Booksmith and Berkeley Arts & Letters are thrilled to present author, photographer, critic and curator Teju Cole for his highly anticipated new book Tremor, a powerful, intimate novel that masterfully explores what constitutes a meaningful life in a violent world. He'll be in conversation with Delphine Sims, assistant curator of photography at SF MoMA. Join us!

About the book

Life is hopeless but it is not serious. We have to have danced while we could and, later, to have danced again in the telling. 

A weekend spent antiquing is shadowed by the colonial atrocities that occurred on that land. A walk at dusk is interrupted by casual racism. A loving marriage is riven by mysterious tensions. And a remarkable cascade of voices speaks out from a pulsing metropolis. 

We’re invited to experience these events and others through the eyes and ears of Tunde, a West African man working as a teacher of photography on a renowned New England campus. He is a reader, a listener, a traveler, drawn to many different kinds of stories: stories from history and epic; stories of friends, family, and strangers; stories found in books and films. Together these stories make up his days. In aggregate these days comprise a life. 

Tremor is a startling work of realism and invention that engages brilliantly with literature, music, race, and history as it examines the passage of time and how we mark it. It is a reckoning with human survival amidst “history’s own brutality, which refuses symmetries and seldom consoles,” but it is also a testament to the possibility of joy. As he did in his magnificent debut Open City, Teju Cole once again offers narration with all its senses alert, a surprising and deeply essential work from a beacon of contemporary literature.

About the speakers

Teju Cole was born in the United States in 1975 to Nigerian parents and grew up in Lagos. His books include the novel Open City, the essay collections Known and Strange Things and Black Paper, and the experimental photo book Blind Spot. He has been honored with the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Internationaler Literaturpreis, the Windham-Campbell Prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, among other accolades. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Cole is currently a professor of the practice of creative writing at Harvard University and a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine. Photo by Stephanie Mitchell.

Delphine Sims is an Assistant Curator in the Department of Photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. She is also Ph.D. candidate in the History of Art Department at UC Berkeley where she studies the history of photography in the Americas. Recently, Delphine was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts within the National Gallery of Art and from 2021-2022 she was a fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 2019, as a Mellon Curatorial Intern at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), she helped organize the exhibitions Unlimited: Recent Gifts from the William Goodman and Victoria Belco Collection and About Things Loved: Blackness and Belonging. She has worked on numerous museum exhibitions and contributed writings to several exhibition publications. Her art criticism can also be found in Matte magazine, The Believer magazine, and Aperture. Delphine has organized and moderated many public programs for museums and art institutions including at San Francisco Camerawork and Autograph ABP (London, UK). Photo by Lewis Watts, Oakland, CA, 2020.

Please note:

• This is a ticketed, in-person event to be held at First Presbyterian Church of Oakland, 2619 Broadway in Oakland, CA (cross street is 27th).
• Masks will be required throughout the duration of the event and capacity will be limited to allow indoor distancing. Protocols subject to change.
• Because we’re limiting capacity, we can't guarantee we'll have space for walk-ins. 
• We are happy to offer *signed copies* of Tremor: order a ticket if you'd like to pick up a signed copy at the event, or order here if you just want a signed copy and no admission.
• If we feel it is not safe to gather, as the event gets closer, we will pivot to a virtual event and your registration will remain valid.
• Questions? Accessibility requests? Write [email protected].