Naked Bulb, Fruitvale’s Backyard Open Mic, is entering her fifth year featuring poets, storytellers, musicians, actors and more. Third Saturday of the month, the gate opens at 6pm/stage at 7. BYOBB (Bring Your Own Blanket and Bottle). Naked Bulb is an inclusive, community stage open to all. Peep your head and listen to some writers who may be, or make you feel, a bit uncomfortable.
Curator: Missy Church
Missy Church has been running Naked Bulb for the past four years, tries to write in between wiping butts and collecting dead animals. She is a Beast Crawl founder and feels honored to be a part of the festival this year.
Event Readers
Patti Orozco-Cronin
A California-native, hyphenated Mexican Jewish American and carrier-creator of 3 spectacular human beings, Patti Orozco-Cronin is a big fan of Jose Tomas, Spanish olives and the 9st poetry collective.
Kelly Klein
Kelly Klein established herself on the stages of Oakland performing macabre burlesque as "Patricia Misery." Her pull-no-punches style is creating an equal buzz in the literary world with her brutally confessional poetry and prose.
Andrew J. Thomas
Andrew J. Thomas is a sad man full of sad words that he sometimes shares in order to make you sad. When he's not enjoying your tears, he's busy parenting two teenage boys, or bullshitting professionally for a living. As a child of The South, he also enjoys fried food, whiskey, and politeness.
Fernando Meisenhalter
Fernando Meisenhalter is of German ancestry but was raised in Mexico City. He's MFA-free, and a full-time immigrant living in Northern California since 1995. He likes it when the audience laughs at his jokes. Mercy chuckles are also welcomed.
Carla Christensen
Carla Christensen has raised kids, eyebrows, several pets, and the occasional ruckus. She can turn a phrase and flip a pancake. She hurls maxims and pasta to see what sticks, then cleans up the resulting literal and figurative messes. She writes long and short fiction, creative nonfiction, and the occasional poem, but almost never a Christmas card.
Lee Foust
Lee Foust is a writer and performer from Oakland who has lived in Florence, Italy since the mid-1990s. Author of Sojourner, stories and poems about the mystery of place, Foust also writes fiction, poetry, and essays.
Dominick Restivo
Dominick Restivo, a 15 year old Sonora High School student with an intense love for language, is a Jazz guitarist and poet who one day hopes to be a high school English teacher.