Come gather and hear Decolonized Verses, Spanglish Poesia,, Latine Spoken Word and neighborhood chisme at Speaking Axolotl, the Bay Area’s long running monthly Latinx Reading series.

!This month our feature is none other than Angel Dominguez!

10 slot open mic list goes up a las 6:50pm

Angel Dominguez is a Latinx poet and artist of Yucatec Maya descent, born in Hollywood and raised in Van Nuys, CA by their immigrant family. They now live amongst the Santa Cruz Mountains in Bonny Doon, CA. They’re the author of Desgraciado (the collected letters) (Nightboat Books, 2022), ROSESUNWATER (The Operating System, 2021) and Black Lavender Milk (Timeless, Infinite Light, 2015). They were the 2021 Mazza writer in residence for San Francisco State University and have shared their work across the country in various venues, universities, and states of consciousness. You can find Angel’s work online and in print in various publications. You can find Angel in the redwoods or ocean. Black Lavendar Milk(the 10th Anniversary Edition) was published this year by Noemi Press.

San Francisco Solidarity Collective hosts Letter Writing and Correspondence Night

Our focus is on prison abolitionist work centered on the struggle of people in prison, jails, and immigrant and juvenile detention centers locally and worldwide. Join us for exchanging letters, starting a pen-pal, or just one-time birthday cards. No commitment necessary We will provide statements from incarcerated individuals, addresses, stamps, and envelopes. We got you, come write with us familia.

Colectivo de Solidaridad de San Francisco
 Noche de Escritura de Cartas y Correspondencias.
 Nuestro enfoque está en el trabajo abolicionista de las prisiones,
centrado en la lucha de las personas en prisiones, cárceles y centros
de detención juvenil y de inmigrantes a nivel local y mundial. Únase con nosotros para intercambiar cartas, iniciar amistades por correspondencia o simplemente escribir tarjetas de cumpleaños. No es necesario comprometerse. Nosotros proveeremos declaraciones de las personas encarceladas, direcciones, sellos y sobres.
¡Estamos para ti! Vengan a escribir con nosotros familia!

RootStock Arts is excited to present its first ever Raga Fest. This event builds on the creative momentum generated by the monthly SF Indian Classical Sessions presented and produced with San Francisco’s independent bookstore Medicine for Nightmares. On Saturday Feb 15th we will present three full-length Indian classical sets that draw on the traditions of Raga music as well as many folk melodies that traveled into the region and provided repertoire pre-dating the classical coalescence. The event showcases sitar, vocal, and rubab presented in the artist-run gallery bookstore and community event space, Medicine for Nightmares in the historic Mission District of San Francisco. Come join on Saturday Feb 15th for RootStock Raga Fest.

Program

5pm - Will Marsh (sitar)

6:45 - Rujul Pathak (vocal)

8:30pm - Siddique Ahmed (rubab)

Enjoy an afternoon of stitching Tatreez, Palestinian embroidery, in community with other stitchers. Palestinian and non-Palestinian allies are welcome at any experience level, but please note that this is not a class/workshop. 

Organized by the SF Bay Area Tatreez Circle, a volunteer group of Bay Area diaspora Palestinians and non-Palestinian allies. 

Join us this evening to celebrate Taca’s solo photography show currently on view in our galeria. Musical medicina will be provided by Raffi Garrabedian, Marcus Stephens, and Jean Carla.

