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 Red Fast Luck(David Boyce-reeds and efx, PC Munoz-percussion, boom stick, and intergalactic hook rug)

Transanything is a disturbance of the constructed norm, a troubling, an offering, a series of encounters and insights encouraging a full aliveness--a transanything. In Jones' mythography of self and world, A hermit crab retires its shell, lovers drift apart, a self-proclaimed “nature essay” misbehaves, wandering away from the hummingbird outside Jones’s window. Transanything takes on a global web of colonial systems that seek to divide us, disrupting loneliness and forging space for queerness and transness to be radical aliveness. Miah Jeffra, co-founder of Foglifter, said, "The aliveness of this book has an ethic, a power, inspired by love. As a queer reader, I am filled with relief, with gratitude, with a sense of my own presence, and release.”

Ever Jones is a queer/trans author and artist based in Tacoma, WA and is super excited to meet writers and readers in the Bay Area. Ever will be in conversation with local writer and immersive experience creator Syr Beker and we'd love to hear your stories and thoughts about queer & trans possibility in this historical moment, especially as it intersects with climate change and forever-crisis. There will be free stickers, BE TRANSANYTHING merch for sale, as well as a special art print made by Ever Jones to raise funds for critical needs in Gaza.

Ever Jones (they, them) is a queer trans nonbinary author and artist based in Tacoma, WA. They are the author of Transanything as well as two books of poetry, nightsong and Wilderness Lessons. Ever is an educator at heart and with heart. Visit everjones.com to view writing and artwork.

Syr Hayati Beker (they/them) is a queer nonbinary Turkish-American writer, immersive experience creator, horror nerd, and art top in search of the queer love language of climate change. Their book, What A Fish Looks Like, is coming out September 4, 2025, from Stelliform Press.

No Kings,No Queens Chess Club 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.

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 Charlotte Law and her guitar.

Bay Area poets Rolando André López, Denise Newman, Dean Rader, and Sarah Rosenthal read inventive new work that probes issues from the environmental crisis to the precarity of embodiment. This event celebrates three recently published books: Newman’s The Redesignation of Paradise (Kelsey Street Press), Rader’s Before the Borderless (Copper Canyon Press), and Rosenthal’s Estelle Meaning Star (Chax Press). Ranging in age from 30s to 60s, representing different poetry communities from spoken word to academic to performance, these poets share a drive for transforming the lyric to speak to our moment.

Denise Newman is the author of five poetry collections, most recently, The Redesignation of Paradise (Kelsey Street Press, 2024), and, forthcoming, Reality Is Occurring in the Cracks in Reality in Bay Area Suite, a collection of four chapbooks with Elizabeth Robinson, Randy Prunty, George Albon (Selva Oscura/Three Count Pour, 2025). Her writings and translations have appeared in journals such as Chicago Review 75th Anniversary Anthology, Posit, World Literature Today, and Asymptote. For many years she has collaborated with composers providing lyrics for choral works and songs. Newman is also the translator of three novels by the late Danish poet Inger Christensen, and Naja Marie Aidt’s Baboon (winner of the PEN translation award) and When Death Takes Something From You Give It Back (long listed for the National Book Award and a finalist for the Kirkus Prize). She teaches at the California College of the Arts. denisenewman.net

Dean Rader has authored or co-authored thirteen books. His debut collection of poems, Works & Days, won the 2010 T. S. Eliot Poetry Prize. His 2014 collection Landscape Portrait Figure Form was named by The Barnes & Noble Review as a Best Poetry Book. Other titles include the poetry collection Self-Portrait as Wikipedia Entry and the anthologies Native Voices: Contemporary Indigenous Poetry, Craft, and Conversations and Bullets into Bells: Poets and Citizens Respond to Gun Violence. Rader writes and reviews regularly for The San Francisco Chronicle, The Huffington Post, BOMB, Ploughshares, Artforum, and The Los Angeles Review of Books, where he co-authors a poetry column with Victoria Chang. In 2020, he was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Balakian Award. His most recent collection of poems, Before the Borderless: Dialogues with the Art of Cy Twombly, was named by Bookriot as one of ten “mesmerizing” books of modern poetry. Rader’s writing has been supported by fellowships from Princeton University, Harvard University, the MacDowell Foundation, Art Omi, and The Headlands Center for the Arts. He is a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow in poetry and a professor at the University of San Francisco.

