ABOUT THE EVENT

The celebration is open to the public and will take place at the OUSD Elementary LitFest on April 23, 2026 from 4pm-6pm, at La Escuelita Great Room/Dolores Huerta Campus as a part of OUSD’s annual Lit Fest. We will have a table at the event where we will distribute FREE copies of the new book, and young poets from our forthcoming anthology will read during the evening’s programming.

ABOUT THE OUSD ELEMENTARY LITFEST:

The OUSD Elementary Lit Fest is an annual district-wide communal celebration of students' reading and writing accomplishments. Writing projects from throughout the school year are showcased and performed by students from Kindergarten to 5th Grade, and from schools across Oakland. The Lit Fest audience is a mosaic of hundreds of families, OUSD educators, and local partners all gathered together to help students feel the Oakland community's pride, joy, and collective commitment to their growth as readers and writers.

ABOUT WHEN THE STARS BLOOM IN OAKLAND

When the Stars Bloom in Oakland is perfect for your summer reading list — an anthology of poems for youth, written by youth. 

The poets featured in this anthology are the first cohort of Chapter 510's Young Oakland Poets Expedition, a program that aims to get every fourth grader in Oakland Unified School District writing poems together annually. For this inaugural edition of the program, Chapter 510 worked with eight classrooms across Oakland and supported 200 poets as they wrote, edited, and published their work.

Read this book in daylight or under the covers curled up with a flashlight—these poems invite us to look a little bit closer at our everyday lives and to dream with a sense of unlimited possibility.