TACANATION (AKA Taca, AKA Maria Fernanda Albarracín) is an Argentine-born photographer whose work explores identity, resistance, and the power of storytelling. She studied journalism at the University of Buenos Aires before moving to San Francisco in 2000. This solo exhibit features Growing Pains, a playful exploration of personal growth, followed by four series inspired by the American Far West. Migration to Bodie, CA captures Gold Rush-era transience, while Monument Valley evokes the land’s timeless, ghostly presence. Antelope Canyon reflects on the power of water shaping rock, and Humanoid explores the deep connections between people, place, and nature. Other images showcase Taca’s diverse aesthetics, including a fascination with sharp architectural lines, moments of opulence, and subtle surrealism—hidden monsters woven into everyday life. Rooted in a rich legacy of resistance, she stands on the shoulders of the strong women who shaped her story: her mother, grandmothers, Eva Duarte de Perón, and the Mothers and Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo. With deepest gratitude, Taca thanks the generous and invaluable support of Don Salvador and his dedicated team at La Gallinita Meat Market. Special thanks to Marcelo Colussi, Martin Goicoechea, Amph Mickens, her ride-or-die and biggest fan, and the Royal creature who makes her life—and the world—an even better place to thrive. A heartfelt thank you to Medicina para Pesadillas for the fantastic opportunity to grace the walls of this gallery and share this work with the world.

Jon us for a very special evening talk with Dr. Mohamed Abdou.

Dr Mohamed Abdou is a North African-Egyptian Muslim anarchist interdisciplinary activist-scholar of Indigenous, Black, critical race, and Islamic studies, as well as gender, sexuality, abolition, and decolonization with extensive fieldwork experience in the Middle East-North Africa, Asia, and Turtle Island. This year, he is the Arcapita Visiting Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African studies (MESAAS) at Columbia University. He is a former Assistant Professor of Sociology at the American University of Cairo and recently completed his postdoctoral fellowship at Cornell University. He has also taught at the University of Toronto & Queen’s University. His research stems from his involvement with the anti-globalization post-Seattle 1999 movements, organizing for Palestinian liberation, the Tyendinaga Mohawks and the sister territories of Kahnawake, Akwesasne, and Kanehsatake, during the standoff over the Culbertson tract, as well as the anti-war protests of Iraq and Afghanistan, the Indigenous Zapatista movement in Chiapas, and the 2011 Egyptian uprisings. He is author of Islam & Anarchism: Relationships & Resonances (Pluto Press, 2022). He wrote his transnational ethnographic and historical-archival PhD dissertation on Islam & Queer-Muslims: Identity & Sexuality in the Contemporary (2019).

San Francisco Solidarity Collective hosts Letter Writing and Correspondence Night

Our focus is on prison abolitionist work centered on the struggle of people in prison, jails, and immigrant and juvenile detention centers locally and worldwide. Join us for exchanging letters, starting a pen-pal, or just one-time birthday cards. No commitment necessary We will provide statements from incarcerated individuals, addresses, stamps, and envelopes. We got you, come write with us familia.

Colectivo de Solidaridad de San Francisco
 Noche de Escritura de Cartas y Correspondencias.
 Nuestro enfoque está en el trabajo abolicionista de las prisiones,
centrado en la lucha de las personas en prisiones, cárceles y centros
de detención juvenil y de inmigrantes a nivel local y mundial. Únase con nosotros para intercambiar cartas, iniciar amistades por correspondencia o simplemente escribir tarjetas de cumpleaños. No es necesario comprometerse. Nosotros proveeremos declaraciones de las personas encarceladas, direcciones, sellos y sobres.
¡Estamos para ti! Vengan a escribir con nosotros familia!

Join us for a very special evening of poetry and prose to celebrate the release of Huizache #11!

Featuring readings by Adela Najarro, Erik Manuel Soto, Gabriel Cortez, María Esquinca, Tatiana Luboviski-Acosta, Josiah Luis Alderete, Oswaldo Vargas. Hosted by Maceo Montoya

Adela Najarro has published four poetry collections, and in 2023 the California Arts Council appointed her as an Individual Artist Fellow. She serves on the board of directors for Círculo de poetas & Writers and works with the Latine/x community to promote the intersection of creative writing and social justice. Her latest book, Variations in Blue, is forthcoming.

Erik Manuel Soto is a Mexican American writer from the Bay Area. He recently earned his MFA from the University of Nevada, Reno, and his poems have appeared in Zaum Magazine, Volt 27, Drunken Monkeys, and the Nevada Poetry Project.

