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. 

Featured performers this month:
Ujjaini Mukhopadhyay - Vocal
Rohan Krishnamurthy - Percussion
Lucian Balmer - Violin
Amit Gud - Sarod

$10 suggested donations all proceeds go to the musicians.

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 Nicholas Mirzoeff, poet Omar Zahzah, and comrades from the Center for Convivial Research and Autonomy as they discuss To See in the Dark: Palestine and Visual Activism Since October 7 on Sunday, March 23, 6:00 pm. To see Palestine is to see the world. Since October 7th 2023, the forces of racial capitalism and settler colonialism have become all too visible in Israel's genocidal war on Gaza.Visual culture theorist Nicholas Mirzoeff, visiting from New York, is joined by local Palestinian poet-scholar-activist Omar Zahzah, author of the forthcoming Terms of Servitude: Zionism, Silicon Valley, and Digital/Settler-Colonialism in the Palestinian Liberation Struggle. Comrades from the Center for Convivial Research and Autonomy will be sitting in.

In To See In the Dark, Nicholas Mirzoeff explores how images, and especially video, viewed outside Palestine enabled a dramatic switch in public opinion, leading to a global uprising against the genocide. In this groundbreaking analysis, he connects the personal and the political through his own anti-Zionist Jewishness and its histories of violence. The result is a new collective and anti-colonial way of seeing, intersecting online and embodied experience.

BIOS

Among the founders of visual culture as a field, Nicholas Mirzoeff has also written extensively on Jewishness and Palestine. His books include How To See The World, The Right to Look and The Appearance of Black Lives Matter. He has written for the Guardian, Hyperallergic and The Nation. He lives in New York City.

Omar Zahzah is an Assistant Professor of Arab, Muslim, Ethnicities and Diaspora Studies (AMED) in the Department of Race and Resistance Studies (RRS) at San Francisco State University. A scholar-activist of Lebanese Palestinian descent, Dr. Zahzah is the former Education and Advocacy Coordinator of Eyewitness Palestine. His book, Terms of Servitude Zionism, Silicon Valley, and Digital/Settler-Colonialism in the Palestinian Liberation Struggle, will be published by Seven Stories Press in July 2025.

The Center for Convivial Research and Autonomy is a transterritorial grassroots collective dedicated to exploring the intersections between conviviality, autonomous learning, and insurgent knowledge production with an investment in autonomous spaces of learning and grassroots convivial research in service of the recovery of convivial tools towards community regeneration.

!LIVE POETS IN THE WINDOW!

Medicina Para Pesadillas is keeping the very special Mission tradition of poets reading on the street alive and well with this literary series. Come hang and enjoy poets reading their work to Calle Veinte Cuatro.

This month’;s features are Preeti Vangani, Connie Mae Oliver, and Sara Borjas.

Preeti Vangani is an Indian poet & writer based in San Francisco. She is the author of Mother Tongue Apologize (2019) and Fifty Mothers, forthcoming from River River Books (Feb 2026). Her work has been published in AGNI, The Georgia Review, Gulf Coast, Prairie Schooner among other places. Her debut short story won the 2021 Pen/Dau Emerging Writers Prize.Vangani has been a resident at UCross, Djerassi and Ragdale. She has received artist grants from San Francisco Arts Commission and YBCA through which she facilitates poetry workshops rooted in writing grief through joy. She holds an MFA in Writing from University of San Francisco.

Connie Mae Concepción Oliver is a Venezuelan poet. Her first book of poems, Cosmos A Personal Voyage by Carl Sagan Ann Druyan Steven Soter And Me is about nuclear disarmament. Her second book, Science Fiction Fiction, is an homage to Miami-Dade County and color photography in the early aughts. Her new collection of poems, dormilona, is a bilingual book that explores dream states, distance, the rituals of sleep, and the elusive nature of time and memory. Both “nightgown” and “sleepyhead” in Venezuelan Spanish, dormilona weaves a neural network linking sleep to language, memory, matrilineal bonds, geography, and history.

Sara Borjas is a queer, Chicanx poet and the author of Heart Like a Window, Mouth Like a Cliff (Noemi Press, 2019), winner of a 2020 American Book Award. The recipient of fellowships from MacDowell, CantoMundo, the Ragdale Foundation, and the Poetry Foundation, Borjas lives on Ohlone territory in Oakland but stays rooted in Fresno, California, territory of the Yokut peoples.

