Litquake 2024

Sponsored by Yerba Buena Gardens Festival
Co-presented with 48 Hills

Uniting north & south of califas, we bring you a brown & black rebel yell! Conjuring. Complaining. Plotting. Politicizing. Punking. Mimi Tempestt presents her favorite generation of feminist musings to the battleground with performances from Tori Gesualdo, soledad con carne, and Lourdes Figueroa. FREE, $10–15 suggested donation

Sponsored by Yerba Buena Gardens Festival
Featuring 2024 festival sponsors Alta Journal, Heyday Books, and Two Lines Press
Co-presented by 48 Hills

Join a curated spread of small presses and literary magazines for the newly revived Litquake Book Fair in Yerba Buena Gardens! Browse the best in local literature set to a day of readings and performances from Litquake Out Loud, with a special section for presses formerly carried by Small Press Distribution. FREE


Participating vendors include:
Alta Journal
Aunt Lute Books
Center for Sex & Culture
City Lights Publishers
Collective Book Studio
Foglifter Press & Journal
Heyday Books
Kelsey Street Press
Last Gasp Press
Mumblers Press
North Atlantic Books
Parapraxis Magazine
Pelekinesis
Philippine American Writers & Artists (PAWA)
PM Press
Sixteen Rivers Press
Somos en escrito Press
Stanford University Press
Transit Books
Two Lines Press
ZYZZYVA

Sponsored by Yerba Buena Gardens Festival
Co-presented with 48 Hills

Darius Simpson presents María Esqinca, Meilani Clay, and Hernan Ramos—local poets who’ve made explicit political commitments to creating a better world outside of electoral structures with work that incites action, inspiration, curiosity, and the creativity needed for transforming reality. FREE, $10-15 suggested donation

Sponsored by Yerba Buena Gardens Festival
Co-presented with 48 Hills

Join RAWdance & Litquake’s Elder Project for a unique, collaborative blend of storytelling, dance, and dialogue. Featuring the personal narratives of former Catskills vacationers, including Elder Project’s 98-year-old Irene Zahler, brought to life by 826 Valencia, and excerpts from RAWdance's evocative dance performance "Escape,” inspired by the history of culturally-specific summer havens. Q&A to follow with the artists and storytellers, exploring the themes of memory, culture, and belonging. FREE, $10-15 suggested donation

Co-presented by KQED Fest

Every year since 2020 the U.S. has seen an exponential rise in the number of book bans—often instigated by a small, vocal group of individuals who wield outsized power to censor books about sexual violence and LGBTQ+ topics (especially trans identities). Join us at KQED Fest, a free, all-day block party and open house at KQED HQ, to learn about the current state of book banning with San Francisco’s City Librarian Michael Lambert, Becka Robbins from Books Not Bans (sponsored by Fabulosa Books), and Authors Against Book Bans members Maggie Tokuda-Hall and Maia Kobabe, award-winning author of Genderqueer, the most banned book in the U.S. in recent years. Moderated by KQED’s Morning News anchor Brian Watt. Book sales benefit the Books Not Bans program that sends LGBTQ+ books to places with active bans of LGBTQ+-affirming content. FREE
Book sales for this event coordinated by Fabulosa Books.

Co-presented with 48 Hills

Two teams of award-winning poets, including Armen Davoudian, Luiza Flynn-Goodlett, Cindy Ok, Joseph Rios, Mimi Tempestt, and Dashaun Washington, take turns batting at topics pitched to them by the audience. Fastballs, curveballs, knuckleballs: these poets won’t know what’s coming next! Hilarity and brilliance both guaranteed. Daniel Handler returns as emcee, and eminently qualified umpires Andrew Sean Greer and Brynn Saito will score each batter’s reading. The winning team takes the series title. Don’t forget to bring a topic to stump the poets with! Book sales/signing follow the reading. Doors at 6:30PM. $17 adv /  $20 door

Book sales for this event coordinated by Dog Eared Books.

Co-presented with Museum of the African Diaspora

Three writers, three radical visions of healing in America today. Decorated, award-winning poets and journalists Morgan Parker, Carvell Wallace, and sam sax’s recent transformative works reimagine the conventions of self-love in a world that wasn’t built for you. Whether it's Parker’s investigation of racial consciousness and its effects on mental well-being (You Get What You Pay For), Wallace’s irresistibly made case for life in his excavation of growing up Black and queer and homeless (Another Word for Love), or sax’s kaleidoscopic coming of age novel (Yr Dead)—all these writers present profoundly original meditations on healing, told through the lenses of justice, sex, family, gender, protest, and death. Moderated by The Stacks podcast founder and host, Traci Thomas. Doors at 6:30PM. $17 adv / $20 door
Book sales for this event coordinated by Museum of African Diaspora.