Life Achievement Award Celebration for devorah major

The Berkeley Poetry Festival is honored to celebrate devorah major recipient of the 2026 Lifetime Achievement Award—a poet whose work has shaped revolutionary poetics, feminist thought, and cultural memory for decades.

devorah major’s writing insists on presence. It refuses erasure. Across poetry, essays, performance, and community work, she has traced the living intersections of race, gender, history, and imagination. Her voice has long been a compass for writers committed not just to craft, but to truth-telling, survival, and collective futures.

This special afternoon celebration will feature readings and tributes from poets whose work resonates with Major’s legacy, including:

• Leticia Hernández-Linares
• Joyce E. Young

Join us to honor a poet whose work has helped shaped generations and whose words continue to light the way forward.

This event is part of the Berkeley Poetry Festival 2026, a multi-day gathering centering poetry as a site of resistance, care, speculation, and radical imagination.

Also check out other Arts events in Berkeley, Literary Art events in Berkeley, Festivals in Berkeley.