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 musical medicina is being provided by David Boyce and Ru.

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’s feature is Zander Moreno Lozano.

Zander Moreno Lozano is an Indigenous Mexican, transgender, poet born from the soil of Mexico City, Mexico. At 2 years old, he and his family immigrated to the United States to escape patriarchal abuse. Zander has been awarded fellowships with Brooklyn Poets, Queer Ancestor’s Project, Seventh Wave, and Genderfail. Zander’s poetry focuses on the intersection of identities, state violence, immigration, being transgender, and ancestral veneration. His poems have been previously published in The Hanging Lantern Review, ARTFAG, and The Ana.

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

NOTA; Speaking Axolotl is a BIPOC reading series which means the features and open mic readers are black and brown poets. Whyte folks are welcome to attend but their presence is not required.

Sri Lankan American poet Indran Amirthanayagam is visiting the Bay Area with his new book SEER. Amirthanayagam will read with amazing Californian poets and friends: William Daly, Heather Bourbeau and Karen Poppy. Together we will hear four visions, four poetries, four affirmations of life before the four horsemen riding in America today.

Indran Amirthanayagam writes poems in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Haitian Creole. He has published 25 books. He publishes poetry at Beltway Editions(www.beltwayeditions.com). He edits Beltway Poetry, a digital poetry magazine. He hosts The Poetry Channel on youtube. His new books are Seer (Hanging Loose Press, 2024) and The Runner’s Almanac (Spuyten Duyvil, 2024). Amirthanayagam’s translation of Mexican poet Kenia Cano’s Animal For The Eyes is forthcoming from Dialogos Books.

William O’Daly has translated nine books of Chilean Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda’s poetry, including Neruda’s first volume, Book of Twilight. In September 2022, Beltway Editions released his most recent book of poems, The New Gods. The Los Angeles Master Chorale included poems from The New Gods and the chapbook Waterways in the world premiere of Reena Esmail’s “Malhaar: A Requiem for Water,” at Walt Disney Concert Hall. A National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, O’Daly has received national and regional honors for his poetry and translations and served on the national board of Poets Against War. He also has served as Lead Writer for the California Water Plan, a strategic plan for sustainably and equitably managing water resources.

Heather Bourbeau’s award-winning poetry and fiction have appeared in The Irish Times, The Kenyon Review, Meridian, and The Stockholm Review of Literature. Her writings are part of the Special Collections at the James Joyce Library, University College Dublin and have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes and Best of the Net. She has worked with various UN agencies, including the UN peacekeeping mission in Liberia and UNICEF Somalia. Her collection Some Days The Bird is a poetry conversation with the Irish-Australian poet Anne Casey (Beltway Editions, 2022). Her latest poetry collection, Monarch, examines overlooked histories from the US West (Cornerstone Press, 2023).

A non-binary poet, Karen Poppy’s debut full-length collection, Diving at the Lip of the Water, is published by Beltway Editions (2023), and is lauded by the legendary Judy Grahn for its demonstration of "paradox and power." She has two chapbooks published with Finishing Line Press, and another chapbook published with Homestead Lighthouse Press: Crack Open/Emergency, our own beautiful brutality, and Every Possible Thing. An attorney licensed in California and Texas, and a librettist, Karen Poppy lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

 The queer community and genre storytelling have always gone hand in hand. From Buffy to The Babadook, queers have long flocked to these kinds of stories, finding a bit of themselves reflected in the magical and mythic horizons of speculative imagination. Somehow, there is still a dearth of explicitly queer and genre stories out in the mainstream. It's time that changed. Whether you're into the spooky and macabre or the fantastical and otherworldly, this free six week class gives you the chance to tap into your experiences and identity and craft your very genre story inspired by the broad and beautiful tapestry of our community. We'll dabble in horror, sci-fi, fantasy, magical realism, and more. The course will include reading assignments, writing exercises, and group discussions. By the end, you'll have a draft of your very own short story, or the beginning of a novel. No experience required, beginners welcome, QTBIPOC friendly. True genre nerds to the front! 

Instructor: Johnny Alvarez is a writer and filmmaker based in San Francisco. His work has been supported by Sundance, SFFILM, Comedy Central, and Outfest. His fiction has been published in The Hunger Journal, Quiet Lightning, and Plenitude Magazine. By day he crusades for public media, and by night he scrapes through finishing his MFA. His perfect cat son Reggie is currently his only source of stability. 

