Famed bohemian saloon Vesuvio Café welcomes Litquake for an edgy and hilarious North Beach reading celebrating 2020 authors (who didn’t get to have any damn fun). Featuring Vanessa Hua, A.H. Kim, Roberto Lovato, Caitlin Myer, and Maggie Tokuda-Hall. Hosted by Alia Volz. A rare opportunity to glimpse authors performing new work in their natural habitat. Held outdoors in Kerouac Alley.

Sponsored by Yerba Buena Community Benefit District Co-presented by Healdsburg Jazz Festival and Poets & Writers In the great tradition of San Francisco jazz and spoken-word basement readings first forged by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Kenneth Rexroth, and Bob Kaufman, Litquake is proud to bring back this festival favorite, showcasing world-class poets accompanied by improvised music created on the spot. With Genny Lim, devorah major, Paul S. Flores, and Brontez Purnell. Music by the Marcus...

Co-presented with MOAD. From The Guardian’s Georgina Lawton, a moving examination of how racial identity is constructed—through the author’s own journey grappling with secrets and stereotypes, having been raised by white parents with no explanation as to why she looked black. Raised in sleepy English suburbia, Georgina Lawton was no stranger to homogeneity. Her parents were white; her friends were white; there was no reason for her to think she was any different. But over time her brown...

This event is now available to watch on our YouTube page, along with the rest of our 2020 festival programming. Co-presented by City Lights Booksellers & Publishers “This notable achievement...is a harrowing account of how Sneed transforms violence and pain into an artist's life." —Claudia Rankine, author of Citizen: A Lyric In this collection of personal essays and poetry, acclaimed Brooklyn-based poet/performer Pamela Sneed details her coming of age in New York City during the...

Co-presented by The Ruby and Left Margin Lit The best short stories evoke a whole world in a small space. But how do they get written? Join Litquake as we hear five writers (and readers) of short stories discuss their different approaches to writing the form. They'll discuss their own methods, philosophies, and techniques behind telling stories with economy and heart. With Yalitza Ferreras, Rachel Khong, Mimi Lok, Shruti Swamy, and C Pam Zhang. Remember to subscribe to Lit Cast to be...

This event is now available to watch on our YouTube page, along with the rest of our 2020 festival programming. “Melchor’s English-language debut is a furious vortex of voices that swirl around a murder in a provincial Mexican town. Forceful, frenzied, violent, and uncompromising, Melchor’s depiction of a town ogling its own destruction is a powder keg that ignites on the first page and sustains its intense, explosive heat until its final sentence.” —Publishers Weekly One of Mexico’s...

As part of Litquake Festival 2020 we will be launching our latest issue with readings from: Ching-In Chen Piper J. Daniels Chekwube Danladi Cyrée Jarelle Johnson J.S. Kuiken t. tran le Wryly T. McCutchen heidi andrea restrepo rhodes Zak Salih Mimi Tempestt Join Foglifter is as we celebrate powerful, intersectional writing that queers our perspectives; writing that explores the sometimes abject, sometimes shameful, but always honest and revelatory experience; writing that calls into...

This event is now available to watch on our YouTube page, alongside the rest of our 2020 festival programming. Co-presented by City Lights Booksellers & Publishers "From Basho to Mandela, Every Day We Get More Illegal takes us on an international tour for a lesson in the history of resistance...In ways subtle and sometimes proudly loud, this book makes it clear exactly why Juan Felipe Herrera continues to be recognized and sought after for his work."—Jericho Brown Join Litquake...

The Rumpus proudly presents our San Francisco Lit Crawl 2020 event, An Evening with The Rumpus! With readings from Tongo Eisen-Martin, Ingrid Rojas Contreras, and Monica Sok, and featuring comedy by Nato Green! Hosted by Christine Hyung-Oak Lee.

“This is an unflinching book that illustrates the central, confounding American paradox—in a country that purports to root for the underdog, too often we exalt the rich and we punish the poor. With thorough reporting and extraordinary compassion, Kristof and WuDunn tell the stories of those who fall behind in the world’s wealthiest country, and find not an efficient first-world safety net created by their government, but a patchwork of community initiatives, perpetually underfunded and run by...

Litquake and City Lights present John Freeman with Robin Coste Lewis, Tommy Orange, and Matt Summell. John Freeman celebrates the latest installment of the journal that is called "a powerful force in the literary world" (Los Angeles Times.) Freeman's turns to one of the greatest elevating forces of life: love. FREEMAN'S: Best New Writings on LOVE edited by John Freeman, and published by Grove Press. Litquake and City Lights present John Freeman with Robin Coste Lewis, Tommy Orange, and Matt...

Millions of families are separated today, by circumstances of the current pandemic, by draconian immigration policies, and by war. Family separation has long been used as an intentional political tool to pressure, frighten, and terrorize. Through the lens of fiction, we can understand the impact of such wounds, and strengthen our shared belief in family and community connection. Authors Donna Hemans, Aimee Liu, Ellen Meeropol, and Kristen Millares Young discuss their Spring 2020 novels, and...