Gabriel Cortez is a Black biracial poet, educator, and organizer of Panamanian descent. He is a member of the artist collective Ghostlines and co-founder of The Root Slam. He currently serves on the board of Performing Arts Workshop and is the poet in residence at The Ecology Center and Shelterwood Collective.

María Esquinca is the winner of the 2024 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize. She was born in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico and grew up in El Paso, TX. She was a James Michener Fellow at the University of Miami where she received her MFA. Her poetry has appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Waxwing, The Florida Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Cream City Review, and others. Her book reviews and interviews have appeared in Adroit Journal and ANMLY. She’s currently based in Oakland, CA.

Tatiana Luboviski-Acosta is Latinx Jewish anarchist artist and poet. They are the author of two books of poetry, The Easy Body and La Movida.

Oswaldo Vargas is a former farmworker, a 2021 recipient of the Undocupoets Fellowship, and was featured in the Academy of American Poets’ “Poem-a-Day.” He has been anthologized in Nepantla: An Anthology Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color and Puro Chicanx Writers of the 21st Century. His work can also be read in Narrative Magazine, The Common, and The West Trade Review. He lives in Sacramento, CA.

Join us tonight for an author reading of Chapter 4, "Panthers and Jaguars" from Palestine 1492: A Report Back to hear lessons from Zapatista and Black Panther elders on fascism and how we might nurture the health of our resistances.

Linda Quiquivix is a geographer and popular educator of Maya-Mam roots based in Chumash and Tongva territories. She is author and illustrator of Palestine 1492: A Report Back; translator at Paliacate Press; and editor of The Fourth World War, a bilingual complilation of Zapatista analyses on global capital

Other Dimensions in Sound is our Friday music series curated and hosted by Boohaabian multi reed player extraordinare David Boyce. Each week David will be inviting different musical guests to join him in our galeria for a night of sonic sustenance.

Tonight’s double dose musical medicina is being provided by Maya(solo harp) and duoB(Lisa Mezzacappa-bass Jason Levis-drums)

Join us for our 2nd installation of our "Kulintang Dialogue" workshop series! No music experience is needed at all; we will learn by rote(watching and copying patterns & rhythms), and no one will be turned away for lack of funds. Just like our last workshop, all proceeds will benefit an organization (selected organization is TBA soon). Register for the workshop by scanning the QR code on the flyer, or click the link in the bio! Thank you to our hosts at @medicinefornightmares as always for hosting us in this awesome, progressive space. Thank you to the Alliance for California Traditional Arts for the grant that made these workshops possible.

San Francisco Solidarity Collective hosts Letter Writing and Correspondence Night

Our focus is on prison abolitionist work centered on the struggle of people in prison, jails, and immigrant and juvenile detention centers locally and worldwide. Join us for exchanging letters, starting a pen-pal, or just one-time birthday cards. No commitment necessary We will provide statements from incarcerated individuals, addresses, stamps, and envelopes. We got you, come write with us familia.

Colectivo de Solidaridad de San Francisco
 Noche de Escritura de Cartas y Correspondencias.
 Nuestro enfoque está en el trabajo abolicionista de las prisiones,
centrado en la lucha de las personas en prisiones, cárceles y centros
de detención juvenil y de inmigrantes a nivel local y mundial. Únase con nosotros para intercambiar cartas, iniciar amistades por correspondencia o simplemente escribir tarjetas de cumpleaños. No es necesario comprometerse. Nosotros proveeremos declaraciones de las personas encarceladas, direcciones, sellos y sobres.
¡Estamos para ti! Vengan a escribir con nosotros familia!

No Kings! No Queens! is the super-chill community chess club that gathers the 1st Sunday of every month in the galeria. Hosted by Danny Cao, all ages and skill levels are encouraged to come. Never played chess? We'll teach you! Come hang out, talk chess and play a few games.