NOTE; this is an ongoing class that will meet the following Tuesdays;

March 18th, 6 to 7:30 PM

April 1st, 6 to 7:30 PM

April 8th, 6 to 7:30 PM

April 22nd, 6 to 7:30 PM

May 6th, 6 to 7:30 PM

To sign up copy and past the link below;

 https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeoIoZAyv2QDje4ihqY7kBXxn9REkEDKG3WcE2YaV1NLx0MpA/viewform?usp=sharing

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!

The Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network (DVAN) is thrilled to present poets and writers Mai Der Vang, Anhvu Buchanan, Teresa Mei Chuc, and Trinh Lê in our first reading of 2025! This event is part of DVAN's quarterly reading series in partnership with the San Francisco Public Library. Join us on March 15, 2025 for an exciting evening of poetry.

Mai Der Vang is the author of Primordial (Graywolf Press, 2025), Yellow Rain (Graywolf Press, 2021), and Afterland (Graywolf Press, 2017). Her honors include the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets, an American Book Award, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, and the First Book Award from the Academy of American Poets, among others. The recipient of a Guggenheim and Lannan Literary Fellowship, she teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Fresno State.

Anhvu Buchanan is the author of The Disordered (sunnyoutside press) and Backhanded Compliments & Other Ways to Say I Love You (Works on Paper Press). His latest collection The Peeling of a Name was recently released with ELJ Editions. He was the recipient of the James D. Phelan Award and also received an Individual Artists Grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission. He currently teaches in San Francisco and can be found online at www.anhvubuchanan.com. 

Teresa Mei Chuc was born in Sài Gòn, Việt Nam shortly after the Vietnam War and grew up in Pasadena and Altadena, California. Altadena Poet Laureate, Editor-in-Chief (2018-2020) and Pasadena Rose Poet since 2016, Teresa Mei Chuc is the author of three books of poetry, Invisible Light (Many Voices Press, 2018), Keeper of the Winds (FootHills Publishing, 2014) and Red Thread (Fithian Press, 2012). Teresa is a public school English teacher in Los Angeles in her twentieth year teaching.

Trinh Le is a Vietnamese American poet & book artist working from the archive. Their work has been supported by the Queer Archives Residency at the SF Public Library, the Bernice Bing: Open Call at the Asian Art Museum, and the UC Berkeley Arts Research Center. You can find their poetry lovingly published by the great people at The Ana. Trinh is an MFA student in creative writing at SF State, where they self-publish under the imprint B!NGO Press. Their favorite color is red.

This event is FREE, but space is limited. Please register in advance by copying and pasting the link below;

bit.ly/DVAN-RRR

Join us this afternoon for a very special photography pop up exhibit and celebration for Barbara Ramos new book Fearless Eye: The Photography of Barbara Ramos

Between 1969 and 1973, the young photographer Barbara Ramos walked the streets of San Francisco, shooting pictures of people. For this brief time, her sharp eye and empathetic gaze allowed her to create a body of work that was incisively historic, timelessly human and luminously beautiful. Then she stopped photographing. Fifty years later, Ramos unpacked her images to discover an astonishing record of a time, a place, and a people. Her photographs offer up stirring scenes from everyday life - a group of Hari Krishnassing on Market Street, a window dresser changes a mannequin at Union Square Macy’s, two men lean in for a kiss at a peace rally in Golden Gate Park. The unearthing of Ramos’s archives revealed the work of a previously unknown master of twentieth-century photography, whose work belongs alongside that of Robert Frank, Diane Arbus and Vivian Maier. In this book, Barbara Ramos’s photographs are publlished for the first time. A preface by award winning novelist and essayist Rachel Kushner, an essay by photography historian Sally Stein, and an interview with Ramos by photographer and writer Steven A.Heller contextualize the images and the era in which the they were taken .Barbara was born in New York City and raised in Los Angeles. She attended the San Francisco Art Institute - BFA Photography. San Francisco State University MA Interdisciplinary Arts.

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 we have a heavy duty extra potent dose of musical medicina being provided by Francis Wong, William Roper, Grex vs. Black Edgar.

