The Bay Area’s long-running Porchlight storytelling series returns to Litquake for this special cinematic edition, featuring tales of the silver screen from the Bay’s finest writers and comedians including Jack Boulware, Mukethe Kawinzi, Ali Liebegott, Allison Mick, TK Moyer, and sam sax. Co-hosted by Arline Klatte and Beth Lisick. Music by Marc Capelle. Doors at 7:00pm.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Broadway debut of Ntozake Shange’s famed choropoem for colored girls who considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf. First performed at the women’s bar Bacchanal right here in Albany before becoming the second play by a Black woman to run on Broadway, for colored girls isa series of poetic monologues accompanied by dance movements and music. To honor Shange’s legacy, join Amalee Bea, Briana Grogan, Jaine, Mukethe Kawinzi, Erica Lewis, and Wendy M. Thompson. Curated by London Pinkney as they weave the work together. Doors at 5:30pm.

Poets in the Window is a reading series that puts poets in the front window of the Medicine for Nightmares bookstore to read their poems to the chingadera, locura, and beauty that is 24th Street. Featuring Mukethe Kawinzi, Cathy Arellano, Barbara Jane Reyes, and San Francisco’s current Poet Laureate Genny Lim. 

Join us on Monday, October 5 for a pre-publication launch celebrating T.S. Leonard's debut poetry collection, Another Anthem of Fabulous Survival, at 9th Ave! Featuring Mukethe Kawinzi and Maw Shein Win

About Another Anthem of Fabulous Survival
Winner of the 2024-2025 Poetic Justice Institute Prize, a dazzling debut charting queer survival, memory, and joy across time

A time traveler crashes into a gay bar, and from that electric collision unfolds Another Anthem of Fabulous Survival, T. S. Leonard’s dazzling debut poetry collection. Moving through glitter, ash, memory, and music, these poems follow a queer time traveler across decades and geographies, from turn-of-the twenty-first-century Missouri to 1970s San Francisco to imagined origins of music itself. Along the way, they come of age, try drag, lose friends, and fall in love, tracing a life shaped by history’s ruptures and its celebrations.

T.S. Leonard (Author) is a poet, performer, and educator whose work has been featured in Poetry, Foglifter, Fourteen Poems, and in collaborative projects at the Portland Art Museum and Pacific Design Center. Originally from Kansas City, Missouri, he lives and teaches in San Francisco.

How is a tree like a stripper pole? Where do the poetics of physicality and ecology overlap? As digital spaces collapse into slop and surveillance, how can queer communities in the material world dig and twerk toward pleasure and liberation? In Hands in the Soil, Legs on the Pole: Queerness in the Material Realm, QTBIPOC writers Brandon Logans, Kevin Madrigal Galindo, May-Li Khoe, and Nnenna Loveth explore the sensuality, tenderness, and resilience of both body and earth. These landworkers, dancers, and poets discuss how queerness informs and supports their relationship to tangible space, natural environs, and embodied movement. Curated by Mukethe Kawinzi.

In celebration of Splendor: Trans Poets (September 1, Two Lines Press), Green Apple Books on the Park is hosting a trans poetry night featuring the work of Québécois poet Pascale Bérubé, read by her translators Andrew Wilson and Jana Vourgourakis. Their readings from the collection will be complemented by readings from Alexis N. Garcia and Mukethe Kawinzi, as well as an introduction from Sarah Coolidge, editor of Splendor and of the Calico series from Two Lines Press.

About Splendor: Trans Poets

Introducing readers to five trans and nonbinary poets, Splendor is an ode to queer bodies, with previously unpublished translations from Argentina, Denmark, Korea, Norway, and Quebec. From the irreverent and irresponsible to the quiet and meditative, these poems decentralize our ideas of trans experience and poetics.

Poet Ben Gucciardi hosts a new reading series at Local Economy. This third edition will benefit the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project (WOEIP), which has been the leading environmental justice organization in that part of the city for the last 20 years.

​Reading this time around will be poet Mukethe Kawinzi, novelist Vanessa Hua, and LE’s own Alexis Madrigal. Writer Lauren Markham will be moderate the discussion and Veronica Eady, executive director of WOEIP, will be in the house, too! RSVP on Luma.

Andrew Paul Nelson & Mukethe Kawinzi for POETS! at Bird and Beckett Bookstore!

Jerry Ferraz and Michael Koch host a poetry reading that showcases local legends, poets passing through and folks from around the Bay – two featured poets followed by an open mic. We can count on a warm group of poets and poetry fans eager to hear the features and the potpourri of poets of every stripe who come out to read and keep the open mic scene alive.

