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Thursday, October 10
 

10:15am PDT

Kidquake: Upper Elementary
Thursday October 10, 2024 10:15am - 12:15pm PDT
San Francisco Public Library Koret Auditorium
Sponsored by Mary A. Crocker Trust and the Sam Mazza Foundation
Book donations sponsored by Candlewick Press
Co-presented with San Francisco Public Library

Our acclaimed Kidquake programs for children’s books; authors, illustrators, poets, and bookmakers provide readings, discussions, and workshops designed to fuel kids’ imagination. This morning’s two sessions, for kids in 3rd to 5th grades, begin at 10:15AM and 11:15AM. Featuring authors Nidhi Chanani and Mae Respicio, plus an exciting draw-off between Chanani and illustrator Bo Lu, with workshops (by lottery) from Bettina Pauly, Jason Shiga, and 826 Valencia. Advance sign-up required, for in-person student groups at litquake.org/kidquake. FREE
Authors and Participants
avatar for Bo Lu

Bo Lu

Bo Lu moved from Taipei to Kansas at 7, knowing just three English words: "Apple," "Banana," and "so-so." Before she could speak, pictures were her friends. Now, as an author and illustrator, Bo creates stories where everyone can explore big feelings and feel less alone, even without... Read More →
avatar for Bettina Pauly

Bettina Pauly

Bettina Pauly studied at the Academy of Art University San Francisco in the Book Arts and Letterpress program and took many classes at SF Center for the Book before she became an instructor. Most of the time she is still the student, even when she teaches.
avatar for Jason Shiga

Jason Shiga

Jason Shiga was born and raised in Oakland. He has been drawing comics since 1996. His comics have a geeky side and often feature exciting uses of mathematics. Many are interactive, requiring the reader to make choices to move the story along. He has created many graphic novels, comic... Read More →
avatar for 826 Valencia

826 Valencia

826 Valencia is dedicated to supporting under-resourced students with their writing skills. In a podcasting field trip to 826 Valencia’s Tenderloin Center, kids visit King Carl’s Emporium for a one-of-a-kind experience. Staff and tutors guide students in writing and recording... Read More →
avatar for Nidhi Chanani

Nidhi Chanani

Nidhi Chanani is an award-winning author and illustrator. Her graphic novels include Pashmina, Jukebox the Shark Princess series and the Super Boba Cafe series. She also has a number of picture books including I will be fierce, Strong, Binny’s Diwali, What Will My Story Be and Quiet... Read More →
avatar for Mae Respicio

Mae Respicio

Mae Respicio is an award-winning author of middle grade novels including The House That Lou Built, which won the Asian/Pacific American Libraries Association Honor Award and was an NPR Best Book. Her titles have been on many “best books” and state reading lists and her most recent... Read More →
Thursday October 10, 2024 10:15am - 12:15pm PDT
San Francisco Public Library Koret Auditorium
  Kidquake
 
Friday, October 11
 

10:15am PDT

Kidquake: Lower Elementary
Friday October 11, 2024 10:15am - 12:15pm PDT
San Francisco Public Library Koret Auditorium
Sponsored by Mary A. Crocker Trust and the Sam Mazza Foundation
Book donations sponsored by Candlewick Press
Co-presented with San Francisco Public Library

Our acclaimed Kidquake programs for children’s books; authors, illustrators, poets, and bookmakers provide readings, discussions, and workshops designed to fuel kids’ imagination. This morning’s two sessions, for kids in K to 2nd grades, begin at 10:15AM and 11:15AM. Featuring authors Minnie Phan and JaNay Brown-Wood, plus a hands-on drumming activity led by DRUMMM to get kids on their feet and making music, with workshops (by lottery) from Stephanie Lucianovic and Jamey Williams. Advance sign-up required, for in-person student groups at litquake.org/kidquake. FREE
Authors and Participants
avatar for Jeni Swerdlow / DRUMMM