For one night only on February 1st, authors from the small press Game Over Books will be turning the portal into a poetry extravaganza. Featuring five authors with deep roots in the Bay Area, we're bringing you a night of readings from collections released through Game Over Books, new looks at in-the-works poems, and celebrating all things indie. All authors will have copies of their books, and we'll have information about GOB's next submission period, too. 

Giovanna Lomanto is a Pushcart-Prize nominated poet and artist. She has published three full-length poetry collections, a limited art edition, and two chapbooks. A recent graduate of NYU's MFA program, her work has been supported by U.C. Berkeley, KQED, and the SFMOMA archive. In addition to working as a teaching artist and nonprofit organizer, she has also co-hosted the Living Room Poetry series and served as the lead curator for the San Francisco Literary Festival's inaugural Out Loud weekend for Queer & BIPOC writers. Currently, she serves as the co-owner of the indie press Game Over Books. She lives in Oakland with her partner and their lion head bunny Maggie.

Summer Farah is a Palestinian writer from California. The author of I could die today and live again, she is a member of the Radius of Arab American Writers and the National Book Critics Circle. She is calling on you to recommit yourself to the liberation of the Palestinian people each day.

Sagaree Jain (she/they) is a poet, writer, researcher, and queer from the Bay. Their writing has been featured in Autostraddle, The Margins, them. magazine, and The Offing, where they served as the Micro Editor. Her book SHRINES is out from Game Over Books now. She is obsessed with words, fire, bodies, reproductive justice, oceans, abolition, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. They are class and caste privileged and tweet at @sagareej.

Zara Jamshed is a queer, trans, disabled Pakistani and Indian American poet from NYC living in Emeryville. Their debut poetry collection Neither Created Nor Destroyed was a semifinalist for the Pamet River Prize, a finalist for the Stories Award for Poetry, and is available now with Game Over Books. Zara is currently working on their second collection focusing on the rise of Hindu nationalism and Islamophobic violence in India.

jelal huyler is a biracial-black poet who does not condone linear time. / published individual works can be found in Ink & Nebula, 3Elements Review, Eleven Eleven, Drunk in a Midnight Choir, 580 Split, The Change Agent, FIVE:2:ONE Magazine, & Likely Red Press / his voice and work have been included in the documentary Cracking the Codes: The System of Racial Inequality, which explores race and restorative justice in the United States / he is the author of the book of poems, A Man Was Lynched Today published by GAME OVER BOOKS.

Join us for an inspiring afternoon reading with Armando Acosta author of the memoir “What is This Place”.

“What Is This Place” is Armando Acosta’s 10 year experience in the Federal Bureau of Prisons told in short, vivid stories. Acosta challenges the stereotypical view of prison as solely dark and harrowing. Instead he illuminates it with stories of camaraderie, gratitude, respect, and softball. Q & A with author will follow.

Other Dimensions in Sound is our Friday music series curated and hosted by Boohaabian multi reed player extraordinare David Boyce. Each week David will be inviting different musical guests to join him in our galeria for a night of sonic sustenance and musical medicina.

Tonight’s musical medicina is being provided by Free Press

Join Laughs w/ Benefits for our showcase, Comedy for a Cause! Watch the best up and coming comics for a night of laughs and to support international humanitarian issues. All proceeds are donated to a different cause. This month, we are bringing attention to the crisis in Sudan. An often overshadowed struggle in the world today that has quietly become the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today. This Is a FREE event but we encourage the audience to donate what they can. Donations suggested $5-$10. Co Hosted by Dayton Dubois and Jonas Castillo

Dayton Dubois is a LA native and SF comic when he isn't telling dirty jokes, he is teaching kindergarten, don’t tell the parents okay?!?

Jonas Castillo is a comedian born and raised in San Francisco and he will tell you that. You can see him performing all over the Bay Area aiming to entertain any and everyone.