Skanking in the streets, riding the bus, walking around with goats: this month five local writers wax philosophical on “Getting Around”. The Happy Endings Reading Series is hosted by the fantastic & fabulous Danielle Truppi & Joe Wadlington at The Make-Out Room.

Kitchen Table is a series centered around poetry and literature, food and drink, and culture and politics. The core of the series is intimate poetry, performance, and conversation with the feel of a salon, with three writers sharing each month and a local pop-up sharing their food or drink with us. July’s theme is "What feeds you?" with Matthew Zapruder, T.K. Rex, and Mukethe Kawinzi.

Join Green Apple Books on Tuesday, June 23 to welcome Christian Bancroft for the release of his book, A Ghost Has No Fantasies, at 9th Ave! Featuring Caroline Mar and Mukethe Kawinzi.

About A Ghost Has No Fantasies
Through haunting poetry and prose, A Ghost Has No Fantasies illuminates the forgotten voices of LGBTQ+ individuals who suffered under Nazi persecution. Drawing from archival documents, survivor testimonies, and Gestapo files, Christian Bancroft weaves together the intimate stories of those imprisoned under Paragraph 175 and beyond — gay men, lesbians, and transgender individuals whose experiences have long remained in the shadows of Holocaust memory.

About Christian Bancroft
Christian Bancroft received his Ph.D. from the University of Houston and is the recipient of a Michener Fellowship. He is also the author of Queering Modernist Translation: The Poetics of Race, Gender, and Queerness (2020) and the co-editor of the 2018 Unsung Masters Series volume, Adelaide Crapsey: The Life & Work of an American Master. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Callaloo, The Missouri Review, Prairie Schooner, Petrichor, and Asymptote, among others.

Me, Carlos Quinteros III, and hector son of hector are your chismosa girls for the Flor y Canto Poetry Crawl. Get into it.

Some voices don’t wait for the future to arrive. They speak from it.

In I Know Who I Am: Voices in the Now-Future, powerhouse poets bring language that moves with clarity, conviction, and fire. Their work lives in the present tense where identity is claimed, history is confronted, and the future is already pressing through the lines.

Mahogany L. Browne brings fearless lyric intelligence to the page and stage, weaving justice, imagination, and cultural memory into poems that challenge and uplift. Tramaine Suubi delivers performance alive with presence, drawing audiences into stories shaped by movement and music. Mukethe Kawinzi brings language shaped by the unruly energy and wisdom of the natural world, looking beyond the visible and opening portals to futures that include all living beings. devorah major (poet, activist, former San Francisco Poet Laureate, and Berkeley Poetry Festival Lifetime Achievement Awardee for 2026) offers work grounded in history, community, and the enduring power of Black literary traditions.

Together, these writers remind us that the future is created voice by voice, poem by poem.

Tapping in to co-host Coit Tower Poetry Club. Close out North Beach Poetry Crawl with an exaltation of the words of Leopoldo Maria Panero, Mario Santiago Papasquiero, and your own self. Degenerates welcome.

Gonna be on the poetry stage at Night of Ideas 2026!

Join KALW Public Media and Bay Poets on the atrium stage at the San Francisco Public Library for ¡AQUI ESTAMOS! at Night of Ideas San Francisco on Saturday, April 11, 2026. Under this year’s theme, Lighting the Way, KALW and Bay Poets are exploring how art, innovation, and shared responsibility can help us navigate what’s next.

Josiah Luis Alderete, Mukethe Kawinzi, and Ellie Lopez backed by band Kim Font. This powerhouse mix of music and poetry will move your heart, soul and body. Don’t just watch the performance—feel it. See you at the library!

Could not be more excited to jet over to the East Coast and pop up in Florida to table for Miami Zine Fair! Planning to sling some zines, chapbooks, and maybe one or two new lil’ thangs. Hosted by Exile Projects.

The Miami Zine Fair is a free, public celebration of self-publishing and independent print culture, featuring interactive artwork, new zine releases, hands-on workshops, and artist-led programs throughout the day. Each year, the Fair brings together more than 150 artists, writers, illustrators, activists, and poets, presenting a dynamic mix of installations, demonstrations, performances, podcasts, and site-specific projects.

Ferlinghetti Day is an annual literary walkabout on March 24th, in honor of Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s birthday. I’ll be reading at 4pm at the Golden Sardine stop.

Open to all. For the Ferlinghetti-enthusiasts, the poets, the appreciators of words and walking. This year, from dawn to dusk, we’ll make 11 stops. Also, this year, we’re trying something new…at each stop we’ll feature a particular book. Esteemed poets and citizen poets alike will read from that book at that stop. Schedule at 3rd Street Creative Artery.