Jeni Swerdlow / DRUMMM

Jeni Swerdlow is a renowned drum circle facilitator and art therapist, known for her transformative work in building connections through the power of rhythm. As the founder and “chief rhythm activator” of DRUMMM Rhythmic Events, she has dedicated her career to creating inclusive... Read More →
avatar for Stephanie Lucianovic

Stephanie Lucianovic

"Stephanie V.W. Lucianovic writes books in the San Francisco Bay Area surrounded by a few kids, a few cats, and one husband.She is the author of SUFFERING SUCCOTASH: A PICKY EATER'S QUEST TO UNDERSTAND WHY WE HATE THE FOODS WE HATE; THE END OF SOMETHING WONDERFUL; HELLO, STAR; THE... Read More →
avatar for Jamey Williams

Jamey Williams

Jamey Williams (He/Him) has been teaching spoken word poetry workshops in K–12 schools since 2016, which is why most people know him as an educator. However, Jamey is also a community organizer and internationally recognized performer. In 2017, after winning the Compliment Death... Read More →
avatar for JaNay Brown-Wood

JaNay Brown-Wood

JaNay Brown-Wood, PhD, is an award-winning and New York Times Best-selling children’s author, poet, and educator. She is the author of over twenty books including Imani’s Moon, the Where in the Garden books, the Simone Biles Little Golden Book, Jam, Too and the Scholastic chapter... Read More →
avatar for Minnie Phan

Minnie Phan

Minnie Phan is an illustrator and writer based in Oakland, CA. Her work has been featured by Google, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the San Francisco Public Library, for which she illustrated a citywide reading campaign in 2022. She is the illustrator of several picture... Read More →
Friday October 11, 2024 10:15am - 12:15pm PDT
San Francisco Public Library Koret Auditorium
  Kidquake

6:00pm PDT

The Literature of War and Peace: A Symposium, Part One
Friday October 11, 2024 6:00pm - 8:00pm PDT
Feldman's Books
Co-presented with Feldman's Books

Feldman’s Books hosts veteran and author Joe Lamb along with members of "Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace," a community led by writer Maxine Hong Kingston. This event, the first part of Feldman’s symposium on the Literature of War and Peace, will feature readings from volume II of their collection of creative works by veterans. Readers include Maddie Aliah, Bonnie Bonner, Sean McLain Brown, Bob Golling, Geneffa Jahan, Martin Lesinski, and Zoe Sameth.This event will feature readings from their collection of creative works by veterans, which reflect on war’s impact and explore literature's role in the healing process. Their readings will be accompanied by a series of musical performances from artists of Redtone Records. Join us to engage with powerful narratives, support our veterans, and witness the transformative power of creative expression! FREE, $20 suggested donation
Book sales for this event coordinated by Feldman's Books
Authors and Participants
avatar for Martin Lesinski

Martin Lesinski

Returning from Vietnam permanently disabled, I began using poetry and photography to explore my identity as a disabled veteran. However, believing I needed to choose between photography and writing, photography became my livelihood for most of my adult life. Several years ago, I returned... Read More →
avatar for Joe Lamb

Joe Lamb

Joe Lamb, founder of the Borneo Project, is a writer, activist, and arborist living in Berkeley, California. His poetry and essays have appeared in Earth Island Journal, The Sun, Caliban, Wind, Orion, Nostos, and other magazines. His work is also included in the anthologies The Rag... Read More →
avatar for Bonnie Bonner

Bonnie Bonner

Eighteen years ago, for our first anthology, Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace, I wrote the afterword.It’s time to start at the beginning. A cautionary tale, this is not a record of the past, simply a recollection of incidents and events during a challenging era. Like war stories... Read More →
avatar for Madeline Aliah

Madeline Aliah

Madeline Aliah is an 18-year-old trans-fem. She is a writer and an orator, who seeks to bring minoritized people together and educate people on our daily struggles. Her debut chapbook, “This is My Body: Poems by a Teen Transfem” was published when she was seventeen. She has since... Read More →
avatar for Geneffa Jahan