The Indian Classical Sessions are an informal gathering dedicated to sharing the meditative beauty, ecstatic energy, and sheer majesty of South Asian music. Hosted by percussionist, drumset and tabla player Sameer Gupta this gathering focuses on curating 4 short live sets that represent different influences and traditions surrounding South Asian music. Our goal is to connect, build our raga music loving community, and share South Asian classical music in an impromptu, casual and attentive setting. 

This month’s guest musicians are Krishna Parthasarathy, Sindhu Natarajan, Mallar Bhattacharya and Sameer Gupta. Minimum $10 suggested donation towards artists. Indian Classical Sessions are produced by RootStock Arts (www.rootstockarts.com).

Nostalgic for Nothing Cinema's is excited to present Punishment Park, the 1971 film by Peter Watkins.

Set in a detention camp in an America of the near-future, Punishment Park’s pseudo-documentary style places a British film crew amongst a group of young students and minor dissidents who have opted to spend three days in ‘Bear Mountain Punishment Park’.

The detainees, rather than accept lengthy jail sentences for their ‘crimes’, gamble their freedom on an attempt to reach an American flag — on foot and without water — through the searing heat of the desert. The pursuit of Group 637 — a lethal, one-sided game of cat-and-mouse with a squad of heavily armed police and National Guardsmen — is contrasted with the corrupt trial of Group 638 by a quasi-judicial tribunal.

Masks required

San Francisco Solidarity Collective hosts Letter Writing and Correspondence Night

Our focus is on prison abolitionist work centered on the struggle of people in prison, jails, and immigrant and juvenile detention centers locally and worldwide. Join us for exchanging letters, starting a pen-pal, or just one-time birthday cards. No commitment necessary We will provide statements from incarcerated individuals, addresses, stamps, and envelopes. We got you, come write with us familia.

Colectivo de Solidaridad de San Francisco
 Noche de Escritura de Cartas y Correspondencias.
 Nuestro enfoque está en el trabajo abolicionista de las prisiones,
centrado en la lucha de las personas en prisiones, cárceles y centros
de detención juvenil y de inmigrantes a nivel local y mundial. Únase con nosotros para intercambiar cartas, iniciar amistades por correspondencia o simplemente escribir tarjetas de cumpleaños. No es necesario comprometerse. Nosotros proveeremos declaraciones de las personas encarceladas, direcciones, sellos y sobres.
¡Estamos para ti! Vengan a escribir con nosotros familia!

Mario Bellatin’s novel The School of Human Pain revolves around the questions of representation and pain, delving into the complex relationship between art, trauma, and violence. If pain is inevitable and omnipresent, what can we do with it?  “Now that you find yourself far away, allow me to tell you, here, surrounded by dozens of corpses, that there is no goal. Sorry, actually, yes: to make a book", writes Bellatin. Using The School of Human Pain (composed of rules and scenes), as a guiding codex, as well as other curated materials to build upon, participants will generate writings and collages that will form part of an ever-growing Archive of Pain. It’s an invitation to a live open reading of Bellatin’s fractured book, to generate new writing (alphabetic and pictographic), reading and writing as an act of archeological speculation and translation, creating fragments of new languages, possible ways of representing human pain –it’s causes, context, and consequences. This evento is hosted by Biblioteca Popular Bruce Lee

Biblioteca Popular Bruce Lee is an artisanal press created by Erasmo Pantoja and Mónica Mejía in Cali, Colombia. This organism encourages the construction of an uncertain and dispersed library through handmade publications in small, numbered print runs, functioning as a collaborative crucible for writings, exhumations, and translations.

Other Dimensions in Sound is our Friday music series curated and hosted by Boohaabian multi reed player extraordinare David Boyce. Each week David will be inviting different musical guests to join him in our galeria for a night of sonic sustenance and musical medicina.

We have a full dose of medicina happening tonight with ON&ON&ON& (Kyle Bruckmann, oboe/english horn, Brett Carson, keys, Lisa Mezzacappa, bass, Jordan Glenn, drums)

Join us for a very special evening of musical medicina with Maestro of the double bass Gustavo Lorenzatti.