Sarah Rosenthal is the author of the full-length collections Estelle Meaning Star (Chax, 2024), Lizard (Chax, 2016), Manhatten (Spuyten Duyvil, 2009), and two books in collaboration with Valerie Witte: One Thing Follows Another: Experiments in Dance, Art, and Life Through the Lens of Simone Forti and Yvonne Rainer (Punctum, forthcoming 2025) and The Grass Is Greener When the Sun Is Yellow (The Operating System, 2019), as well as several chapbooks. She edited A Community Writing Itself: Conversations with Vanguard Writers of the Bay Area (Dalkey Archive, 2010). Her collaborative film We Agree on the Sun won Best Experimental Short at the Berlin Independent Film Festival. Her new collaborative film, Lizard Song, is currently on the film festival circuit. She has received the Leo Litwak Fiction Award, a Creative Capacity Innovation Grant, a San Francisco Education Fund Grant, and residencies at This Will Take Time, Hambidge, New York Mills, Vermont Studio Center, Soul Mountain, and Ragdale, as well as a two-year term as Affiliate Artist at Headlands Center for the Arts. From 2012 to 2023, she served as a juror for the California Book Awards. More at sarahrosenthal.net. 

Rolando André López, from San Juan, Puerto Rico, is an educator, writer, and translator. His work appears in Passages North, ORCA, and more, with citations in Best American Essays. A 2023 Puerto Rican Artist Fellow at MASSMOCA, he writes hybrid fiction, poetry, and essays. López lives in Oakland, California.

Join us on Wednesday, September 3 from 7-9 p.m. to write letters to Cata Xóchitl (SO-CHEEL) Santiago - a DACA recipient, farmworker, and beloved community member who was unjustly detained by border patrol on August 3rd. The event is one of several that has taken place across the country demonstrating the outpouring of national support for Xochitl.

Cata was detained at the El Paso International Airport by two border patrol agents before she boarded a domestic flight for work. Cata showed her valid DACA work authorization card (offering proof of protection from deportation) and was still abducted by DHS without warrant, cause, or access to legal representation. Since then, the Department of Homeland Security has lied to the public to paint Xochitl as a threat. She is currently being detained at the El Paso Processing Center - an immigration detention center with a well-documented history of abuse and neglect.  This is a national litmus test in defending activists and Dreamers from the administration’s attacks.

Hosted by Maria Esquinca

Art opening celebration tonight for Threaded Truths; new works by Jackie Houston& Shashari Kiburi.

Threaded Truths: Current Explorations in Fiber. This exhibition is a snippet of my current explorations in fiber. My work is about connecting to the past, honoring my ancestors, and bringing their voices to the present. Quilting is an art form that communicates an act of love and patience. Quilts, past and present, are often given as gifts to honor a loved one and provide a functionality that conveys warmth and care. I take deep dives into history as a way to make sense of the present realities we find ourselves in. I have been exploring the idea of how and when Western society reduced our identities to a color and its development as a way to divide those who were enslaved and those who were not. I have been looking to the early US colonies and considering not only those who were known in history, but those who were unknown. I considered the unbearable travel endured by African peoples during the transatlantic slave trade. How much was lost when language, ritual, and sense of place was taken through forced slavery?  These quilts are tributes to them.  Textiles, specifically Indigo, have a rich and varied history throughout Western Africa, the region of my ancestors. Each quilt is sewn with either my Indigo fabric or a deep black dye to emphasize composition. Actively creating art, sorting through the ups and downs of the process itself, is also a metaphor for my own personal experience. Each quilt contemplates the past, abstract compositions revealing stories through color, line,and shape. The narrative quality of these quilts act like a portal or bridge, a connection to the commonalities we all share as human beings. I invite you, the viewer, to engage with my quilts and feel a connection to their own space and time.  