Geneffa Jahan

Geneffa Jahan is a woman of South Asian Muslim descent whose diasporic journey has taken her family from North India to East Africa, London (where she was born), Canada (where she was raised), and California (where she has resided since 1998). She has taught English at Cabrillo College... Read More →
avatar for Bob Golling

Bob Golling

Born in Oakland, Bob Golling is a third generation Californian. His grandfather served in the U.S. Navy during WW1, his father served in the U.S. Navy during WW2, and he is a U.S. Navy veteran of the American War in Vietnam.A retired telephone engineer, he resides with hisdear wife... Read More →
avatar for Zoe Sameth

Zoe Sameth

Zoe Sheli Sameth, writer, poet, playwright and songwriter discovered at an early age her love of writing, winning awards for her fiction short stories starting in junior high. Her one-woman play, “Taste of Enlightenment”, about her experiences living in Sri Lanka during the start... Read More →
avatar for Sean Mclain Brown

Sean Mclain Brown

Sean Mclain Brown is a disabled Marine Corps veteran. He taught writing at De Anza College and Western Connecticut State University. His poetry and fiction has appeared in more than 50 journals, including San Francisco Magazine, The San Francisco Chronicle, EM, First Intensity, Fourteen... Read More →
Friday October 11, 2024 6:00pm - 8:00pm PDT
Feldman's Books
  Discussion

7:00pm PDT

Paola Ramos on Defectors: The Rise of the Latino Far Right
Friday October 11, 2024 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
KALW
Co-presented with 48 Hills and KALW

On the eve of this year’s hugely consequential presidential election, award-winning journalist Paola Ramos sheds light on a misunderstood and underestimated electorate: the growing number of Latino voters supporting conservative candidates and policies. Using a combination of deep reporting, effective storytelling, and probing yet compassionate questions, Ramos unpacks the combination of race, identity, and political trauma that has shaped this rightward shift—and urges politicians and activists alike not to ignore the power of this group to shape American politics. Noted Bay Area journalist and interviewer Angie Coiro will join Ramos for this critical conversation. FREE, $10–15 suggested donation.

Book sales for this event coordinated by Bookshop West Portal
Moderators
avatar for Angie Coiro

Angie Coiro

Angie Coiro is an award-winning radio journalist and on-stage interviewer. Her decades of experience have established her as a top-tier media personality and moderator. After fifteen years at KQED Radio and Television, she hosted the syndicated show, In Deep with Angie Coiro, until... Read More →
Authors and Participants
avatar for Paola Ramos

Paola Ramos

Paola Ramos is an author and Emmy-Award-winning journalist. She is a contributor for Telemundo News and MSNBC, where she is the host of “Field Report.” Ramos is a former Correspondent for Vice News.Prior to her career in journalism, Ramos was the Deputy Director of Hispanic Media... Read More →
Friday October 11, 2024 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
KALW
  Nonfiction

7:00pm PDT

Foglifter Issue Launch Party
Friday October 11, 2024 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
Strut
Foglifter—created by and for LGBTQ+ writers and readers—continues the San Francisco Bay Area’s tradition of groundbreaking queer and trans writing, with an emphasis on publishing those multi-marginalized (BIPOC, youth, elders, and people with disabilities). Join us for the launch of Foglifter’s Fall 2024 issue, celebrating our vibrant 9.2 edition with a dazzling night of literary readings. Explore new voices as our featured writers bring their work to life. Limited print copies of the issue will be available for purchase. Featuring Amal Amer, Amalee Beattie, sienna fereshteh, Eden Nobile, and more! Doors at 6:45PM. FREE, $10–15 suggested donation

Authors and Participants
avatar for sienna fereshteh

sienna fereshteh

sienna fereshteh (they/them) is a multiracial, Iranian-American artist based in the South Bay Area. They believe that their fundamental role as a poet is to RESIST the insidious violence of erasure, to pay witness to humanity in its struggle for collective liberation—such that our... Read More →
avatar for Amal Amer

