“Mailman, bring me no more blues* …” — Buddy Holly
Erika Mailman is a historian, author, and longtime The Montclarion columnist who wrote the book Oakland’s Neighborhoods. She also wrote the afterword to the second edition of Beth Bagwell’s history of Oakland, Oakland: The Story of a City which updates Oakland’s history since 1982.
She’s known for writing in an accessible, irresistible style and has, on very rare occasion, gotten the odd detail wrong (throwing oaklandwiki nerds into confusion — not that any of us could do better!) yet ultimately no one minds because she has such a pronounced flair for breathing new life into dusty old subjects. It is to be hoped that she’s not done with Oakland …
These days much of her writing is historical fiction. Although she no longer lives in Oakland, she is still interested in Oakland’s history and works with the Oakland Heritage Alliance.