Shashari Kiburi is a visual artist and educator working primarily in textiles. As a child she felt a deep connection to creating. Growing up in a sewing household, she sat by her mom’s sewing machine often, pulling the pins out of fabric as her mother made many of the clothes she and her siblings wore. While studying Anthropology at UC Berkeley, she had the opportunity to learn printmaking from painter Mary O’Neal. This work inspired a deep passion for abstract art and eventually led to using fiber as medium for storytelling. Shashari’s work in quilting came about when her children were young. It was a medium that she could fit into her busy life as a mother of four children. She was able to seamlessly apply her practice in drawing and photography with textiles. Drawing upon her ancestry she also dyes indigo fabrics as a foundation for her quiltmaking. Indigo puts her voice into each of the quilts and helps to close the gaps between her ancestors’ past and her present. She has shown her work at the Oakland Museum, the Steinbeck Museum in Salinas, Ca, the Ontario Museum, the Crocker Museum in Sacramento, Ca, and Medicine for Nightmares in San Francisco. Her work was recently published in Patchwork Deutschland, a quarterly fiber arts magazine and she recently contributed to the Modern Quilt Guild’s education resource library.  Shashari currently teaches visual arts in Sacramento where she lives with her four children. Follow her current creative work on Instagram @ulaludie. 

Jackie Houston; Art is the vehicle by which I express myself both politically and spiritually. It motivates me to express my feelings in a form to which others can relate. I want my work to be accessible to a large and diverse audience, even (perhaps especially) those who are not the usual gallery population. Although I have been an artist for more than 50 years, I discovered a whole new dimension when I found that the colors and patterns in fabric could animate my art in bold and exciting ways. Since then, I have explored themes of politics, family, music, and dance in fabric portraits. As an African American artist, my eyes and ears are open to the people and issues that engage my community. From rappers Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls to young people chanting “Hands up, Don’t shoot!”, my quilts bring the viewer images that are not frequently found in the “soft art” of quilting.  But my message is also one of contrast. If the outside world is steeped in violence and pain, I offer instead a portrait of my grandson in his own moment of baby “tragedy,” tears brimming, bubbles cascading from his mouth. He shows me, and so I show the world, that even in the midst of pain “Life Is Precious.” Similarly, rather than just focus on the beauty and grace of a dancer, I drill down to show the strength of the muscles, the severely curved arch that supports that grace. Frequently, I “hide” things within my work: images from the African savanna subtly placed on the face of Nelson Mandela, or the lyrics of a song by Louis Armstrong threading its way through my piece “Nawlins.”  

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 featured poets are part of When The Smoke Comes, a creative writing space that explores the inextricable link between our social, economic, and political reality and the human experience we are having or hope to have in the future. This workshop is intended to be a starting place, a jumping-off point for broader anti-imperialist political practice. Simply put, When The Smoke Comes is a creative writing workshop that seeks to not only imagine an end to oppression, but better prepare us to bring it about. Featured poets are Darius Simpson, Kevin Madrigal Galindo, Sarah O’Neal and Aniya Butler.

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 Jordan Boyd (crystal singing bowls, horns), Edward Pollard (bass), and Tomek Sidori (guitar) 

Jordan, Edward, and Tomek will explore sonic improvisation and sound as healing vibration.  Consonance and Consciousness investigation. Sound Be....

The SF Indian Classical Session at Medicine for Nightmares is back on August 27th! 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 musicians are;

Srikanth Narahari viola

Arjun Ravi Shankar vocal

Mallar Bhattacharya sarod

Lucian Balmer  violin

7pm show starts, $10 at the door!