Amal Amer

Amal Amer (they/them) is a transdisciplinary artist, writer, and facilitator of SWANA descent currently based in California. Through visual media, performance, and collective storytelling, they explore the tension between rootedness and movement in diaspora. Amer’s work reinterprets... Read More →
avatar for Amalee Bea

Amalee Bea

Amalee Bea (she/they) is a Blackqueer writer, artist, and curator of warm communal spaces based in Oakland, California (Ohlone Land). Their written work spans experimental poetry, nonfiction, science fiction, and prose. Her practice also includes painting, installation, and conceptual... Read More →
avatar for Eden Nobile

Eden Nobile

Eden Nobile (he/they) is a trans writer originally from the Connecticut river valley, pursuing an MFA in poetry at St. Mary's College of California. Their writing life is highly influenced by ecology, possibly the long-term effects of watching Animal Planet as a youth. Nobile is a... Read More →
Friday October 11, 2024 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
Strut
  Performance

7:00pm PDT

An Evening with Booker Prize Winner Paul Lynch
Friday October 11, 2024 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley
Sponsored by the Government of Ireland: Emigrant Support Programme, Culture Ireland, and Center for the Art of Translation
Co-presented with Irish Culture Bay Area

If the accolades for Irish writer Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song are any indication, the novel is no less than required reading for our turbulent times. Awarded the 2023 Booker Prize, Lynch’s fifth novel recounts in exacting, all-too-plausible detail the inexorable descent of Ireland’s liberal democracy into authoritarian rule. Booker Prize chair Esi Edugyan called the novel “soul-shattering and true,” and noted that readers “will not soon forget its warnings.” Join us for one of Lynch’s few North American events in honor of the paperback release of Prophet Song; he will be in conversation with Irish writer Ethel Rohan, author most recently of the novel Sing, I. FREE, $10–15 suggested donation.
Book sales for this event coordinated by Mrs.Dalloway's Bookstore of Literary and Garden Arts

This event will also be live-streamed and videorecorded for those unable to attend in person. Mrs. Dalloway's Books in Berkeley will have extra signed copies of Prophet Song available for purchase after the event.
Moderators
avatar for Ethel Rohan

Ethel Rohan

San Francisco–based Irish author Ethel Rohan is an award-winning essayist, novelist, and short story writer. Most recently, her short story collection In the Event of Contact won the Dzanc Prize, the Eric Hoffer Prize, and a Gold Independent Publisher Book Award for Best European... Read More →
Authors and Participants
avatar for Paul Lynch

Paul Lynch

Paul Lynch is the award-winning author of five novels — Prophet Song, Beyond the Sea, Grace, The Black Snow, and Red Sky in Morning. His most recent novel, Prophet Song, won the 2023 Booker Prize and was shortlisted for the Strega European Award and the A Post Irish Novel of the... Read More →
Friday October 11, 2024 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley
  Words Around the World
 
Saturday, October 12
 

12:30pm PDT

Behind the Veil: Ghostwriting 101
Saturday October 12, 2024 12:30pm - 1:30pm PDT
San Francisco Public Library Saroyan Gallery
It’s time to take an art form that’s secretive by design (it’s right there in the name!) out from the shadows. A trio of professional ghosts—Felice Laverne, Hilary Swanson, and Annie Tucker—will share the challenges and rewards of their craft, as well as tips for breaking into the biz. Is the work glamorous, thankless, or both? What kinds of ethical questions do ghostwriters encounter? How can a ghostwriter park their ego—and preserve their composure—when assuming the voice of a public (and sometimes very famous) persona? This freewheeling yet practical conversation will be moderated by Brooke Warner, publisher of SheWrites Press. FREE, $10-15 suggested donation


Moderators
avatar for Brooke Warner

Brooke Warner

Brooke Warner is publisher of She Writes Press and SparkPress, president of Warner Coaching Inc., and author of Write On, Sisters!, Green-light Your Book, What's Your Book?, as well as three books on memoir. Warner teaches memoir intensives online and in person, and publishes around... Read More →
Authors and Participants
avatar for Felice Laverne