Join us for an exciting evening of literature, community, and creativity at the debut reading of The Other Lives of Altagracia Sanchez, a compelling new novella by Felicia Martinez. The evening will feature a lively discussion about the novellas' themes, inspiration, and writing process, followed by a captivating reading from Felicia Martinez herself. The Other Lives of Altagracia Sanchez delves into the complexities of identity, family, and resilience, offering a poignant and thought-provoking exploration that will resonate with readers of all ages. In addition to the debut reading, the event will include three short readings from talented local Bay Area authors, showcasing the diverse voices and literary talent of our community. 

Felicia Martínez (she/her) is a writer and artist from Eastern New Mexico, though the San Francisco Bay Area is now home. While an Associate Professor in the Integral Program at Saint Mary's College of California, she had the great pleasure of leading students in discussions across the liberal arts tradition. Her avid interest in conceptions of personhood, and the ways in which such conceptions inform narrative experimentation in literature, inspires her creative outlets, both visual and written. She favors surreal, speculative writing and stories that explore identity, agency, and empowerment. Find her words at Asimov's, The Razor, The Acentos Review, The Rising Phoenix Review, The Deadlands, and others. Her short novella, The Other Lives of Altagracia Sanchez, is available now from Querencia Press.

Dylan Connell is an author and musician who seems to have wandered out of the classical canon and into the modern-day metropolis of the Bay Area. He holds an MFA from the University of San Francisco and writes fast paced philosophical fiction. His story Cult of Venus won Ab Terra’s 2021 Prize for best short story in Science Fiction and his re-imagining of an ancient myth: Lotus Drinkers was a finalist for the Pushcart Prize. Akinoga Press will be publishing his novella: Nadie se Salva in the summer of 2025. And his Collection: Mask of Aphrodite will be published by Legacy Press in early 2026. He co-hosts a hip-hop cypher every first Friday at the Alan Blueford Center for Justice.

Tino V. H. Jr. is a  Mexican-American teaching artist and spoken word poet born and raised in Oakland, CA. He attended UC Santa Cruz, pursuing a degree in Literature with a concentration in Latin American Literature.. He’s represented poetry teams for cities like Santa Cruz and Berkeley, CA on national stages.Mostly recently, he traveled to the Bigfoot Poetry Festival with the 2023 Berkeley Slam team, where they took 3rd place. His work explores im/migration, indigeneity, the hood, queerness, feminism, and decolonial frameworks. He currently organizes with RichOak Events in the Bay Area co-curating 4 shows: Alchemy Open Mic, Day Dreamer’s Poetry, the Oakland Poetry Slam and the Berkeley Poetry Slam. In his spare time he constantly updates his “Best Tacos in East Oakland” list, plays too many video games, reads to feel alive and writes pre-colonial high fantasy.

Gayathri Kamath is a South Indian-American engineer, waylaid on her original path to build rockets and ended up herding cats in tech instead. She’s told stories all her life about goddesses, apsaras, and warrior-princesses and started writing again after not seeing enough of these people in the books she was reading.Her short story, Akka, will be in an upcoming issue of Reckoning, and she was awarded the 2021 Futurescapes Award for most Promising Writer of the Year for her novel, Raven’s Journey to the West

Doctors Against Genocide and Do No Harm Coalition present an evening of learning and healing together in a time of genocide. Professor of medicine currently suspended at UCSF, physician, musician and author Rupa Marya will host a discussion of the book she co-authored with Raj Patel, Inflamed: Deep Medicine & the Anatomy of Injustice. She will be joined by fellow exiled professors Dr Sang Hea Kil and Rochelle McLaughlin from San Jose State University to discuss the academic repression of women/people of color in this moment of rising fascism in the US. 

Throughout the evening, the Kamal Adwan Pop Up Free Clinic for the Treatment of Sickness of Genocide will be staffed by healthcare workers offering peer support, tea and basic care for those who need it in solidarity with Doctors Against Genocide's Washington DC gathering at the Hill to petition our lawmakers to end the genocide in Palestine.

Rupa Marya is a doctor, artist, activist and author, co-founder of the Do No Harm Coalition, and founder of the Deep Medicine Circle, an organization that works to heal the wounds of colonialism through food, medicine, storytelling, restoration and learning. She has toured twenty-nine countries with her band, Rupa and the April Fishes, whose music was described by the legend Gil Scott-Heron as “Liberation Music.” 

