eisen-Martin has emerged on center stage as today’s premier revolutionary poet. A master craftsman and a sensitive artist, he reserves his sledgehammer words for the cruelty of imperialism. He should not only be read–he should be studied.
– Gerald Horne
‘Revolution’ appears at least two dozen times in Tongo Eisen-Martin’s amazing Blood on the Fog. Find something like a revolving, reiterating locomotion of music riding the rails of thinking and feeling in Blood on the Fog. Find a poetry of ‘swinging type body language’ where the swinging swings like Ellington and Ali combined, knocking you out inside and out, and turning you around in this extraordinary book.
– Terrance Hayes
Blood on the Fog is the illest artifact of time travel I’ve ever experienced. Tongo Eisen-Martin takes us to a tomorrow and yesterday where we stand–contorted and mangled–but oh so beautiful, faithful and free.
–Kiese Laymon
San Francisco Poet Laureate is only a title unless you are willing to fight for a people’s freedom. These poems be an archive of survival. These poems be a bridge. And they do the profound work of serving an eclipse of literary measure. Whether speaking rhyme in slant, calling forward Medgar Evers, or the spirituality of an oppressed people, Eisen-Martin offers stanza after stanza as a sunrise. Each poem leads us towards our liberation. This means these poems are heavy in their desire to free our current state of stoic apathy. This means Tongo Eisen-Martin’s poetic legacy will live forever.
– Mahogany L. Browne
Raise Your Voice: Writing Workshop
Raise Your Voice is a free monthly workshop exploring connection, healing, and empowerment through creative writing and expression. The goal is to illuminate stories of Black writers in the Bay Area and the dynamic power of writing. Authentically presenting our communities with additional tools to reimagine, cultivate, and create.
Alie Jones is a self-care advocate, writer, artist, and Creole mermaid. Currently pursuing a Masters in Creative Writing and Literature at Mills College. She is the Director and Cofounder of Black Freighter Press, a revolutionary press committed to the exploration of liberation, using art to transform consciousness.
The Docks: August Reading
The Docks is the Black Freighter Press monthly reading event that takes place on Zoom every fourth Friday of the month with six writers we admire.
Our authors for August are Ashley Smiley, Antony Fangary, Sarai, Bordeaux, Viva Padilla, Kimani Rose, Daniel B. Summerhill
Zoom registration: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMtc-urqjIpGdPSF3vdlKW60b1Qbxpwuepm
Facebook event: https://fb.me/e/4y3WAXv9T
¿Donde Esta Mi Gente?
This event is part of the Summer Reading Program at Sonoma County Library. Experience the electrifying voices of Latinx performers hosted by Baruch Porras Hernandez. This show features music from Dizzy Jenkins and literary reading and performances from Jaime Cortez, Luna Merbruja, and Josiah Luis Alderete!
Advanced registration is required. Registered participants will receive the Zoom invite one hour prior to the scheduled event.
Poetics of Decolonization
Join us for an hour of poesia and platica featuring Angel Dominguez and Josiah Luis Alderete reading from their new book and in conversation about the power that poetry has to decolonize our hearts, minds and vida. There will be a Q&A at the end of the reading.
The Docks: June Reading
The Docks is the Black Freighter Press monthly reading event that takes place on Zoom every fourth Friday of the month with six writers we admire.
Our authors for June are Toya Groves, Joyce Lee, Duane Horton, Jive Poetic, Wendy Trevino, and Landon Smith.
Zoom registration: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMtc-urqjIpGdPSF3vdlKW60b1Qbxpwuepm
Facebook event: https://fb.me/e/1oRwHK4nj
Panel discussion: Radical Presses
Radical Presses, a panel discussion hosted by Dominican's MFA program
REGISTER HERE
Join Dominican University’s MFA in Creative Writing Program for a free virtual creative writing event.
Panelists: Editors from Aunt Lute Books, Black Freighter Press, and Sixteen Rivers Press
Get an inside look at how editors shape literary production. Join us as editors from Sixteen Rivers Press, Aunt Lute Books, and Black Freighter Press discuss their visions for change.
Aunt Lute Books has been bringing revolutionary queer women, women of color, and underrepresented voices to the forefront of literature since 1982.
Black Freighter Press is committed to the exploration of liberation, using art to transform consciousness. A platform for Black and Brown writers to honor ancestry and propel radical imagination.
Sixteen Rivers Press is a shared-work, nonprofit poetry collective dedicated to providing an alternative publishing avenue for Northern California poets.
REGISTER HERE
The Docks: May Reading
Black Freighter Press presents The Docks. This event takes place on Zoom every fourth Friday of the month with six writers we admire. (May is an exception, we have another event May 28th with Pochino Press)
Zoom registration: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMtc-urqjIpGdPSF3vdlKW60b1Qbxpwuepm
Facebook event: https://fb.me/e/1kF3VKoqq
Speaking Axolotl
A Chicano/Latinx poetry reading series y open mic entering into our 3rd consecutive year happening the third Thursday of every month. Curated y hosted by Josiahluis Alderete.
!!!This month Speaking Axolotl is over la luna excited to be returning to "live" readings!!!
Performance area and seats will be set up in the back parking lot of 111 Fairmount Ave. in Oakland. Pandemico distancing and masks will be required.
This month's Speaking Axoltotl is a collaborating with Black Freighter Press and will feature Hector Son of Hector, Landon Smith and others TBA with sagrado beats provided by Dizzy Jenkins
Black Freighter Press, a celebration
An evening celebrating the works of Mahogany L. Browne, Christopher Malec, Josiah Luis Alderete, Tongo Eisen-Martin, and readings from the final book by the late Q.R. Hand Jr.
The Docks
Black Freighter Press presents The Docks. This monthly reading series continues with Michal “MJ” Jones, Donté Clark, Halima J. Olufemi, Matt Sedillo, and Alie Jones reading from Christopher Malec’s upcoming book Pendulum On A Dead Clock.
Facebook event: https://fb.me/e/1kF3VKoqq
Zoom registration: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMtc-urqjIpGdPSF3vdlKW60b1Qbxpwuepm
The Docks
Black Freighter Press presents The Docks. This monthly reading series continues with Raina León, James Cagney, adrienne danyelle oliver, TJ Sykes, Norman Antonio Zelaya, DeMareon Gipson, and Sierra Gonzalez.
Facebook event: https://fb.me/e/1kF3VKoqq
Zoom registration: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMtc-urqjIpGdPSF3vdlKW60b1Qbxpwuepm
Nomadic & Black Freighter Press
Black Freighter is honored to team up with our comrades at Nomadic Press for a joint reading celebrating resistance art.
JOIN US as we celebrate the arrival of Black Freighter Press! With readings by Josiah Luis Alderete, Alie Jones, Tongo Eisen-Martin reading QR Hand, Jr., James Cagney, Ayodele Nzinga, and Tureeda Mikell, it'll be a great evening of fam and joy.
Event is free and all are welcome. Donations will be called for throughout the evening to support both Nomadic Press and Black Freighter Press.
Celebrating the Arrival of Black Freighter Press, RSVP Here
