California Fever Dream: A Memoir (Willow Books Memoir Series) Hardcover – March 27, 2026

Memoir by Judy Juanita, Black Arts Movement icon and winner of the American Book Award. California Fever Dream chronicles Juanita's 60 years of writing and activism. Judy Juanita is an award-winning poet, short story writer, novelist, essayist and playwright. At San Francisco State University in the 1960s, Juanita joined fellow student protesters to revolutionize American higher education and create the nation’s first Black Studies department. Juanita was the editor-in-chief of The Black Panther, the newspaper of the Black Panther Party. Her semi-autobiographical debut novel, Virgin Soul (Viking, 2013), features a young woman in the 1960s who joins the Black Panther Party. Her work is archived at Duke University's John Hope Franklin Research Center, alongside the work of SNCC activists from the 1960s.Juanita is a winner of the American Book Award (2021) for Manhattan my ass, you're in Oakland, a poetry collection. Juanita’s twenty-odd plays have been produced in the Bay Area, L.A. and NYC. She appeared in Netflix's Last Chance U:Season 5 (2020). Juanita taught at Laney College in Oakland, CA for over three decades. She is a Lecturer in the College Writing Programs at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2024, Juanita received a Reginald Lockett Lifetime Achievement Award from PEN Oakland. Read more