Two years ago, Kira Brunner Don and
her husband, Timothy Don, packed up their two kids and moved back to Oakland,
where Kira grew up, after 20 years in New York. They work for Lapham's
Quarterly – she's the editor at large; he's the art director - which uses
primary source material from history to examine a specific theme in each issue,
such as "Foreigners," "Time" or "Youth."
They wanted to put down some roots in
their once-and-future hometown, so they decided to found a book festival.
"We had done some festivals in
New York, so we said, 'Let's do what we already know how to do,'" says
Kira. "We wanted to make this a festival that we would want to go to."
And they did. The first annual Oakland
Book Festival was held May 30 at City Hall, and it was cool beyond belief.
It wasn't just a collection of
readings, and it wasn't just a trade show of people selling books, either.
Instead, it was a curated festival of ideas. Kira and Tim chose a concept and
created panels and readings around it.
For the inaugural festival, the
concept was "Cities," both the upside and the downside.
"The upside is that we find in
cities the highest expression of utopian dreams and projects – including
diversity, tolerance, and a cosmopolitan outlook – and Oakland is an expression
of that," says Tim. "The downside of course, is the dystopian outcome
that sometimes happens with utopian projects."
They turned all of City Hall's
hearing rooms into panel rooms and filled them with 35 different panels, including:
An examination of the life and
works of the late journalist Alexander Cockburn, featuring Bruce Anderson, the
founder/editor of the Anderson Valley Advertiser, a quirky community-based
newspaper in Boonville; activist/historian Frank Bardacke, one of the leaders
of the anti-war movement in Berkeley in the late '60s; and writer/historian Leo
Hollis, who flew in all the way from London for the occasion.
"What Does It Mean To Lead A
Radical Life?" a comparison of the Black Panthers in Oakland, the Occupy Wall
Street movement in New York and the Anti-Apartheid movement in Johannesburg, featuring
former Panther leader Elaine Brown, documentary filmmaker Astra Taylor and UC
Irvine professor Frank Wilderson, one of the few Americans who worked with the
African National Congress in the 1960s, when most of the world still thought of
Nelson Mandela as a thug.
And "What Is
Gentrification?" a panel featuring urban planners Lance Freeman, a
professor at Columbia, Malo Andre Hutson, a professor a Cal, and author Gordson
Young, moderated by local writer/poet/journalist Dashka Slater.
Outside on
Frank Ogawa Plaza, 40 different independent booksellers were selling their
books while the Oakland Youth Chorus, the Oakland
School for the Arts Classical Guitarist Ensemble, and rappers Dizzy, J-Mal and Khafre
Jay from HipHop4Change provided entertainment.
The youngest generation wasn't left out,
either. Throughout the day, staffers from the Oakland Public Library read
children's stories to the little tykes, while interactive storytellers from
Children's Fairyland told the tales of Tweedle-dee and Little Miss Muffet.
And it was all free. No tickets, no need to
sign up online. "We wanted to make sure that people who don't have credit
cards or computers would show up," says Tim.
Next Year's concept: "Labor."
For more information, visit oaklandbookfestival.org.
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