At UCSB A&L, Tuesdays are for Talking

Whether by accident or design, UCSB Arts & Lectures has dedicated the first three Tuesdays in April to focusing on the L-word part of its name, with the dates offering discussions of some of the most pressing issues of the day. First up is Ibram X. Kendi, one of the world’s leading scholars of racism and discriminatory policy. The author of Stamped from the Beginning was the youngest winner of the National Book Award for Nonfiction and has been named a MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellow. His new book Chain of Ideas: The Origins of Our Authoritarian Age traces how “great replacement theory” moved from the margins to a dominant force in global authoritarianism, showing how it erodes democratic norms and outlining how we can confront it and strengthen democracy. His Justice for All talk at Campbell Hall on April 7 offers a clear path for understanding the origins of this threat, and for resisting it. Free copies of the new book will be distributed at the event. 

The more prolific author Masha Gessen is also a National Book Award recipient for The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia. Gessen’s book is also an incisive observer of democracy, with a current focus on how autocracies turn vulnerable groups into the “other.” She has traced this tactic in Putin’s Russia, which led her to flee to the U.S. a decade ago, where she’s now drawing a clear throughline to similar currents here. As contemporary autocrats promise a return to an imaginary, safer past, Gessen argues in Politics of the Past, Politics of the Future (and at her April 14 talk at Campbell) that the antidote to the politics of the past is an inspiring politics of the future. 

Rounding out the timely trio is Bill McKibben, the pioneering climate journalist and environmental activist whose voluminous work over the decades includes launching Third Act, a group and campaign for climate change activists aged over 60, and, most recently, co-founding No Kings, the organization behind last weekend’s massive protest against President Trump and authoritarianism that drew thousands to Alameda Park and millions across the nation. In his 2025 book, Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization and April 21 talk,McKibbenblends hard science with compelling storytelling and seasoned advocacy in laying out a hopeful and more equitable path forward driven – in solar power – by the cheapest energy in history. 

Mid-week Musings from UCSB

Breaking the Tuesday timeline, David Miliband comes to Campbell Hall on April 22 to carry on a Justice for All conversation titled “New World Disorder: A Humanitarian Perspective.” Theformer U.K. foreign secretary who is now president and CEO of the International Rescue Committee,Miliband directs humanitarian relief and refugee assistance across more than 40 crisis zones, bringing aid to millions each year. The son of refugees and author of Rescue: Refugees and the Political Crisis of Our Time, offers compelling perspectives on leadership, displacement, and our shared responsibility in a turbulent world both in opening remarks and in a conversation with former Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes, co-host of Pod Save the World. 

Falk Waxes on Weapons 

Richard Falk will present this year’s Frank K. Kelly Lecture on Humanity’s Future from Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, the Santa Barbara-based international organization working to end the threat posed by nuclear weapons. Falk, widely considered to be one of the world’s foremost experts on international law, served as a UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories for six years. His writing and other contributions on nuclear abolition, human rights, and global governance have shaped international debate for decades. In the free April 7 talk at the Music Academy of the West’s Hahn Hall, Falk will address the legal and moral limits of power in an age of conflict, chaos, nuclear weapons, and global instability. His comments are particularly potent in the wake of the ongoing attacks by the U.S. and Israel on Iran, the expiration of the last remaining arms control treaty between the U.S. and Russia, and threats of nuclear testing resumption.

Visit https://tinyurl.com/MAW-Falk-Lecture

Power to the Poets

In a month of public speaking rife with angst and anxiety-producing subject matter, it’s good to know that April is also National Poetry Month, a celebration which many of our local poets are well versed with. (Yes, I ended a sentence with a preposition. Poets do it!)

Among this year’s highlights are Poetry Night at Chaucer’s Books on April 9, featuring Rich Ferguson, a Pushcart Prize-nominee whose Somewhere, a Playground is a lyrical meditation on grief and survival, simultaneous with being an upbeat collection evincing resilience, defiance and hope; Kathleen Florence, whose Prayers With a Side of Cash reframes the classic American road trip with a series of poems that witness a country in flux; Stephanie Barbé Hammer, whose recent mini-collection City Slicker boasts city/country poems in mostly free verse; and Melinda Palacio, Santa Barbara’s 10th Poet Laureate, whose How Fire Is a Story, Waiting creates images that are at once heartbreaking and humorous. 

The 12th annual Spirits in the Air: Potent Potable Poetry, April 15 at The Good Lion, begins with a “poetic happy hour” followed by poetry readings from locals Clayton E. Clark, Justin Graham Hoops, Rebecca Horrigan, Amy Michelson, Diana Raab, Linda Saccoccio, Jason Scrymgeour, David Starkey, and George Yatchisin, the current Poet Laureate and the evening’s host. Mason Granger, Poet-in-Residence at USC’s Schwarzenegger Institute, will participate as part of his 30 Days & 30 Mics spoken word poetry activations across California in April. As always, the Good Lion will feature special poetry-themed cocktails for the event.

Palacio and Scott Green of California State Parks are the hosts for an evening of music and poetry at the Presidio State Park downtown on April 17, when they’ll be joined by poets including Hammer, Yatchisin, Lori Anaya, Takunda Chikowero, Jen Cheng, Emma Trelles, among others, as well as the Gruntled and the Ladies Social Strumming Club. 

Yatchisin will join UCSB Professor Emerita Shirley Geok-lin Lim in hosting Community Poetry Readings with UCSB Reads & Goleta Valley Library on April 22 at the UCSB Library, which features several other participants reading selected poems, some by other writers.

Back at UCSB Campbell, Martín Espada, winner of the 2021 National Book Award and a defining voice in American poetry, shares his work on April 29, a rebooking of a date earlier in the season. His verse confronts injustice with lyrical power, celebrating the dignity of working people and illuminating issues of inequality, labor and immigration. 

Visit https://sbpoetry.net/home for more details and other events

‘Feast’ of Free Verse

April also marks the publication of Yatchisin’s A Feast for Santa Barbara: Poets Celebrate Food & Drink, the latest book from the current Poet Laureate from Gunpowder Press. The anthology collects contributions from over 100 Santa Barbara–area poets – including all of the living previous occupants of Yatchisin’s position and many previously unpublished poets of all ages – on the theme of food, cooking, dining and drinking in the local community, touching on famous places (Brophy Bros.) and the much more obscure. We imagine we’ll hear some of them read aloud at the Good Lion on Tax Day. 

Write On

The Santa Barbara Writers Conference is back in all its full glory for a 52nd annual event after an unexpected one-year hiatus in 2025. The weeklong gathering of writers, authors, workshop leaders and others takes place June 21-26, and, as always, there will be a nightly speaker series open to the public. This year scribes sharing their thoughts include SBWC’s own Monte Schulz, plus Kerri Schlottman, Jess Walter, Rachel Howzell Hall, and Adriana Trigiani, all authors of bestsellers and award winners.  

Visit www.sbwriters.com for full conference details, registration and more.