Gustavo Lorenzatti is an Argentine double bass player, composer, and long-standing member of the Symphony Orchestra of Córdoba. He has a background in jazz, improvised and classical music, tango, and Argentine folklore. He formally studied at the Rotterdam Conservatory of Music with the soloist of the Netherlands Philharmonic, Hans Roelofsen. Gustavo has toured several countries including Japan, Australia, Europe, South America, and Mexico and has collaborated with artists such as Egberto Gismonti, Osbaldo Plugliese, Martha Argerich, Michael Moore, and Lalo Schifrin.

In his 2020 book “Marxism & Witchcraft”, based on his research as a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow, David Kubrin analyzed the startling refusal by the Italian and Germna left(anarchists, socialists, and communists) to engage the fascists in the culture wars of the 1920’s and ‘30’s that the far right initiated, choosing to fight only politically and militarily. In recent decades, the US left has followed a similar strategy, mostly focusing its fight against the far-right culture wars to lawsuits, attempted legislation, Speeches, and op-eds.

On the basis of the failure of the 20’s and 30’s and the nightmare history that ensued, as well as the largely hidden, but critical roots in magic and ritual of fascism, Kubrin will sketch in that background, and the reason behind it before facilitating a workshop to explore different anti-fascist organizing approaches as we enter into an elevated stage in a struggle we must not lose.

(please come without cell phones)

San Francisco Solidarity Collective hosts Letter Writing and Correspondence Night

Our focus is on prison abolitionist work centered on the struggle of people in prison, jails, and immigrant and juvenile detention centers locally and worldwide. Join us for exchanging letters, starting a pen-pal, or just one-time birthday cards. No commitment necessary We will provide statements from incarcerated individuals, addresses, stamps, and envelopes. We got you, come write with us familia.

Colectivo de Solidaridad de San Francisco
 Noche de Escritura de Cartas y Correspondencias.
 Nuestro enfoque está en el trabajo abolicionista de las prisiones,
centrado en la lucha de las personas en prisiones, cárceles y centros
de detención juvenil y de inmigrantes a nivel local y mundial. Únase con nosotros para intercambiar cartas, iniciar amistades por correspondencia o simplemente escribir tarjetas de cumpleaños. No es necesario comprometerse. Nosotros proveeremos declaraciones de las personas encarceladas, direcciones, sellos y sobres.
¡Estamos para ti! Vengan a escribir con nosotros familia!

Join us Sunday, January 19th @ 2pm inside Medicine for Nightmares Bookstore & Gallery for a comic book release and Drag Story Hour. We are celebrating the release of  Socrates and Me, a comic that dives into the magic of Per Sia’s Drag Story Hour, where a powerful moment of realization unfolds about the importance of inclusive stories for kids. This event features a special Drag Story Hour performance by author, Per Sia and illustrator, Ali R. Blake.

This comic is part of a larger, dazzling project called Occasional Paper Series Issue 52: The Adventures of Trans Educators, led by Harper B. Keenan, Lee Iskander, and Rachel Marie-Crane Williams. Come for the comics, stay for the drag, and let’s make some queer history!

Per Sia

With a pedigree from weekly performances at the late, iconic Esta Noche, her trajectory has gone on to include art curation, stand-up, television, and maybe a quinceañera or two, in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and México.  Currently she is a regular performer in the nationally acclaimed "Drag Story Hour" as well as an educator in residence at an after school arts program in the San Francisco Unified School District profiled on KQED Arts,  National Public Radio and CNN.

Ali R. Blake

Ali R. Blake is a teaching artist and education researcher cultivating spaces for people to imagine and create the worlds we want to live in together— definitely more queer and more trans worlds! When Ali is not drawing, reading, writing, gardening, singing and dancing while cooking, or cuddling with cats, they organize a queer and trans communal clothing making space rooted in multidimensional struggles for self-determination. If you're lucky, you may meet them performing, too, as Al iteration.