Shaded Space will be celebrating our latest short story release, "Beth Hendricks", at Medicine for Nightmares with an evening of readings by the author, Finn Finneran, as well as by local poets Wendy Trevino and David Buuck. Signed copies, previous Shaded Space releases, and a selection of free zines will also be available.

Finn Finneran (he/they) is a writer, student, and organizer living in the Bay Area, CA. Originally from the south, Finn left home and high school as a teenager seeking something like a life one might find in a Diane di Prima poem. He thinks he’s mostly succeeded in this regard. An eventful life and a free ride at City College of San Francisco inspired Finn to write stories and poems. He’s self-published three issues of his zine Slap Back Sylvia, and has since transferred as a re-entry student to UC Berkeley to study literature, history, and political theory in the American Studies department. He’s also a worker-owner at Rainbow Grocery Cooperative in San Francisco. Finn is queer, trans, working class, and rooting for the Intifada and all the underdogs!

Shaded Space is a resting place for printed media that doesn't have a home elsewhere. We print and distribute a wide variety of work ranging from artist’s books and zines to short stories and Islamic manuscripts. We believe most of all in providing a physical object you can hold in your hands and enjoy.

A live late show just like the good old days! El Late Show with host Marisol Medina Cadena will take on local politics, culture and consejos before a live audience and trade chismes y cuentos with special guests from La Mision. On tonight’s episode cumbia barn band Rascuaches stops by for a jam, Marisol takes a visit to “Herencia”, 24th street’s latest bougie gastronoeria, and El Late Show is visited by a pinche puppet.

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 double dose of sonic sustenance for you with Dahveed Behroozi(vocalist and synth) and Ark Of Bones(Chris Evans-cello, David Boyce-reeds and efx) and special guests Evelyn Ficarra on sound design and PC Munoz on percussion.

Come gather and hear decolonized verses, spanglish poesia, Latine spokenword, Pocho poems and neighborhood chisme at Speaking Axolotl, the Bay Area’s long running monthly Latine Reading series. 10 slot open mic goes up a las 6:50PM. Open mic poets have 7 minutes to read.

This month’s feature are Lucía Arrocha and Abraham Garcia.

Lucía Arrocha.is an artist hailing from Buenos Aires and living in San Francisco. Her multicultural background has fostered in her a proclivity for language, as well as a profound fascination for different ways of living and emoting. Poetry was her first love and she has been writing for over two decades, but she has also found her voice through various artistic endeavors such as filmmaking and DJing under the moniker Iris Umbra.

Abraham Garcia is a San Francisco native with Nicaraguan and Guatemalan roots. He finds inspiration in nature and often spends his free time writing and reflecting outdoors. He is the author of Love and Nature / Amor y Naturaleza, a bilingual collection in Spanish and English that explores the connections between romantic relationships, the natural world, God, and self-reflection. Self-published, the book blends themes of love, spirituality, and the beauty of the earth through a heartfelt poetic lens.

NOTA; Speaking Axolotl is a BIPOC reading series which means black and brown poets ONLY on the mic. Whyte folks are more than welcome to listen and enjoy but their presence is not requiered.

Un espacio íntimo para compartir lecturas latinoamericanas, recorrer paisajes y voces únicas de la región, y abrir conversaciones que nos atraviesan y nos invitan a pensar juntxs.

An intimate space to share Latin American literature, explore the region’s unique voices and landscapes, and open up conversations that move us and invite us to think together.

Líneas del Sur is a book membership program designed to connect passionate Spanish-speaking readers with the rich literary landscape of Latin America. Members explore fresh voices from the region through carefully curated books, contextual articles, and editorial notes. The experience is enriched by lively conversations in both online and in-person book clubs, fostering a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts.

This month’s book is Las Aventuras de la China Iron de Gabriela Cabezon Camara. Copies are available at Medicina Para Pesadillas.

Hosted by a black queer author based in the Bay Area, the Fable Storytelling Writing Workshop is about using the imagination to come up with tools for personal liberation. In this guided writing workshop that focuses on the structure of the fable, participants will use their real lives to craft fantasy narratives in tiny books.