Sang Hea Kil is a professor in the “Justice” Studies Department at San Jose State University (SJSU).  She is currently job suspended for helping her students protest a genocide on her campus. She is a scholar-activist whose research focuses on the criminalization of immigrants, media analysis of the militarization of the border and immigrant bans/exclusions, and the discourse of whiteness and the nation. Her award-winning book is Covering the Border War: How the News Media Create Race, Crime, Nation and the USA-Mexico Divide. 

Rochelle McLaughlin taught at SJSU for 20 years until she resigned this December due to SJSU's support for the U.S.-Israeli genocide in Palestine. Rochelle is currently working with Doctors Against Genocide and the Stanford Healthcare Workers for Palestine to continue to organize for a free Palestine. 

Doctors Against Genocide is a global coalition of healthcare workers dedicated to succeeding where global governments have failed in confronting and preventing genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Do No Harm Coalition is a national coalition of healthcare workers committed to advancing structural change to address poor health outcomes due to state violence.

Join us on Tuesday, March 11 at Medicine for Nightmares for a screening of Trokas Duras, followed by a virtual Q&A with director Jazmin Garcia, hosted by navi kaur, and dilpreet, Trokas Duras is visual journey through the interior landscapes of a Jornalero’s dreams, his waking reality in L.A., and what it looks like when a group of people relegated to serving others labors for their own elevation of body and spirit. An homage to the unique, idiosyncratic, and customized old pick-up trucks driven by Latino day laborers and the intimacy that is cultivated in and around them.

A jornalero dreams about the iconic trucks of his compañeros,, their customized details, style, and honorable cargos. Just when his dream ramps up with visions of love and justice, he wakes up to a seemingly ordinary day in Los Angeles. Like any work day for a jornalero, it starts with a coffee before loading up cargos. We then weave through intimate moments and conversations in and around colorful pick up trucks, learning about the labor, loss, and pride of a few pairs of workers as they work and commute through the city. A day’s chamba, or work, ends with a synchronized route to the country outskirts of LA, where a Tree of Life gathers and provides shelter, as well as space for ritual and celebration for a group of laborers ending a hard day of work.

Jazmin Garcia is a filmmaker, photographer, and music curator based in Mexico City and Los Angeles. She has been developing her craft through music videos, short documentaries, and commercial work. Her work aspires to live within the visual realm of transformative justice, as a space that holds and uplifts memory, exploring themes around identity and freedom, focusing on immigration and the American pressures of cultural assimilation. She continues to develop narrative projects that expand on generational family histories and her own experience as a first-generation Mexican-Guatemalan- American, weaving intimate stories of trauma, magic, amor, and the perseverance of hope. She has exhibited selected short films through programs like the Echo Park Film Center L.A. Air Residency and the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival. Her latest short film, TROKAS DURAS, won the Short Film Jury Award for Best US Fiction at the Sundance Film Festival 2025. When she is not working on visual projects, she is hosting and curating her monthly radio show, Como La Flor. The sonic landscape she creates is one of nostalgia and solace through sentimental and cinematic Latin American music spanning from the 1930s-1970s. Como La Flor ranks as the 3rd most listened to broadcast on the online global platform NTS Radio.

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!

From the organizing body that brings you the Berkeley Slam and the Oakland Slam, RichOak Events presents a new poetry show in the heart of San Francisco’s Mission District. In partnership with Medicine for Nightmares, the Day Dreamer’s Poetry Showcase is a spoken word event where voices that have often been silenced or overlooked have a chance to shine.

Join us every 2nd Saturday in the Galleria as we invite local and traveling poets to shape and nurture the very dreams we as poets refuse to let die.

Every month, we will be bringing featuring poets from all walks of life to inspire our audience with beauty of story telling and the alchemy of word play. You don't wanna miss this!

As part of this month’s neighborhood Paseo Artistico we are over la luna excited to have none other than Marga Gomez and Betty Pazmino performing in the front window of the bookstore!

Marga Gomez was named “2024 Best Of The Bay Comedian” by 48 Hills/ SF Bay Guardian. She was an original member of Culture Clash and is an artist in residence at Brava Theater. Marga's sabrosa one person show “Spanish Stew” will premiere this year if she’s not arrested first. Follow @themargagomez on instagram unless she deletes it. 

Betty Pazmiño, or Betty la Bella, is a homegirl de la Misión with tell-it-like-it-is humor and over 35 years experience as a San Francisco teacher. Betty has also emceed and danced at San Francisco Carnaval, hosted Brava’s New Year’s Eve Comedy Fiesta as well as Encuentro del Canto Popular.