Ferlinghetti Day 2025 is very special San Francisco memory for me, and I wrote about it last year over at Quiet Lightening.

Join us from dawn to dusk. Or just here, there, and everywhere. Poetry and poets. Pomp and circumstance.

Reading for International Women’s Day for North Beach First Fridays with Jessica Loos and company.

Join KALW's Bay Poets for a live poetry performance and art exhibit closing party celebrating resistance, solidarity, community, & joy.

Experience poetic voices of rare vision and explore the evolution of Bay Area social justice movements through posters made by La Raza Graphics and the Mission Grafica print studio live at KALW. See poets Mukethe Kawinzi, María Esquinca, Rolando André López, and Josiah Luis Alderete and take one last look at the Mission Grafica art show, live and in person.

This event is presented with support from Joyride Pizza, who will be providing food for this event.

All hail Golden Sardine! Info to come.

The lineup for Stir: Rainy Season 2026 is OFFICIAL. Annalee Newitz, Jason Bayani, Sam J. Miller and Mukethe Kawinzi will all be there, and you should too. More details soon.

Stir is a seasonal reading series on Folsom Corridor, hosted four times a year by Cafe Suspiro & The Fabulist Literary Magazine. Coffee hour at the cafe followed by readings & discussion with local & locally-relevant poets and authors in the Arc Gallery.

Tapping in for Jessica Loos’ Poetry Series at Macchiarini Creative Design during the monthly poetry crawl for North Beach First Fridays. Poetry Crawl starts at 6pm at Golden Sardine and closes out at 9pm up at Coit Tower Poetry Club.

(I wrote about the beauty of the North Beach Poetry Crawl for Quiet Lightning last year.)

The Art Bloc Sausalito Poetry Showcase, hosted by the lilting and lovely Sophia Fox, and starring a fantastic lineup of San Francisco poets.

Black Freighter Press and The Ana invite you to come experience an evening of resonance & reflection. The Music WE Make is a bricolage of language, healing, and sound.

Each of the writers featured in the event incorporate sound and music into their readings — including cultural practices like call & response, hymns, and folk songs — thus making the event an experience rather than an ordinary reading. The event will be co-hosted by Alie Jones, co-director of Black Freighter Press and Carlos Quinteros III the managing and poetry editor of The Ana.

Forest bath? Sure. Or come yell at a beautiful plant. Whatever suits you. Part poetic performance, part storytelling, part study of place, join our guide Myriam Gurba and a gaggle of poets and musicians as they traverse themes of language, power, ancestry, and California’s ecology, in the structure of a labyrinthine secret garden. Close out our afternoon series in the gardens with poets Caroline M. Mar, Wendy M. Thompson, and Mukethe Kawinzi. Limited seating. BYO chair or blanket, encouraged. FREE with SFBG admission, no RSVP required

Co-presented with The Gardens of Golden Gate Park
A part of Litquake Secret Garden series
Musical interludes by Rosie Cima and Natasha Jong (Jenny Haniver)

Bay Area Poets! Beat Corner at Conifer Lawn! Reading with Avante Garden Music and Poetry as part of Flower Piano at Gardens of Golden Gate Park. Hosted by the singular Agneta Falk and Jessica Loos.

Sharing works that delight, provoke, inspire and rouse, the Poetic Tuesdays series turns lunchtime into an oasis of creative expression. Lighting up Jessie Square with a fabulously curated line-up of poets and musicians, Poetic Tuesdays offer a vivifying midday breather for neighborhood groups, students, office workers on break and out-of-towners looking for respite from The City’s hustle and bustle.

Curated by Nia Pearl, an award-winning poet, writer, and environmental justice advocate working at the intersection of art, activism, and public engagement.

Honored to be joining up with Truong Tran and Sophia Dahlin in the upstairs poetry loft at the incomparable Golden Sardine in North Beach. Hosted by Andrew Paul Nelson, watched over by ghosts of Beats past.

Tapping in for Jessica Loos’ Poetry Series at Macchiarini Creative Design during the monthly poetry crawl for North Beach First Fridays. Poetry Crawl starts at 6pm at Golden Sardine and closes out at 9pm up at Coit Tower Poetry Club.

(I wrote about the beauty of the North Beach Poetry Crawl for Quiet Lightning last year.)

Third stop of the Flor y Canto poetry crawl at the beloved Galeria de la Raza with a Celebration of Queer Poetics curated by Lourdes Figueroa and featuring the tender y peligrosx palabras of Yeva Johnson, Kevin Madrigal Galindo, Zander Moreno, and Mukethe Kawinzi.