We at Beast Crawl Literary Festival dearly miss our friend J. de Salvo. He was the founder and editor of The Bicycle Review & Pedestrian Press which published many great works. J was a prolific writer and exemplary performer. He had a profound understanding of literature and knew how to read it. For that, he saw the highest good in the writers in his midst and did his best to promote them. In his memory, we created the J. de Salvo Open Mic.

This year, we have a special guest writer, performer, and all-around excellent gentleman Charlie Getter hosting the group reading. Charlie is the author of four poetry collections, and his work has appeared in numerous anthologies, journals, zines, and other publications. He’s a founding member of the Collaborative Arts Insurgency (CAI), the group of artists, poets, emcees, and musicians responsible for the genesis of the ongoing 16th & Mission street arts workshop that takes place every Thursday on the street corner at 16th & Mission in San Francisco’s Mission District.

Show up for this open mic on time at the spot on the map and Charlie will manage sign-ups! The location is a basketball court with sculptures on 12th street, behind 1111 Broadway and WeWork. Questions? Check with us at the Information Table.

Leg: 1 4:00PM Venue: "Sculpture Basketball Court"

A tribute to iconic, bubble-blowing Berkeley poet Julia Vinograd featuring an excerpt from an in-progress documentary on her life and work, followed by readings of her most cherished poems.

CURATOR: Ken Paul Rosenthal makes visually innovative documentaries that explore the intersection of art, madness and the spectrum of difference. His films have screened widely at national and international film festivals. He is the recipient of numerous festival awards, a Kodak Cinematography Award, and a University Film & Video Association Award. His website is  www.kenpaulrosenthal.com/

Jan Steckel’s book Like Flesh Covers Bone (Zeitgeist Press, 2018) won Rainbow Awards for LGBT Poetry and Best Bisexual Book. Her poetry book The Horizontal Poet (Zeitgeist Press, 2011) won a Lambda Literary Award. Her fiction chapbook Mixing Tracks (Gertrude Press, 2009) and poetry chapbook The Underwater Hospital (Zeitgeist Press, 2006) also won awards. www.jansteckel.com

Richard Loranger is a multi-genre writer and all-around squeaky wheel currently residing in Oakland, CA. He is the author of Unit of Agency, Be A Bough Tit, Sudden Windows, Poems for Teeth, The Orange Book, and ten chapbooks, and has work in over 100 magazines and journals. You can find more about his work and scandals at www.richardloranger.com

Paul Corman-Robert’s 2nd full length collection of poems, Bone Moon Palace (Nomadic Press 2021) has been nominated for a CLMP Firecracker Award. He currently teaches workshops for the Older Writer’s Lab in conjunction with the San Francisco Public Library as well as the San Francisco Creative Writing Institute.

Venue: Chapter 510 Leg: One, 4:00PM

Milvia Street is a print and online journal that has featured the diverse voices and visions of Berkeley City College students since 1989. We nurture the next generations of literary movers and shakers. www.milviastreet.com

Join us for an amazing reading featuring phenomenal emerging LGBTQ+ and BPOC poets: antmen pimentel mendoza, Carla Schick, Christiana Smith, Elaine Dowd, and Jay Whittington. Their creative work is forth coming in the next issue of Milvia Street, Berkeley City College’s art and literary journal. Hosted by Sharon Coleman.

antmen pimentel mendoza (he + she) is a writer currently based in Oakland, CA. His poetry is published in Cosmonauts Avenue, Underblong, and Lantern Review and is anthologized in Peach Mag’s Worlds In Which: Speculative Mix. Her favorite donut is a maple old-fashioned. antmen is online as @antmenismagic.

Carla Schick is a Queer transformative justice activist and writer. Their writing weaves together personal stories, politics, and history to create visions for resistance & liberation. They have been published in Milvia St., Forum Literary Journal, Sinister Wisdom, Berkeley Times, and Earth’s Daughters. The Write Launch published their creative nonfiction.

Christiana Smith is an emerging writer and poet. They write about sapphic and non-binary experiences, family, and the discovery of self. Their love for music led them to poetry. They believe language is always evolving, and learning to evolve with it is a valuable skill.