NOTA: This very special event is part of the neighborhood Paseo Artistico celebrating International Woman’s Day!

Paseo Artistico: Women’s Health and Healing will take place Saturday March 8 all day featuring women artists and community members sharing their work and showcasing a vibrant array of performances and cultural practices that support women’s health and healing. The event also celebrates Acción Latina’s Fatima Ramirez as she says goodbye to the organization after serving as Executive Director for the last 6 years. Come dance, sing, and enjoy interactive opportunities to celebrate women with theater, musical performances, painting exhibits, and more along the 24th Street/Calle 24 Latino Cultural District. Free for the entire family. Paseo Artistico is produced quarterly and co-presented by 24th Street cultural venues including Mission Cultural Center, Brava Theater, Dance Mission, Precita Eyes Muralists, Community Music Center, Medicine For Nightmares Bookstore, Calle 24 Latino Cultural District, EvolvedSF, Donaji, and Artillery Ceramics Studio. Paseo Artístico is generously supported by Latino Community Foundation Poderatre Grant, SFAC, The GAP, and the Mellon Foundation.

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 musical medicina is being provided by Michael P. Dawson(electronics, flute)-set 1

Bruce Ackley(woodwinds), Darren Johnston(trumpet), David Michalak(skatch 'n steel), and Ben Davis(cello)-set 2

Join us as we celebrate the launch of Call Her Freedom by Tara Dorabji, How We Know Our Time Travelers by Anita Felicelli, and Too Soon by Betty Shamieh with a reading and conversation with Zara Houshmand! This event will include short readings, an exciting conversation between the authors and Zara Houshmand, and Q&A.

About Call Her Freedom: A sweeping family saga following one woman’s struggle to protect her culture and her family amidst the backdrop of a military occupation. Call Her Freedom is a love story that untangles family secrets and heals generational wounds, announcing Tara Dorabji as a thrilling new voice in fiction.

Tara Dorabji |  Tara Dorabji is the author of the novel, Call Her Freedom, winner of the Simon & Schuster Books Like Us first novel contest. She is the daughter of Parsi-Indian and German-Italian migrants. Her documentary film series on human rights defenders in Kashmir won awards at over a dozen film festivals throughout Asia and the USA. Tara's publications include Al Jazeera, The Chicago Quarterly, Huizache, and acclaimed anthologies: Good Girls Marry Doctors & All the Women in My Family Sing. She lives in Northern California with her family and rabbit.

About How We Know Our Time Traveler is a dark, surreal, and atmospheric collection of 14 genre-bending stories that explore themes of reality, time, and love. Meet an uncanny crew: a bickering couple who use an app to track their fights, a woman who realizes that an unseen lodger is squatting in her home, a woman encounters a younger version of her husband, and a group of creepy friends sell jars of fog.

Anita Felicelli | Anita Felicelli is the author of the short story collection How We Know Our Time Travelers. Her other books include Chimerica: A Novel and the award-winning Love Songs for a Lost Continent. Anita edits Alta Journal‘s California Book Club. Anita has also contributed essays and criticism to the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Alta Journal, Slate, among other places. Her work has been recognized by the Greater Bay Area Journalism Awards and the Los Angeles Press Club. She served on the Board of the National Book Critics Circle from 2021-2024.

About Too Soon with biting hilarity, Too Soon introduces us to a trio of bold and unforgettable voices. This dramatic saga follows one family’s epic journey fleeing war-torn Jaffa in 1948, chasing the American Dream in Detroit and San Francisco in the sixties and seventies, hustling in the New York theatre scene post-9/11, and daring to stage a show in Palestine in 2012. Upon learning one of them is living on borrowed time, the three women fight to live, make art, and love on their own terms. A funny, sexy, and heart-wrenching literary debut, Too Soon illuminates our shared history and asks, how can we set ourselves free?

Betty Shamieh | Betty Shamieh (she/her) is a Palestinian American writer and the author of fifteen plays. She is the playwright-in-residence at the Classical Theatre of Harlem. Her six New York play premieres include the sold-out off-Broadway runs of Roar and Malvolio, a sequel to Twelfth Night, which were both New York Times Critic’s Picks. Shamieh was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and named a UNESCO Young Artist for Intercultural Dialogue. She is a founding artistic director of The Semitic Root, a collective that supports innovative theatre cocreated by Arab and Jewish Americans. A graduate of Harvard College and the Yale School of Drama, she lives with her family in San Francisco.

