Bushwick Book Club Oakland

Bushwick Book Club Oakland is a community event series co-produced by Mia Pixley, Nikki Bonsol, and Claire Calderón that invites Bay Area musicians from a wide range of genres to compose original songs inspired by a single book. On the day of the event, the performers debut their brand new “baby songs” at a public venue for a live audience of community members. By elevating the creative process over the final product, the culture of Bushwick Book Club fosters vulnerability, connection, and receptivity to new ideas. Originally founded in Brooklyn by songwriter Susan Hwang there are now dozens of BBC chapters across the country and the world from Seattle, New Orleans, London, and Malmo, Sweden!

more information on their website

Bushwick Book Club Oakland will be performing one song before each of our headlining events during the 2025 Bay Area Book Festival.

Prentis Hemphill: Hilaga

Hilaga is a music project based in the Bay Area between kasamas and cultural workers, Sam Sipin and Gem Datuin. Sam strives to make and share revolutionary music that inspires, consoles, and activates. Gem is a songwriter and guitarist for the indie rock band, Coraza, whose EP, A New Color—an exploration of uncertainty and transformation—was released in January of 2025.

“Writing as an Other”: Mia Pixley

Mia Pixley, Ph.D., is a mother, clinical psychologist, and multidisciplinary artist who integrates cello, voice, and performance to explore aspects of our inner worlds. Like her psychotherapy practice, Mia’s artistic work is guided by curiosity, honesty, humility, and humor.Her music—often described as whimsical, irreverent, melodic and unconventional — is a grounding, soulful, and ethereal blend of classical, experimental, blues, folk, and jazz genres.

Who’s Afraid of Gender?: Oddity

Oddity’s music is a reflection of her Sagittarius spirit: spontaneous, improvisational, and passionate. As a transfeminine Chinese-American, she manifests a certain yin-yang quality to her sound, embracing the duality of hope and despair, rage and tenderness, revenge and forgiveness. In her debut album series The Oddisea, Oddity explores this messy yet alchemical process of transition: of having to reinvent oneself, of having to let old selves die in order for new selves to be born.

Portable Intersectionality: Roxane Gay in conversation with Alicia Garza.: Elizabeth Lubin

Elizabeth Lubin is a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist whose songwriting is a catalyst for contemplation, her rhythms a rootsy homage to intimacy. Her melodies are digging for the roots of the ancestral, seeking new growth and healing to replace where a stump beholden to a discouraged heart once stood. Elizabeth’s most recent project, Bottom Bunk Sessions, was released in November 2023 and she is currently at work on her first full length album.

 

2025 Headliners
Introducer - The Embodiment of Care
Introducer - Who’s Afraid of Gender?
Introducer - “Writing as an Other”
Introducer - Portable Intersectionality: Roxane Gay in conversation with Alicia Garza