Duane Horton is a black queer fantasy writer and educator who believes in writing his intersection of identity into his stories to widen the cannon and so that folks who share his intersection can see themselves represented on the page. Duane graduated with his MFA in 2019 and since then, has published his first book - NO HERO ALONE. As well as having numerous short stories appear in literary magazines. When Duane isn't reading or writing, you can find him teaching classes, hosting a radical book club or playing with his cat.

Event Brite Link:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/fable-storytelling-workshop-tickets-1458916992999?aff=oddtdtcreator

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 a solo piano set with Evelyn Davis.

Celebrating their ongoing collaboration, the tour spotlights Street by Street (Insert Press), a restless, queer, and border-crossing body of work that moves from Berlin to Bangkok to Santiago across five collections written between 2006 and 2020. Translated into English by Shook, Street by Street explores exile, desire, and alien status with humor, lyricism, and irreverence.

Shook will also read from their translation of Pigs in Delirium by Jorge Carlos Fonseca, a bold, surreal collection that veers from the grotesque to the absurdly political. Recently translated by Shook and published by Insert Press, it marks the first appearance of Fonseca’s poetry in English.

Together, these readings offer a rare look at transnational poetic exchange—across languages, geographies, and lived experience.

Presented by Insert Press with support from Instituto Cervantes Los Angeles and the Chilean Ministry of Culture, Arts, and Heritage.

Pablo Jofré is a Chilean poet and translator. His work includes Entre tanta calle (Amargord/Cuarto Propio) and Street by Street (Insert Press), translated into English by Shook. Jofré has translated writers such as Bernice Chauly, Nora Gomringer, and Elfriede Jelinek, and his own poetry has appeared in multiple languages and international festivals.

Olga Garcia (Torreón, Coahuila, Mexico, 1951) is a poet, physicist, and mathematician (ITESM, Monterrey Campus). She is the editor of the bilingual SD Poetry Annual and a member of the SD Haiku Study Group. Her most recent publication is Visitaciones (Editorial Cinosargo, Chile; Los Pájaros, Mexico). Her books are published under her Mexican name, Olga Gutierrez Galindo. Her pseudonym is enriKetta luissi.

Shook is a poet, translator, and editor of Insert Press' MANIFESTOH! imprint. Their most recent translations include Jorge Carlos Fonseca's Pigs in Delirium (Insert Press), Jorge Lauten's Bury My Heart on Mount Ramelau: Revolutionary Poems from Timor-Leste (Gato Negro Ediciones), and Mario Bellatin's Mishima's Head (Hanuman Editions). Their translation of Pablo Jofré's Street by Street was published by Insert Press in 2023.

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 particularly potent dose of musical medicina happening with Red Fast Triple Luck(David Boyce-reeds and efx, Francis Wong-Tenor saxophone, Chris Trinidad-bass, and PC Munoz-percussion,boomstick,electric cajon, and intergalactic hook-rug)

No Kings,No Queens Chess Club 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 for an afternoon art talk with Amanda Ayala whose solo exhibit LIBROS is currently up in our galeria. Amanda will be in conversation with Josiah Luis Alderete about her beautiful y chinogn exhibit, her art practice, her inspirations, her suenops and her hustle as a working class artist. Expect lots of love and chisme for real.

Amanda Ayala is an interdisciplinary Xicana Indigenous artist and maker who centers people targeted by oppression and acknowledges their brilliance. Amanda leads and facilitates workshops that combine artist liberation and social justice for people of all ages. She creates within community as a way to heal and transform society.  linktr.ee/xicanaollin

“Here are some of my books…sketchbooks, notebooks, journals, books I sewed together, books gifted and filled, books that hold things I want to remember, things others have shared with me and commitments I have made to and for myself. When we create, these pieces of ourselves are reflections of hours and generations of thinking, feeling, trying, changing, experiencing and dreaming. These books are filled with this and more, lots of experimenting, painting, drawing, gluing, sewing, layering. Look through them and you can see some of my mind and life. I wonder how they might remind you of anything you have been through, anything you want for yourself and for the world. What books have you filled/would you fill?”-Amanda Ayala  

