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Police Accountability Board is short-handed | Is it time to rethink I-80? | Get The Scene, our new arts newsletter | We're hiring: Nosh Editor

Avatar photo

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.

mikeberry@mindspring.com
Posted inArts

Wonder Woman’s Black twin, Nubia, inspired Cal professor’s book on superhero comics

Avatar photo by Michael Berry Jan. 16, 2022, 8:00 a.m.August 4, 2022

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.’

Posted inArts

Berkeley Law dean’s book reveals how the Supreme Court enabled racist policing

Avatar photo by Michael Berry Sept. 03, 2021, 10:00 a.m.August 4, 2022

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.”

Posted inArts

Diane Johnson’s 12th novel explores Franco-American relations, money and transatlantic love

Avatar photo by Michael Berry June 28, 2021, 8:00 a.m.August 4, 2022

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.

Posted inArts

A year after his unexpected death, a new book from Richard Sala, the ‘cartooning master of the macabre’

Avatar photo by Michael Berry May 04, 2021, 10:27 a.m.August 4, 2022

Four richly illustrated novellas in a new collection showcase Sala’s unmistakable style that mixed humor, horror and mystery.

Jennifer Doudna
Posted inArts

In new biography of Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna, science is a ‘competitive sport’

Avatar photo by Michael Berry March 09, 2021, 10:24 a.m.August 4, 2022

Best-selling author Walter Issacson, who has written about Leonardo da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin and Steve Jobs, turns his eye to Doudna.

Posted inArts

Book review: ‘Driven’ traces development of self-driving cars, saga of the Berkeley man who stole industry secrets

Avatar photo by Michael Berry Jan. 04, 2021, 4:30 p.m.August 4, 2022

Anthony Levandowski will serve 18 months in prison for stealing files from Google for his own autonomous car company.

Obi Kaufmann
Posted inArts

Obi Kaufmann delivers a message of hope — and resilience — in his new field atlas on California’s forests

Avatar photo by Michael Berry Sept. 16, 2020, 2:30 p.m.August 4, 2022

‘The Forests of California’ is a gorgeously illustrated book featuring Kaufmann’s watercolors. It is also a primer on how to approach nature.

young girl reading in front of waterfall
Posted inArts

It’s summertime. Dig into these books with a Berkeley connection

Avatar photo by Michael Berry July 02, 2020, 1:35 p.m.August 4, 2022

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.

Authors Releasing Books
Posted inArts

How 6 Berkeley authors are promoting new books when everyone’s at home

Avatar photo by Michael Berry June 08, 2020, 11:33 a.m.August 4, 2022

With bookstores closed, authors are holding numerous Zoom meetings, writing essays and articles, and getting the word out through Lockdown Literature.

Posted inArts

In ‘Creole Son,’ a white Berkeley mother explores impact of adopting a mixed-race child

Avatar photo by Michael Berry May 18, 2020, 9:18 a.m.August 4, 2022

E. Kay Trimberger learned that nurture isn’t everything.

enormous mansion in the hills of Massachusetts circa 1910
Posted inArts

Berkeley writer Adam Hochschild writes about an unusual 1905 socialist marriage

Avatar photo by Michael Berry March 20, 2020, 10:00 a.m.August 4, 2022

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.

Posted inArts

‘Chicken of the Sea’ is a wacky collaboration between two acclaimed Vietnamese-American artists and their kids

Avatar photo by Michael Berry Jan. 14, 2020, 9:29 a.m.October 4, 2022

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.

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