Felice Laverne

Felice Laverne is a ghostwriter who helps high-profile celebrities, leaders, healers, influencers, political figures and doers turn their messages into powerful brand assets and engagingly moving narratives. A seasoned storyteller with a deeply involved career in the publishing industry... Read More →
avatar for Hilary Swanson

Hilary Swanson

Hilary Swanson is a multiple New York Times bestselling ghostwriter and former Senior Editor at HarperCollins. She has collaborated on acclaimed memoirs, narrative nonfiction and personal development books including Over the Top by Jonathan Van Ness, BRAVE by Rose McGowan, and One... Read More →
avatar for Annie Tucker

Annie Tucker

Annie Tucker is the founder of the Understory Writers' Conference and has written and edited more than eight hundred books. She currently specializes in ghostwriting memoirs and other works of nonfiction for clients all over the world. Previously, she was the managing editor of Juxtapoz... Read More →
Saturday October 12, 2024 12:30pm - 1:30pm PDT
San Francisco Public Library Saroyan Gallery
  Writers Weekend

2:00pm PDT

Radical Creative Womanist Workshopping and Reflection in Community
Saturday October 12, 2024 2:00pm - 3:00pm PDT
San Francisco Public Library Saroyan Gallery
A panel featuring Ellen Barry, Andrea Canaan, Lisa Clapper, Natalie Devora, Juli C. Lasselle, Jessica Millett and Suma Nagaraj will discuss and engage the audience in a brief writing exercise through the workshopping model Radical Creative Womanist Workshopping and Reflection in Community (RCWWRC). An antidote to competitive traditional workshopping models, the spirit of RCWWRC is for writers to bring a writing work to life with the support of a writing community. FREE, $10-15 suggested donation
Authors and Participants
avatar for Ellen Barry

Ellen Barry

Ellen Barry is a social justice activist who is deeply committed to racial justice and the end of mass incarceration. In 1978, she founded Legal Services for Prisoners with Children (LSPC), a non-profit organization which has advocated on behalf of incarcerated parents, their children... Read More →
avatar for Andrea Canaan

Andrea Canaan

Andrea Ruth Ransom Canaan, MSW, MFA, is a contributor to This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, edited by Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua with her lauded essay, “Brownness.”Canaan is the founder of A Writer’s Life (AWL), providing skills and support... Read More →
avatar for Lisa Clapper

Lisa Clapper

The Lisa Clapper is a poet, spoken word artiste, author, brand maven, and positive energy Yay advocate with over 3 decades of storytelling and brand strategy experience. By heart and soul, she is a writer and storyteller who loves the written word and comes alive voicing the spoken... Read More →
avatar for Natalie Devora

Natalie Devora

Natalie Devora is an activist on issues related to albinism. Devora is the author of Black Girl, White Skin: A Life in Stories. She was senior editor for Aché: A Journal for Lesbians of African Descent. She has been featured on NPR’s Code Switch and The Top Of Mind podcast. Devora... Read More →
avatar for Juli C. Lasselle

Juli C. Lasselle

Originally from Berkeley, CA, Juli C. Lasselle holds an MFA from the University of  San Francisco and has been published in The Brooklyn Review, The Sun, Flash Fiction Magazine, and forthcoming in 2025 in the Cimarron Review. You can find her in the garden, hiking with her dog, or... Read More →
avatar for Jessica Millett

Jessica Millett

Jessica Millett is a fearless writer, creative thinker, and collector of words. When she is not navigating the minutiae of corporate life, she writes children’s books and dreams about the illustrations that will bring them to life. Millett has written four children’s books including... Read More →
avatar for Suma Nagaraj