Elaine Dowd is a Berkeley based poet who believes in the power of story to heal and transform lives. Poetry is her favorite practice, as it connects her to secret portals and new spaces of exploration in which she can dance with both shadow and stars.

Berkeley native, Jay Whittington, found her home within the written word. Painting unique landscapes with words, Jay creates platforms for voices lost within the world's noise. "I write the wrong to right the wrong," Jay uses her pen to bring forth new thought and hope, one letter at a time.

Venue: Binny's Leg: One 4:00PM

Poetry Flash is an online review and literary calendar for California and the West, featuring book reviews, essays, homages, poems, columns, and calls for submissions. Poetry Flash presents a regular reading series in Berkeley, produces the Northern California Book Awards, and sponsors the Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival. Our heartfelt mission is to build community through literary events and publishing. See more athttps://poetryflash.org/.

Four poets read to celebrate building community through literature, all of whom have been featured in Poetry Flash Readings, or reviewed and published in Poetry Flash, plus our Associate Editor. The reading will be emceed by Joyce Jenkins, Editor and Director of Poetry Flash.

Heather Bourbeau’s work has appeared in 100 Word Story, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Kenyon Review, Meridian, The Stockholm Review of Literature, and Haight Ashbury Literary Journal. She is the winner of La Piccioletta Barca’s inaugural competition and the Chapman Magazine Flash Fiction winner, and has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her work has been featured in several anthologies, including Nothing Short Of 100: Selected Tales from 100 Word Story (Outpost 19), America, We Call Your Name: Poems of Resistance and Resilience (Sixteen Rivers Press), and Respect: Poems About Detroit Music (Michigan State University Press).

Maw Shein Win is a Burmese American poet, editor, and educator who lives and teaches in the Bay Area. Her new collection is Storage Unit for the Spirit House, longlisted for the PEN America 2021 Open Book Award, finalist for the Northern California Book Award in Poetry, and shortlisted for The Golden Poppy Awards 2021. D.A. Powell wrote of it, "Poetry has long been a vessel, a container of history, emotion, perceptions…These poems are portals to other worlds and to our own, a space in which one sees and one is seen. A marvelous, timely and resilient book.” Maw Shein Win’s collections include Invisible Gifts: Poems; her chapbooks include Ruins of a glittering palace and Score and Bone. She is the inaugural Poet Laureate of El Cerrito (2016–2018). http://www.mawsheinwin.com/

Richard Silberg is a poet, critic, translator, and Associate Editor of Poetry Flash. He is the author of six collections of poetry, most recently The Horses: New and Selected Poems and Deconstruction of the Blues, recipient of the PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles Literary Award and nominee for the Northern California Book Award. His books include Reading the Sphere: A Geography of Contemporary American Poetry. He co-translated, with Clare You, The Three Way Tavern, by Ko Un, foreword by Gary Snyder, which received the Northern California Book Award in Translation. He also co-translated Flowers Long For Stars, poems by Oh Sae-Young, This Side of Time, by Ko Un, and I Must Be the Wind, by Moon Chung-Hee. His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Denver Quarterly, Volt, Parthenon West Review, ZYZZYVA, Eleven Eleven, and New American Writing.

Sam Sax’s latest book of poems is Bury It. Tyehimba Jess says, “Bury It, Sam Sax’s urgent, thriving excavation of desire, is lit with imagery and purpose that surprises and jolts at every turn.…A vitalizing and necessary book of poems that dig hard and lift luminously.” Bury It received the 2017 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. Their first collections are Madness, winner of the National Poetry Series, and A Guide to Undressing Your Monsters; their poems were included In Absentia: Reflections on the Pandemic. A queer Jewish writer and educator, they are a two-time Bay Area Grand Slam champion, and have received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Lambda Literary, Wallace Stegner Fellowship, The MacDowell Colony, the Blue Mountain Center, and the Michener Center for Writers. https://www.samsax.com/  

The Bookmark Bookstore is a unique shopping experience located in Old Oakland. Proceeds from the Bookmark benefit Oakland's Public libraries! Shop & support us in our store or online.

Venue: Bookmark Bookstore Leg: One 4:00PM