Daily Cal Weekender

Welcome to Weekender summer! Did you miss us? The Daily Californian’s creative writing department will be dropping brand new pieces on a biweekly basis, all summer long! Stay tuned for poignant personal essays, thought-provoking cultural commentaries and resonant poetry and short fiction.

For our very first summer issue, we are proud to share “Brooklyn exceptionalism” by Maria Chernishova and “Short-lived things” by Shiloh Capiak.

Read the full articles through the link in bio!

✍️: Maria Chernishova, Shiloh Capiak Chernishova
📸 : Acroterion via Creative Commons
🎨: Ashley Vargas-Mayo
sisterhood

At UC Berkeley, some classes begin not with a requirement, but with a more pressing question.

They start as observations students cannot quite let go of — something that may be noticed in a conversation, in a lecture, in a piece of literature or in the way people move through the world. Over time, these observations sharpen into ideas, and at UC Berkeley, these ideas can become DeCal courses: student-led courses shaped by curiosity, experimentation and a desire to build a classroom around something that feels newly urgent.

That spirit is what makes DeCal culture distinctive. These courses often emerge from intellectual interests that feel both personal and collective, allowing students to share and transform niche fascinations into shared spaces for inquiry.

✍️: Anayaa Jogani
📸: Andoe Glaser

Before the meeting started, I talked to someone in the hallway. A couple of people in suits were shuffling nervously between us. Framing our conversation were two looming 5-foot cardboard signs advertising our respective consulting clubs.

The signs, much like their pamphlets, were more-or-less the same as all the consulting club pamphlets at Berkeley: dozens of recognizable logos and texts that Fortune 500 companies just dragged and dropped all over the face of it. If there didn’t exist a backside of the card, they might have forgotten to put any practical information.

✍️: Caleb Silver
📸: Joe Noriega
club

Explore how Europe’s artistic heritage comes alive at the Legion of Honor museum through the link in our bio!

✍️: Farida Dowidar
📸: Ahana Sur

Read a heartfelt interview written in response to recent rhetorical attempts to restore the “nuclear family.” Link in bio!

✍️: Jack Mireles
🎨: Cherianne Yoon

Happy almost Thanksgiving! To celebrate the holiday The Weekender has NINE brand new stories for you to read… and we know you have the time this break to read the full articles at the link in bio!

✍️: Sage Plaisted, Jolie Feld, Jojo Pak, Madison Rojas, Caleb Silver, Meghan Boyle, Tarini Kakkar, Davina Jou, Vincent Luo

📸: Daniel Kim, Courtesy of PJ Bae, Jojo Pak, Diego Moran, Meghnath Dey, Steve Shupe via Creative Commons, Caroline Lobel, Steven Zucker via Creative Commons

🎨: Sydney Ong

❗️Exciting Announcement❗️
In an effort to make sure The Weekender is covering the culture of Berkeley as best we can, we are accepting submissions of personal essays, fiction and poems by non-Daily Cal writers to be published on our website!! Submissions are due by midnight on March 17th. We’re so excited to see what you all come up with!
Click the link in our bio to apply and for more information!

“I don’t want a dead memorial.” —Madison Rojas

Read Madison’s introspective poem, written in response to W.H. Auden’s Poem ‘In Memory of W.B. Yeats’. Link in bio!

“Between gloved hands, my winner held / his trophy high before he took / me by the hip and gave a kiss, / a bloody stain of victory.“ —Logan Roscoe

Read Logan’s poem, link in bio!