Suma Nagaraj

Suma Nagaraj is a writer, editor, website designer, and content consultant with an MFA in creative writing from USFCA. She offers manuscript editing, content writing, web design, and social media strategy/consultancy services. Nagaraj is currently working on a book of short stories... Read More →
Saturday October 12, 2024 2:00pm - 3:00pm PDT
San Francisco Public Library Saroyan Gallery
  Writers Weekend

3:30pm PDT

Black Poetics, Black Worldbuilding
Saturday October 12, 2024 3:30pm - 4:30pm PDT
San Francisco Public Library Saroyan Gallery
Co-presented with Sistah Sci-fi

Co-moderated by Lyn Patterson and Vincente Perez, this session considers Black poetics as a world-building phenomenon. In the lineage of Black poets like Henry Dumas and June Jordan, panelists Ashia Ajani, Darius Simpson and Nefertiti Asanti write against the Human, write towards Black eco-poetics, and write as political education to form critical practices of viewing, listening, and being. Hear how they use poetry to dissect and analyze the worlds of white supremacy, settler colonialism, and heteropatriarchy, charting a path toward alternative worlds and possibilities. FREE, $10-15 suggested donation
Moderators
avatar for Lyn Patterson

Lyn Patterson

Lyn Patterson is a storyteller and visual artist who lives in Oakland, CA. She is a deeply invigorated poet, specifically inspired to write about Black diaspora and those who have been systematically marginalized in society as a means of empowering future generations with their stories... Read More →
avatar for Vincente Perez

Vincente Perez

Vincente Perez is a poet and scholar working at the intersection of poetry, Hip-Hop, and digital culture. He is a PhD Candidate in the Performance Studies program and a Poetry and the Senses Fellow at UC Berkeley. His debut poetry chapbook, Other Stories to Tell Ourselves, won an... Read More →
Authors and Participants
avatar for Ashia Ajani

Ashia Ajani

Ashia Ajani is a sunshower, a glass bead, an overripe nectarine from Denver, CO, Queen City of the Plains and the unceded territory of Cheyenne, Ute and Arapaho peoples now living on unceded Ohlone land. They are an African American Studies lecturer at UC Berkeley and a Climate Resilient... Read More →
avatar for Darius Simpson

Darius Simpson

Darius Simpson is a New Afrikan writer, educator, performer, and skilled living room dancer from Akron, Ohio. Much like the means of production, he believes poetry must be used for the positive social, political, and economic development of the majority of society. He aims to inspire... Read More →
avatar for Nefertiti Asanti

Nefertiti Asanti

Nefertiti Asanti is a poet and cultural worker from the Bronx. Asanti is a recipient of fellowships and residencies from the Watering Hole, Lambda Literary, Anaphora Arts, Winter Tangerine, Museum of the African Diaspora, PEN America, and VONA. Asanti’s debut chapbook fist of wind... Read More →
Saturday October 12, 2024 3:30pm - 4:30pm PDT
San Francisco Public Library Saroyan Gallery
  Writers Weekend
 
Sunday, October 13
 

12:30pm PDT

FilBookFest Keynote with Elaine Castillo
Sunday October 13, 2024 12:30pm - 12:45pm PDT
San Francisco Public Library Koret Auditorium
Co-presented with Philippine American Writers and Artists, Inc. (PAWA) and San Francisco Public Library

In her latest book, How to Read Now: Essays, Elaine Castillo explores the "politics and ethics of reading, and insists that we are capable of something better: a more engaged relationship not just with our fiction and our art, but with our buried and entangled histories." In this year’s FilBookFest keynote, Castillo will discuss her ambitious hopes for our reading culture.