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(reeds and efx)and Ben Davis(Cello)

Mala Influencia es un taller creativo de serigrafía, producción gráfica y textil dirigido por Ximena Ortiz en Bogotá, Colombia.
Desde allí desarrolla el proyecto de cartel y fanzine PUNK POSTERS, que reúne gráfica contemporánea de artistas e ilustradores de la escena punk a nivel mundial.
Hasta su séptima edición en 2024, Punk Posters ha contado con la colaboración de más de 100 personas.
En esta ocasión, Mala Influencia presenta parte de su trabajo, procesos, serigrafías y merch producida en Bogotá bajo la filosofía del hazlo tú mismo y el trabajo colectivo.

__________

Mala Influencia is a creative screen printing, graphic, and textile workshop led by Ximena Ortiz in Bogotá, Colombia.
From there, she develops the PUNK POSTERS project — a poster and zine series that brings together contemporary graphics from punk artists and illustrators around the world.
As of its seventh edition in 2024, Punk Posters has featured collaborations from over 100 people.
This time, Mala Influencia comes to share part of its work, processes, screenprints, and merch produced in Bogotá under the do-it-yourself philosophy and collective spirit.

The SF Indian Classical Session at Medicine for Nightmares is back on June 30th!

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 sets are:

Neeraj Naik, bansuri & Rajan Arora, sitar

Vanita Mundhra, kathak dance

Ben Kunin, sarod

Shreyas Muralidharan, vocal

7pm show starts, $10 at the door!

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!

Is zine making a dead art form? Has ai ruined comics? Well, no. At Enjoy Zine Festival independent creators and lovers of the craft will get to connect irl. This is a free, all ages event July 27th from 1-6pm at Medicine for Nightmares. With zines and comics that center sharing knowledge, collaboration, intersectional identities, and human journeys.

At Medicine for Nightmares for the second year. EZ Fest has added a few more makers to share space with. Come watch the poetry performances and be silly with your friends for the photobooth. Come enjoy a welcoming atmosphere centering the community, working with what we have, and giving ourselves permission to feel joy. Hosted by ZINE.tv/@onzine.tv.

Join us tonight for a heavy dose of musical medicina with The Broken Rhythms Collective.

The Deciphering Broken Rhythms Collective (DBRC) includes Scott Oshiro on Flute, Francis Wong on Tenor Saxophone, DJean Vasciannie on Drums, and Kumi Maxson on Bass. They explore new approaches, philosophies and spiritual experiences in Jazz through an Afrofuturistic lens using the music as a tool for liberation. Melding Jazz, Hip‑Hop, and Electronic music, this immersive project explores the shared properties between improvisation, quantum physics, and the cosmos. By leveraging quantum computer powered improvisation systems the ensemble brings quantum phenomena into live musical performances, illuminating new dimensions of Jazz. DBRC also engages deeply with cultural narratives incorporating themes of generational trauma, mental health, racial and cultural identity. Their work acts as a counterpoint to Silicon Valley’s history of displacement, demonstrating how emergent technology can be reclaimed, repurposed, and used to amplify the voices of communities of color. 

Making poetry in color: The art of the Xicanx word is an intergenerational, multi-border storm of poets coming together to share their words in all the colors of the rainbow-raza Featuring Stalina Villareal and their debut book of poetry, Watcha (Vellum Press 2024), who is in the Town from Houston, Texas. Stalina will be joined by Oakland and San Francisco-based poets arnoldo colibri, hector son of hector and Lourdes Figueroa.