“One of the difficulties of being alive today, is that everything is absurd but fewer and fewer things are funny.” In her new essay collection Nothing Is Wrong and Here Is Why, acclaimed Washington Post satirist Alexandra Petri offers perfectly logical, reassuring reasons for everything that has happened in recent American politics that will in no way unsettle your worldview. Petri reports that the Trump administration is as competent as it is uncorrupted, white supremacy has never been less...

Afrofuturism: Risen From a Poet’s Sun explores the intersection of technology, science, and the arts, as well as culture, of the African Diaspora. Featuring Bay Area poets James Cagney, Tongo-Eisen Martin, Thea Matthews, and Tureeda Mikell.          

Cutting-edge poetry and visuals from both coasts, on the theme of "You, Me, and Everyone In Quarantine." From the depths of their shelter-in-place, these writers will perform their literary hearts out for you! With SevanKele Boult, Wo Chan, Katie Fricas, Irene McCalphin aka Magnoliah Black, and Preeti Vangani. Curated and hosted by Baruch Porras-Hernandez. Books are available from your favorite indie bookstores, or order from bookshop.org!

Page turners are usually associated with genre or popular fiction rather than literary fiction. In this discussion, Melanie Abrams, Laura Mazer, and Kate Milliken will talk about what readers, agents, and editors are looking for when it comes to plot. Our guest authors speak about marketability, but also how to write a beautifully crafted narrative while still making readers turn pages.  Books are available from your favorite indie bookstores, or order from bookshop.org!

Please join us for this vivid and compelling evening with Alka Joshi, author of The Henna Artist, the May selection for Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine Book Club. Tune in and learn why Publishers Weekly calls this novel “eloquent and moving,” while Christian Science Monitor highlights its “vibrant characters, evocative imagery, and sumptuous prose.” A portrait of one woman’s struggle for fulfillment in a society pivoting between the traditional and the modern, The Henna Artist takes...

From the #1 New York Times-bestselling author of the Sierra Leone child-soldier memoir, A LONG WAY GONE, comes this powerful new novel about young people living at the margins of society. LITTLE FAMILY portrays the lives of five youth who have improvised a household in an abandoned airplane, struggling to replace the homes they have lost with the one they have created together. Join us to celebrate release of this remarkable debut work of fiction from Ishmael Beah, whom Vanity Fair has called...

Fiction writers Nayomi Munaweera, R.O. Kwon, Ingrid Rojas Contreras, and host Lauren Markham discuss both the challenges and urgency of fiction writing at this moment in time. How do we write during bleak times, and into the bleakness? How does the loss and grief of our current moment impact what we are writing about, how we write, and who we are writing for? What works or writers are we turning to right now, and how are we finding sustenance there? And perhaps most importantly, where might...

Let's connect our global literary community in a time of closed borders. Hear World Editions authors Adam Dalva, Esther Gerritsen, Adeline Dieudonné, Pierre Jarawan, Sisonke Msimang, and Amin Maalouf read from their works, discuss the current situation in their countries, and talk about what books mean to them during Covid-19. Adam Dalva’s writing has appeared in The New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, Tin House, and The Guardian. He teaches Creative Writing at Rutgers University...

A reading of dozens of tiny stories from micro-fictionistas, including guest readers, plus a discussion of the Art of Flash and prompts—including visual prompts—to write and submit your own, with a selection to be published on the Flash Fiction Collective Facebook page. Author bios: Jane Ciabattari, author of the short story collection Stealing the Fire, writes the Between the Lines column for BBC Culture. She is a former president of the National Book Critics Circle and a member of the...

Celebrate ZYZZYVA's 35th anniversary issue with contributors Dave Madden, Lysley Tenorio, Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, and Kristen Iskandrian. Kristen Iskandrian is the author of the novel Motherest (Twelve). Her story “Good With Boys,” which appeared in Issue No. 109, was included in Best American Short Stories 2018. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama, and is co-owner of Thank You Books, a new independent bookstore. Lysley Tenorio is the author of the forthcoming novel The Son of Good Fortune...

Booksmith presents visionary novelist William Gibson reading from the sharply imagined sequel to his New York Times bestselling novel The Peripheral. He is in conversation with Mother Jones editor-in-chief, Clara Jeffery. This event was recorded January 23, 2020 at Public Works.

Co-presented by Litquake and MoAD In honor of the post-mortem publication of Zora Neal-Hurston’s short story anthology Hitting a Straight Lick With a Crooked Stick: Stories From The Harlem Renaissance, we put together a reading at the Museum of African Diaspora here in San Francisco. After reading pieces of their favorite stories from the book, local authors, educators, and activists spoke to a sold out crowd about the legacy of Zora Neale Hurston and how it has influenced contemporary...