Storying Ourselves into Oakland Spaces: Zine Release Party and Open Mic

Thursday, October 23, 2025 

6:30pm - 8:30pm 

Bandung Books, 2289 International Blvd. Oakland, CA 94601

Join us for the release of the Storying Ourselves into Oakland Spaces zine. This gathering will celebrate a year-long series of writing workshops held at Eastside Arts Alliance and surrounding spaces that invited people of Oakland to reflect and write about the Town and their relationships to this place we call home. 

Led by UCLA Professor Dr. Kaily Heitz in collaboration with UT Austin Geography student Elybeth Alcantar, the community writing workshops partnered with Eastside’s Patrice Lumumba Writing Group organized by Don Juan Woodward Carter. Throughout 2023 and 2024, poets, community members, and youth came together to reflect and write. Together, these writers reclaimed an emotional, embodied, and remembered connection to Oakland for its beauty, ugly, and everything in between. 

This zine represents a glimmer of the storied sense of place that Oaklanders carry with them. These stories are honest reflections on movement work - the Third World Alliance, Black radical tradition, and Zapatista organizing that frames social engagement in the Bay. They also represent the narratives of literal displacement and trans-plantation that materially shape our pathways of solidarity and community. 

Join us for an evening of poetry, words and a celebration of Oakland.