The Filipino American International Book Festival is the largest and only international book festival in the US featuring Filipinx and Filipinix American authors and books. This year's theme is Kaisá't Kasama: Celebrating Our Diverse Voices and Solidarity. FREE
Authors and Participants
avatar for Elaine Castillo

Elaine Castillo

Elaine Castillo, named one of “30 of the Planet’s Most Exciting Young People” by the Financial Times, was born and raised in the Bay Area. Her debut novel, America Is Not the Heart, was a finalist for numerous prizes including the Elle Big Book Award, the Center for Fiction... Read More →
Sunday October 13, 2024 12:30pm - 12:45pm PDT
San Francisco Public Library Koret Auditorium
  Writers Weekend

1:00pm PDT

How Mighty Is the Small, Independent Press?
Sunday October 13, 2024 1:00pm - 2:00pm PDT
San Francisco Public Library Saroyan Gallery
Co-presented with 48 Hills

Moderator Tania Malik and panelists Nina Schuyler, Grace Loh Prasad, and Carol LaHines will share a frank discussion about their experiences being traditionally published by small, independent presses. Following a reading, they will delve into the ins and outs of the small press publication process, as well as the cultural impact of smaller presses taking chances on voices that bigger presses find too risky or hard to classify. FREE, $10-15 suggested donation
Moderators
avatar for Tania Malik

Tania Malik

Tania Malik is the author of the novel Hope You Are Satisfied which was recommended by NPR and named one of the best espionage novels of 2023 by CrimeReads. Her previous novel Three Bargains received a Publishers Weekly Starred review and a Booklist Starred review. Her work has... Read More →
Authors and Participants
avatar for Carol LaHines

Carol LaHines

Carol LaHines’s debut novel, Someday Everything Will All Make Sense, was a finalist for the Nilsen Prize for a First Novel and an American Fiction Award. Her second novel, The Vixen Amber Halloway, was published in June 2024. Her fiction has appeared in journals including Fence... Read More →
avatar for Grace Loh Prasad

Grace Loh Prasad

Grace Loh Prasad is the author of The Translator’s Daughter, a debut memoir about living between languages, navigating loss, and the search for belonging. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Literary Hub, Longreads, Guernica, Brevity, The Offing, Oldster Magazine, KHÔRA... Read More →
avatar for Nina Schuyler

Nina Schuyler

Nina Schuyler's collection, In This Ravishing World, won the W.S. Porter Prize and the Prism Prize for Climate Literature. Her novel, Afterword, won the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year for Literary and Science Fiction and the PenCraft Seasonal Book Award for Fiction-Science Fiction... Read More →
Sunday October 13, 2024 1:00pm - 2:00pm PDT
San Francisco Public Library Saroyan Gallery
  Writers Weekend

2:00pm PDT

Mayor of the Tenderloin: Del Seymour's Fight to End Homelessness in San Francisco
Sunday October 13, 2024 2:00pm - 3:30pm PDT
KALW
Co-presented with 48 Hills and KALW

Join journalist Alison Owings and Del Seymour, who overcame 18 years of homelessness and addiction to become one of the most respected advocates in San Francisco, as they slip behind the cold statistics and sensationalism. Mayor of Tenderloin reveals a harrowing and life-affirming portrait of Seymour, who, once housed and sober, started Tenderloin Walking Tours and later Code Tenderloin, the remarkable organization teaching homeless, recovering addicts, sex workers, dealers, ex-felons, and other marginalized people how to get and keep a job. Special performance inspired by Del’s advocacy and life by Skywatchers, the multi-disciplinary, mixed-ability ensemble that creates work amplifying the Tenderloin neighborhood’s stories. FREE, $10-15 suggested donation

Book sales for this event coordinated by Medicine for Nightmares.
Authors and Participants
avatar for Del Seymour

Del Seymour

A veteran and compassionate neighbor, Del Seymour has been a member of the Tenderloin community for the past 30 years. He is a leader in the neighborhood, working closely with Glide Memorial Church, St. Antony’s, and Swords to Plowshares. He is also co-chair of San Francisco's Local... Read More →
avatar for Alison Owings

Alison Owings

Alison Owings, trained as a journalist, wrote for network and logal television news before pursuing oral histories of stereotyped people. Her first book Frauen / German Women Recall the Third Reich, was a NYTimes Notable Book of the Year. It was followed by Hey, Waitress! The USA... Read More →
avatar for Skywatchers