Join us for a night of Flor y Canto aqui en La Misión as we celebrate Aideed Medina’s new book of poesia “Segmented Bodies”. published by Prickly Pear Publishing. Aideed will be joined by her poetry hermanas Adela Najarro and Diosa Xochiquetzalcoatl.

!Palabra, danza y música to invoke the whole heart!

Poet, spoken word artist, and playwright, Aideed Medina’s work has appeared in various publications, including Issue #26 of The Common: Farmworkers Portfolio and Somos Xicanas Anthology, Riot of Roses Publishing House. Her work has been a part of Eclectic Collective theatrical productions, The Opera Remix, Fresno Grand Opera, and 559 Mural Project murals. She is the author of 31 Hummingbird, Editorial Xingao, Segmented Bodies, Prickly Pear Publishing, and a forthcoming binational chapbook, selected poems from Segmented Bodies published by Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, Mexico. 

Diosa Xochiquetzalcóatl, or Diosa X for short, is a multilingual and multidimensional spoken word artist, workshop facilitator, and international poetiza. She is a seasoned language arts educator with a Bachelor’s in English and a Master’s in Cross-Cultural Teaching. Diosa X was selected Regional 2nd Runner Up in Inlandia’s Hillary Gravendyke’s Poetry Prize in 2023 for her poetry collection titled, When the Leaves Come Tumbling Down: An A to Z Poetry Collection About Loss. She was also selected as finalist for Somos en escrito’s Best Raza Short Story Award in 2023 for her piece titled, The Weight of the Scales. Diosa Xochiquetzalcóatl is currently serving as a board member for Círculo de poetas and Writers, works as a Poet-Teacher with California Poets in the Schools, and is a writing coach for Quill & Company. Not only has she been published in a variety of anthologies and literary magazines in the U.S. and in Mexico, she is also the author of six poetry collections, with her seventh being released in 2024. To learn more about Diosa Xochiquetzalcóatl’s work, feel free to visit www.diosax.net.

Adela Najarro is a poet with a social consciousness who is working on a novel. Her extended family left Nicaragua and arrived in San Francisco during the 1940s; after the fall of the Somoza regime, the last of the family settled in the Los Angeles area. She serves on the board of directors for Círculo de poetas and Writers and works with the Latinx community nationwide, promoting the intersection of creative writing and social justice. She has published four poetry collections, and the Letras Latinas/ Red Hen Collaborative has selected Variations in Blue for publication in 2025. The California Arts Council recognized her as an established artist for the Central California Region and appointed her as an Individual Artist Fellow. More information about Adela can be found at her website: www.adelanajarro.com.

Join us for an afternoon of art talk and chisme with the Oakland collectivo Los Pobres Artistas, whose beautiful group show “Home is Where the Heart is” is currently up in our galeria.

Los pobres artistas are a group of artists, educators and friends based in Oakland, CA. They are a group of multidisciplinary artists with a strong practice in muralism, whose work is revolutionary and community-oriented. They strive to break down borders and unite people through art. The group is made up of Sarah Siskin, Keena Romano, Fredericko Alvarado,Thitiwat Phromratanapongse, Rafasz,Thomas Jones, and Stephanie Hooper. They believe that art is vital in the healing and transformation of the communities they serve.

Other Dimensions in Sound is our Friday music series curated and hosted by Boohaabian multi reed player extraordinare David Boyce. Each week David will be inviting different musical guests to join him in our galeria for a night of sonic sustenance and musical medicina.

Tonight’s sonic medicina is being provided by Go Van Gogh 2025

Speaking Axolotl La Area Bahia’s long running monthly Latinx reading series happens the third Thursday of each month. Come gather and hear Decolonized Verses, Spanglish Poesia,, Latine Spoken Word and neighborhood chisme. This month we are over la luna excited to feature a very special Filipinx edition of Speaking Axolotl curated and hosted by the one and only Barbara Jane Reyes. Barbara will be joined by Janice Lobo Sapigao and Michelle Peñaloza.

