What Haunts Us Still: Surviving and Storytelling

Sun May 31 2026 at 05:30 pm to 07:00 pm UTC-07:00

The Freight | Berkeley

Bay Area Book Festival
Publisher/HostBay Area Book Festival
What Haunts Us Still: Surviving and Storytelling
Advertisement
Tananarive Due and Stephen Graham Jones reveal how horror becomes a vital tool for reckoning, resistance, and truth-telling.
About this Event

Tananarive Due and Stephen Graham Jones, moderated by Ayize Evertt-Jama


The Freight


This chilling and visionary conversation brings together three groundbreaking voices in contemporary horror and speculative fiction who use storytelling to interrogate history, identity, and the legacies that refuse to stay buried. Through unsettling narratives and fearless imagination, they reveal how horror becomes a vital tool for reckoning, resistance, and truth-telling.

Tananarive Due, award-winning author and scholar, is a leading force in Black horror and speculative fiction whose work draws on Black history, family, and lived experience to explore generational trauma, injustice, and survival. From the multi-award-winning The Reformatory to classics like The Good House and My Soul to Keep, Due transforms real-world horrors into powerful narratives of memory and reckoning. Stephen Graham Jones, The New York Times bestselling author and professor, reshapes contemporary horror through Indigenous perspectives that challenge colonial myths and genre conventions. In works such as The Buffalo Hunters Hunter, The Only Good Indians, and My Heart Is a Chainsaw, he interrogates violence, belonging, and cultural endurance with relentless innovation and emotional force.

Moderated by Ayize Jama-Everett, novelist and cultural thinker whose own boundary-defying work spans horror, science fiction, philosophy, and spirituality, this conversation will explore how horror functions as cultural critique, creative liberation, and a mirror to the fears societies try to bury. Join us for a compelling discussion on the power of horror to illuminate hidden histories, disrupt dominant narratives, and imagine new ways of surviving and storytelling in a haunted world.


Introductory live music performance by Bushwick Book Club Oakland


In partnership with Locus

Advertisement

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

The Freight, 2020 Addison Street, Berkeley, United States

Tickets

USD 21.99 to USD 126.99

Icon
Concerts, fests, parties, meetups - all the happenings, one place.

Ask AI if this event suits you:

More Events in Berkeley

Aunt Lute Popup Booth: Bay Area Book Festival 2026 Bookworm Block Party
Sun, 31 May at 11:00 am Aunt Lute Popup Booth: Bay Area Book Festival 2026 Bookworm Block Party

Centered on (and in the streets) surrounding Allston Way in Downtown Berkeley as well as at the Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park

Academy of Danse Libre presents A Regency Afternoon
Sun, 31 May at 01:00 pm Academy of Danse Libre presents A Regency Afternoon

The Hillside Club

May 2026 Picture Book Club for Grown Ups
Sun, 31 May at 03:30 pm May 2026 Picture Book Club for Grown Ups

Mr.Mopps Children's Books

Kenny Mason
Sun, 31 May Kenny Mason

Cornerstone - CA

Chosen Fam presents: Suns of the Apocalypse, the Album Release
Sun, 31 May at 06:00 pm Chosen Fam presents: Suns of the Apocalypse, the Album Release

2727 California St

Syncopate Sunday
Sun, 31 May at 06:00 pm Syncopate Sunday

1974 Shattuck Ave.

OTHERWORD ENSEMBLE + ZELE
Sun, 31 May at 07:00 pm OTHERWORD ENSEMBLE + ZELE

The Finnish Hall

Bay Area Book Festival: Black Feminist Futurescaping
Sun, 31 May at 07:30 pm Bay Area Book Festival: Black Feminist Futurescaping

The Freight

Pradabagshawty at Cornerstone
Sun, 31 May at 08:00 pm Pradabagshawty at Cornerstone

Cornerstone

Berkeley is Happening!

Never miss your favorite happenings again!

Explore Berkeley Events