Wonder Woman’s Black twin, Nubia, inspired Cal professor’s book on superhero comics
The early 1970s comic is among those discussed in UC Berkeley Professor Darieck Scott’s new book, ‘Keeping It Unreal: Black Queer Fantasy and Superhero Comics.’
Michael Berry
A New Hampshire native, freelancer Michael Berry has been a resident of Berkeley since the early 1980s. A long-time reviewer of science fiction and fantasy for the San Francisco Chronicle, he has written about books, literature and the arts for a wide range of publications, including the Boston Globe, the Portland (Me.) Press Herald, the Seattle Times, Oakland Magazine, San Diego Magazine, Sierra Magazine, High Country News and numerous alt-weeklies. He enjoys writing about Berkeley-based authors and books for Berkeleyside. Reach him @mlberry.
Articles by Michael Berry
Berkeley Law dean’s book reveals how the Supreme Court enabled racist policing
Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law, casts a cold eye on the post-Warren court in “Presumed Guilty: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil Rights.”
Diane Johnson’s 12th novel explores Franco-American relations, money and transatlantic love
She observes the French with an outsider’s eye but has an insider’s knowledge of everything from French eating and romantic proclivities to French inheritance law.
A year after his unexpected death, a new book from Richard Sala, the ‘cartooning master of the macabre’
Four richly illustrated novellas in a new collection showcase Sala’s unmistakable style that mixed humor, horror and mystery.
In new biography of Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna, science is a ‘competitive sport’
Best-selling author Walter Issacson, who has written about Leonardo da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin and Steve Jobs, turns his eye to Doudna.
Book review: ‘Driven’ traces development of self-driving cars, saga of the Berkeley man who stole industry secrets
Anthony Levandowski will serve 18 months in prison for stealing files from Google for his own autonomous car company.
Obi Kaufmann delivers a message of hope — and resilience — in his new field atlas on California’s forests
‘The Forests of California’ is a gorgeously illustrated book featuring Kaufmann’s watercolors. It is also a primer on how to approach nature.
It’s summertime. Dig into these books with a Berkeley connection
Read a novel about an Irish-American clan or a memoir about growing up on a kibbutz, discover who “America’s Sherlock Holmes” was and his Berkeley connection, or savor a graphic novel to learn how to fix our democracy.
How 6 Berkeley authors are promoting new books when everyone’s at home
With bookstores closed, authors are holding numerous Zoom meetings, writing essays and articles, and getting the word out through Lockdown Literature.
In ‘Creole Son,’ a white Berkeley mother explores impact of adopting a mixed-race child
E. Kay Trimberger learned that nurture isn’t everything.
Berkeley writer Adam Hochschild writes about an unusual 1905 socialist marriage
It was a scandal when James Graham Phelps Stokes, scion of one of the legendary 400 families of New York, married Rosa Pastor, a Russian-Jewish immigrant.
‘Chicken of the Sea’ is a wacky collaboration between two acclaimed Vietnamese-American artists and their kids
The new children’s picture book is written by USC professor and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen and his son Ellison Nguyen, and illustrated by Berkeley cartoonist Thi Bui and her son, Hien Bui-Stafford.
No man knows as much about Batman as this Berkeley man
Andrew Farago wrote a 400-page, lavishly illustrated book that looks at all of Batman’s various incarnations in the last 80 years.
New $50K Berkeley literary prize aims to help mid-career novelists
The newly established Simpson Family Literary Prize is going to T. Geronimo Johnson, a Berkeley author.
Zachary Mason uses his skills as an artificial intelligence expert in new novel
In Void Star, Zachary Mason draws from his professional work to create a vivid future world altered by climate change, social inequality, and longevity extension,