10 slot open mic slot goes up a las 6;50pm

Janice Lobo Sapigao (she/her) is a Filipina American poet, writer, and independent scholar from the San Francisco Bay Area (unceded Ohlone land). She is a daughter of immigrants who grew up in a house with 12 people. She is the author of the poetry collections like a solid to a shadow (Nightboat Books, 2022) and microchips for millions (PAWA, Inc., 2016), along with two other chapbooks. She contributed three entries to The SAGE Encyclopedia of Filipina/x/o American Studies. She is an earrings collector, an introvert, an avid reader, and a July Leo. She is working on a novel. She is a 2023-2026 Lucas Arts Resident in Literary Arts at the Montalvo Arts Center. She was a Visiting Scholar at the Newberry Library in Chicago, IL, an AWP Writer-to-Writer Mentee in fiction, the 2020-2021 Santa Clara County Poet Laureate, and a Poet Laureate Fellow with the Academy of American Poets. She is a tenured Associate Professor of English at Skyline College where she works with community college students and directs the Honors Transfer Program. There, she received the Meyer Excellence in Teaching Award in 2023. She co-founded Santa Clara County’s Youth Poet Laureate Program as a chapter with Urban Word NYC, and she co-founded Sunday Jump Open Mic in Los Angeles’s Historic Filipinotown. She received a Ralph C. and Mary Lynn Heid Rare Materials Research Fellowship at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and she studied the Philippine History Special Collection archives in 2024. She will be a Mendel Fellow at Indiana University’s Lilly Library in 2025.

Michelle Peñaloza is the author of All The Words I Can Remember Are Poems, winner of the 2024 Lexi Rudnitsky Editor’s Choice Award and the James Laughlin Award, awarded by The Academy of American Poets to recognize and support a second book of poetry forthcoming in the next calendar year. (Persea Books, 2025). She is also the author of Former Possessions of the Spanish Empire, winner of the 2018 Hillary Gravendyk National Poetry Prize (Inlandia Books, 2019), and two chapbooks, landscape/heartbreak (Two Sylvias, 2015), and Last Night I Dreamt of Volcanoes (Organic Weapon Arts, 2015). Some of her honors include the Frederick Bock Prize from the Poetry Foundation as well as grants from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, the Community Foundation of Mendocino County, Upstate Creative Corps, 4Culture, Artist Trust, Literary Arts, and PAWA (Philippine American Writers and Artists). You can find her work at The Seventh Wave, Poetry, Honey Literary, Bellingham Review, New England Review, Lantern Review, and featured in American Life in Poetry. The proud daughter of Filipino immigrants, Michelle was born in the suburbs of Detroit, MI and raised in Nashville, TN. She now lives in Covelo, CA.

Barbara Jane Reyes was born in Manila, Philippines, raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, and is the author of Gravities of Center (Arkipelago Books, 2003), Poeta en San Francisco (TinFish Press, 2005), Diwata (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2010), To Love as Aswang (Philippine American Writers and Artists, Inc., 2015), Invocation to Daughters (City Lights Publishing, 2017), Letters to a Young Brown Girl (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2020), and Wanna Peek Into My Notebook?: Notes on Pinay Liminality (Paloma Press, 2022). Poems and essays have appeared in Asian Pacific American Journal, Chain, Hambone, Huizache, Maganda, Marías at Sampaguitas, Meridians, Ms. Magazine, New American Writing, New England Review, North American Review, Notre Dame Review, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, San Francisco Chronicle, Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, South Dakota Review, Southern Humanities Review, The New York Times, World Literature Today, and elsewhere. An Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellow, a recipient of the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets, the Global Filipino Literary Award, and a San Francisco Press Club Journalism Award, she received her BA in Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley, her MFA at San Francisco State University, and she teaches in the Yuchengco Philippine Studies Program at University of San Francisco.