About us
Join the Berkeley Branch of the California Writers Club!
Monthly meetings, low cost workshops, networking, critique groups, a great opportunity to hear from industry professionals, marketing support - Come meet your new friends!
Upcoming events
2
CWC Write-In at the Oakland Museum of California
Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak St, Oakland, CA, USJoin California's oldest writing club for a monthly 6-hour write-in with camaraderie and accountability!
WHERE: The Oakland Museum of California. The big beautiful building has a bigger and more beautiful garden with lots of seats and tables and places to write. Please choose any publicly accessible spot in the garden or in the Cafe. The host is usually in the cafe or the picnic benches by the water lilies pond. Check in with the host, who will likely have a CWC sign on the table.
HOW MUCH: This is a free event. While the museum charges a price for admission to the exhibits, there is no charge to use the Café or the gardens. Do buy lunch, drink, or something nice at the gift shop. We love OMCA!
WHEN: Second Saturdays, 12-5pm. Come for as little or as much of that time as you like. Find a space and write! Socialize respectfully! If someone is too busy to talk, no worries, shut up and write!
At 3:30 pm, we gather together so we can share what we have written. We usually meet behind the cafe, and the host will always check that spot if for some reason the reading location moves.
BRING: 1) your favorite writing tools, such as a pen and paper or a laptop, whatever is portable. 2) a warm jacket, blanket, or hoodie, if you chose to write outside in the spacious and glorious gardens in winter, or a hat and sunscreen in the summer. 3) a pillow or cushion, if that will make you more comfortable to sit and write, and 4) lunch money or a bag lunch/snacks to help you power through.
View for Monthly Dates:
https://bit.ly/cwc-write-in-at-the-oakland-museum-of-california-multipledatesOur Google calendar, if you want to save this event into your personal calendar or get notifications.
5 attendees
AI vs the Author: Writers Grapple with How New Tools Shape Our Future 4/19/26
Gilman Brewery, 912 Gilman Street, Berkeley, CA, US### AI, Algorithms and Art: Our Tech-Savviest Authors Discuss our New Sci-Fi Reality
As part of our spring series on the ubiquitous and insistent presence of artificial intelligence, The California Writers Club of Berkeley is thrilled to present a panel discussion around issues that concern us all as writers and citizens.
This month's panel features four deep thinkers, some prolific writers, all of them neurodiverse in different ways, with intellectual abilities computers can only dream of. All of the panelists are writers who have worked in tech, so they bring an insider's take that will illuminate much for users and abdicators alike. We'll focus this panel on conceptions and misconceptions people have about AI and writing, and bring your questions. Ask our panel about using AI, using AI ethically, protecting ourselves from AI, ecological sustainability, AI for disabled or neurodivergent writers, international laws, translation, AI potentially leveling the playing field, taking our jobs away, or homogenizing the literary landscape.
## Meet our Panel
### Thaddeus Howze
Longtime member Thaddeus Howze brings award-winning narrative design experience and decades of intelligence analysis to questions of AI, authorship, and cognitive architecture. His work spans military intelligence, IT leadership, and creative writing across social media and online platforms. He approaches AI not as a tool or threat, but as a shift in the information environment requiring new frameworks for understanding narrative authority, authorship, and the economics of human cognition.
Thaddeus is a veteran of the information technology industry with thirty years of hardware, systems administration, network administration and Internet technology. He's spent the last three years writing essays on varying generative artificial intelligence models, their strengths, their limitations, and why they are not ideal resources in some aspects but potentially useful tools in others.### Gary Durbin
Gary Durbin had early experience in his tech career with knowledge engineering and natural language, but dove into the technical side building massively parallel systems - what makes the Large Language Models of today's AIs possible. He has had some playtime with some of the LLMs and researching agents, but lately is working on machine learning. Both of his published novels are about the emergence of a sentient AI, and he has written several short stories from the AI POV.### Leena Prasad
Leena's perspective on AI comes from hands-on experience with earlier forms of the technology, including work as a knowledge engineer on expert systems and natural language processing, and from currently teaching tips and tricks for using today’s generative tools. Having seen AI evolve from rigid, rule-based systems to interactive generative models, she's genuinely excited about the technology. She's especially interested in how these tools can support exploration and thinking, while keeping human judgment, authorship, and creative intent firmly in charge. More context for her AI work lives at WhoseBrainIsIt.com.## Meet our Moderator
Cristina Deptula is the founder of the Hayward Lit Hop (coming up the week after this panel!), the literary magazine Synchronized Chaos, and the author pr firm, Authors Large and Small. She is passionate about helping the disadvantaged, and well known for moderating panels at conferences such as AWP.
## Schedule
### $5 for members, $10 for guests, free tickets available*
## Community
1:00 Doors open
1:30 Welcome and networking with members & guests## Program
2:00 p.m. Club Announcements
2:30 p.m. PANEL
4:00 p.m. Author Support Group1 attendee
Past events
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