Zara Houshmand | Zara Houshmand is an Iranian American writer whose work includes poetry, theatre, literary translation, collaborative memoir, and creative nonfiction. She was a pioneer in the development of virtual reality as an art form and her VR installation Beyond Manzanar, with Tamiko Thiel, has been exhibited widely around the world and is in the permanent collection of the San Jose Museum of Art. For two decades she was publications director for the Mind & Life Institute, editing books on the Dalai Lama’s dialogues with Western scientists, and she has contributed to many other publications on Buddhism. Her theater work includes directing and designing as well as writing, with bilingual productions and award-winning translations of Bijan Mofid’s plays. Her most recent book is Moon and Sun, a bilingual edition of her translations of Rumi’s rubaiyat. 

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.

Join us this afternoon for an artist talk with Taca, whose solo photography exhibit “Growing Pains”, is currently up in our galeria.

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.

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 potent dose of musical medicina is being provided by Ben Goldberg(clarinet), David Ewell(bass) and Hamir Atwal(drums) followed by a second set with Evelyn Davis(piano), David Boyce(reeds and electronics) and John Diaz(drums)

Tonight in our galeria author Nancy Wang will read from her latest novel, Red Altar. Red Altar is a historical fiction novel that follows three generations of the same Chinese family that started the fishing industry in the Monterey Bay area in 1850. Based on Wang’s own family history, Red Altar is a story of courage and resilience as the characters, all real, face the challenges of racism, also real, by reinventing themselves over and over again in order to exist. With the realities of racial injustice continuing to impact BIPOC communities today, Red Altar weaves awareness and harvests wisdom from freedom struggles past and present. Wang will read excerpts from the book, followed by a Q&A. Books will be available for sale.

Nancy Wang started her artistic career as a modern dancer and Asian American storyteller, and co-founded The Asian American Dance Company as well as Kalilang Kulintang, the first Filipino kulintang school and performance company of Northern California, featuring the traditional bronze gong ensemble music and dance of the southern island of Mindanao. In 1985, they together founded Eth-Noh-Tec, a kinetic storytelling theater non-profit. With her husband musician, performer and writer Robert Kikuchi-Yngojo, besides working their non-profit mission, they work to accomplish Eth-Noh-Tec’s goal to heal the divides within us and between us. This is accomplished through the performances of pan-Asian folktales and myths and Asian American inspiring stories such as Red Altar. As award winning storytelling performers, they continue to create and perform as well as train the next generation of Asian American storytellers in their award-winning kinetic style of performance. Red Altar started as a multi-media, interdisciplinary performance story drama and continues to be performed around the United States to standing ovations.

Book release celebration for Keana Aguila Labra new book of poetry THE LANGUAGE OF UNBREAKING(Sampaguita Press 2025). Keana will be reading from their new book of poetry and will be joined by fellow poets Nik Vik, Lorenz Mazon Dumuk, Ellie Lopez, Arlene Biala, Reggie Imbat, and more TBA,

Nik Vik (he/they) is a comedy performer who has done a variety of acts across the Bay Area, including improv and stand-up comedy. In 2019, they were the frontman of the freestyle rap improv duo “F$#K.” who regularly performed at Syzygy SF. Currently, he is a cast member with the improv team “Quality Control” who have performed at venues such as Endgames Improv and All Out Comedy Theater, and have been featured in shows like “Jokeland” and “Haight to Laugh.” Outside of their on-stage performances, Nik is the writer of the slice of afterlife web comic “The ‘Guardian’ of Purgatory,” which they create with illustrator Meena Vempaty. They are also a filmmaker who has written and directed videos for the YouTube channel “Los Jackals,” and has starred in one of their latest films “Join Our Team!” Follow Nik on instagram @notnikvik to stay updated on current and future projects of theirs, and follow his team “Quality Control” @qc_improv to learn of upcoming shows!

Lorenz Mazon Dumuk is a poet and spoken word artist from San Jose, California. He is the author of the book, Held (Sampaguita Press), as well as the author to two self published chapbooks, Ay Nako: Writing Through the Struggle, and I Think In Poetry. He is a VONA alumni, and a MALI (Multicultural Arts Leadership Institute) alumni, which is a Silicon Valley based program that focuses on developing leaders of color in the arts, culture, and entertainment sectors. He is one of the curators for, Glowing with the Moon, an open mic and interactive community space in San Jose. Lorenz writes with, against, and through the contradictions he encounters, which allows him to explore the different silences in his life through his poetry. His spoken word performances are painfully heartfelt as well as magnificently healing. An awkwardly adorable poet who can be caught doing hip-circles before a poetry reading.  