Stalina Emmanuelle Villarreal (she/they) sees, hears, feels, and communicates across mediums and cultures. She’s a deep-watching ekphrastic poet, a photographic eco-essayist, a broad-stroke sketch artist, a sonic improv performer, a sound-sensitive literary translator, and an assistant professor of English. Their bilingualism stems from her 1.5-generation experience being both Mexican and Xicanx. Her debut collection of poetry called Watcha is out now from Deep Vellum Publishing. Their poetry can be found in the Rio Grande Review, Texas Review, The Acentos Review, Defunkt Magazine, and elsewhere. Her published translations of poetry include Enigmas by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Photograms of My Conceptual Heart Absolutely Blind by Minerva Reynosa, Kilimanjaro by Maricela Guerrero, and Postcards in Braille by Sergio Pérez Torres. Stalina is the recipient of the Inprint Donald Barthelme Prize in Poetry and one of the BIPOC Arts Network and Fund 2025 Artist Awards. Their visual poetry—spanning queer erotica, interactive digital art, and video installation—was part of the Antena@Blaffer exhibit at University of Houston’s Blaffer Art Museum. She is currently writing ekphrastic elegies about her interpretative drawings of portraits and a memoir about her photographs of nature—revealing her ability to look backward and within, to write new ways forward.

arnoldo garcía, colibri, (él, he, him) is originally from the south Texas border. He is a trans-language community-based poet-writer & organizer and the publisher/editor of editorial Xingao, a press dedicated to disseminating poets the color of the land. You can catch up on his work at artofthecommune.wordpress.com

hector son of hector is from Long Beach, CA and currently lives in Oakland. He is the child of Mexican immigrants, works in a hospital, dreams of short stories and writes poetry in secret.

Lourdes Figueroa is an oral queer chicanx poet & an award winning poetry filmmaker whose work is in dialogue of her lived experience when her family worked in el azadón—tilling the soil under the blistering sun. Lourdes is the author of the chapbooks yolotl, Ruidos = To Learn Speak, & most recent Vuelta from Nomadic Press. Her poem “Pieces from YOLOTL” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize 2022 by “Quite Lightning” & is a recipient of The San Francisco Foundation/Nomadic Press Literature Award for Poetry. Discover her latest poems in the Mexican Journal Tierra Adentro & latest film Las Marimacha Fragments made in collaboration with Filmmaker Peggy Peralta within 3rd Thing’s Press A Good Symptom: A Serial Anthology of Time Based Disturbances. Lourdes celebrates your pocha marimachita tongue. A native of limbo nation, she continues to believe in your lung & your throat.

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 soulful and cosmic vibes are being provided by guitarist/vocalist Angel.

Soulful, ethereal, and transcendental, Angel’s sound is a fusion of guitar and voice—blending ambient textures, jazz rap’s message-driven flow, and the reverence of reggae. 27-year-old Angelo Idrovo, known as Angel, was born in Manhattan and raised across the tri-state area of NJ/NY/PA. A cross-country road trip brought him to the Bay on a wave of synchronicities, where he’s now based and building his sound and sharing it through live performances and digital platforms. Follow his journey on YouTube, Instagram, and Tik Tok under Soul Speakings.

Explore the influence of dreams, dream recollection and dream interpretation in poetry. We will discuss the ways in which poetry simulates the variability of dream states, source dream memories for the content of our poems, and develop dream poems to then draft in handmade chapbooks and workshop as a group. Much of the workshop will focus on the connections between memory, middling states of consciousness, sleep phases, and how they can be structurally and imaginatively woven into the writing process.  

Connie Mae Oliver is a poet and artist living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her first book of poems, Cosmos A Personal Voyage by Carl Sagan Ann Druyan Steven Soter And Me (Operating System, 2017) is about nuclear disarmament. Her second book, Science Fiction Fiction (Spuyten Duyvil, 2020) is an homage to Miami-Dade County and color photography in the early aughts. Her first novel, Close Encounters, is forthcoming in 2026 from Texas Review Press. This poetry workshop is an extension of her most recent collection of poems, dormilona (Burrow Press, 2025), which focuses on dreams and matrilineal memory.