Ellie Lopez (she/her) is a photographer & storyteller from the 209. She is a community college dropout and failed music journalist. When she’s not ear hustling for the best chismes she writes poetry about grief, pop culture and her family chismes. Her work has been published in Sin Cesar (formally DRYLAND), Maria’s at Sampaguitas, and CWAA Fresno Flies, Cockroaches & Poets. “While in Mourning” is her first chapbook BuiLit Zine.

Arlene Biala (she/her) is a Pinay poet and performance artist born in San Francisco, CA and raised in the South Bay. She has been participating in poetry performances and workshops in the Bay Area for over 30 years and was Poet Laureate of Santa Clara County for 2016 and 2017. She is the author of several collections of poetry: bone, continental drift, and her beckoning hands, which won the 2015 American Book Award. Her latest book, one inch punch, was published in 2019. Arlene’s poetry has been described as "grounded in ritual object and ritual practice, mantras that resonate within the body and plant the body firmly in the world. Her work responds to the call of ancestors and our own broken bodies, spirits, and the spaces we inhabit. Her poems are prayer flags offered to those whose stories have been silenced, hidden, and ignored. Arlene’s work centers on stories of family, of generations who have left their native lands to live in diaspora, particularly those from the Philippines. She writes poetry to serve as witness, to create space for recognition and dialogue toward healing. 

Reggie Imbat (he/him) is an Ilocano Filipino from the Bay Area. He loves playing the guitar and watching movies with his best friends. His love language is bringing food over to the house and playing with cats. 

Keana Aguila Labra (they/she) is a Cebuano-Tagalog Filipino from San Jose. They are the co-founder of SAMPAGUITA PRESS and their first full-length collection THE LANGUAGE OF UNBREAKING released today at this event!

Sampaguita Press is a nonprofit independent micropress committed to serving underrepresented voices and communities who may not have access to traditional publishing spaces. Sampaguita Press publishes works by and for Black, Indigenous, and POC artists of all genders and LGBTQIA+ identities.

Nostalgic for Nothing Cinema presents Yuri Kochiyama: Passion for Justice (1993) a film by Pat Saunders and Rea Tajiri.

Yuri Kochiyama was a Japanese American woman who lived in Harlem for more than 40 years and had a long history of activism on a wide range of issues. Through extensive interviews with family and friends, archival footage, music and photographs, YURI KOCHIYAMA chronicles this remarkable woman’s contribution to social change through some of the most significant events of the 20th century, including the Black Liberation movement, the struggle for Puerto Rican independence, and the Japanese American Redress movement. In an era of divided communities and racial conflict, Kochiyama offered an outstanding example of an equitable and compassionate multiculturalist vision.

57 mins

7pm

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!

Please join us for a book signing and reading by Dorotea Reyna, author of the newly released book Los Cedros: A Tejana Memoir. 

Chicana writer Dorotea Reyna returns to visit her beloved childhood home in South Texas situated on the Rio Grande River on the U.S.-Mexico border. To her astonishment, she discovers that her father's village is now being monitored by a surveillance balloon, and her mother's village is now framed by the Wall. Alarmed by these changes, she writes this memoir which takes her readers back to a far more peaceful time on the border when she was a girl growing up the in the 60s. 

In colorful vignettes which blend both facts and fiction, she recreates the spirit of the unforgettable men and women who helped shape her as a child including her pueblo's activist priest, the kindly woman who took care of her when her parents were teaching, and the village curandera. She also shares lessons she learned from her parents and abuelos regarding race and gender, as well as recounts her journey from a primarily Spanish-speaking world to an "English only" classroom.

Writing in vivid poetic language, with stories that express both wonder and despair, she attempts to recover the wholeness she felt as a child from the violence and demagoguery of today's political discourse. 

Dorotea Reyna was born and raised in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, and earned degrees in English from Stanford University and the University of Texas at Austin. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in several anthologies of Chicano literature, most recently in Chicana/Latina Studies, the journal of Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social. Professionally, she worked as a fundraiser for several Bay Area universities focusing on raising scholarships for Latinos and other students of color.