Skywatchers

Founded in 2011, Skywatchers is a radical cross-cultural, intergenerational, and mixed-ability community arts collaboration in San Francisco's Tenderloin district (TL). In the streets, in urban plazas, and on the stages of theaters large and small, we co-create rigorous works of art... Read More →
Sunday October 13, 2024 2:00pm - 3:30pm PDT
KALW
  Nonfiction

2:30pm PDT

Is Nonfiction Literature? Exploring the Intersection of Fact and Art
Sunday October 13, 2024 2:30pm - 3:30pm PDT
San Francisco Public Library Saroyan Gallery
Although memoir and narrative nonfiction continue to thrive as genres, the writers of such works tend to be seen as something other than artists—reporters, survivors, historians, and social thinkers, yes, but not artists. Can works driven by facts aspire to true artistry, or does the burden of representing reality inherently place it in a different category? Together, writers Tom Barbash, Lindsey Crittenden, Glen David Gold, and Rachel Howard, along with moderator Jason Roberts, explore these worthwhile questions. FREE, $10-15 suggested donation
Moderators
avatar for Jason Roberts

Jason Roberts

Jason Roberts is a writer of fiction and nonfiction. His newest book, Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life, came out in April. His previous book, A Sense of the World, was a national bestseller and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. A... Read More →
Authors and Participants
avatar for Tom Barbash

Tom Barbash

Tom Barbash is the author of four books as well as reviews, essays, and articles for publications such as Men’s Journal, ESPN The Magazine, McSweeney’s, Tin House, the Believer, Narrative Magazine, ZYZZYVA, and The New York Times. His non-Fiction book, On Top of the World, was... Read More →
avatar for Lindsey Crittenden

Lindsey Crittenden

Lindsey Crittenden is the author of The View From Below: Stories and The Water Will Hold You, a memoir ("exquisitely written," Publishers Weekly starred review). Her personal essays have appeared in Cimarron Review, the Washington Post, the New York Times, Best American Spiritual... Read More →
avatar for Glen David Gold

Glen David Gold

Glen David Gold is the author of the international best-selling novels Carter Beats the Devil and Sunnyside, and the memoir I Will Be Complete. He's written comic books for Marvel, DC and Dark Horse, and composed essays and short stories for Playboy, McSweeney's, Wired, Zyzzyva, and... Read More →
avatar for Rachel Howard

Rachel Howard

Rachel Howard is the author of The Risk of Us, a novel, and The Lost Night, a memoir about her father's unsolved murder. A 2024 National Endowment for the Arts literature fellow, she has published fiction and nonfiction in ZYZZYVA, StoryQuarterly, the Los Angeles Review of Books... Read More →
Sunday October 13, 2024 2:30pm - 3:30pm PDT
San Francisco Public Library Saroyan Gallery
  Writers Weekend

4:00pm PDT

Subterfuge and Secrets: Memoirists Who Go Undercover to Learn the Truth
Sunday October 13, 2024 4:00pm - 5:00pm PDT
San Francisco Public Library Saroyan Gallery
How do memoirists fill in the gaps when there are missing pieces in their research—for example, when the person with needed information died long ago or when gender, culture, language, or other barriers thwart the process? These obstacles require memoirists to get crafty. This might mean using creative nonfiction to write imagined scenes or even require lying, eavesdropping, and/or employing subterfuge to gain access to something off-limits. Susan Kiyo Ito, Margaret Juhae Lee, Grace Loh Prasad, and Leslie Absher will present how they used “unofficial” means to get at the truth, and, in essence, became spies in their own stories. FREE
Authors and Participants
avatar for Susan Ito

Susan Ito

Susan Ito is the author of the memoir, I Would Meet You Anywhere, published by the Ohio State University Press, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She co-edited the literary anthology A Ghost At Heart’s Edge: Stories & Poems of Adoption. Her work has appeared... Read More →
avatar for Grace Loh Prasad

Grace Loh Prasad

Grace Loh Prasad is the author of The Translator’s Daughter, a debut memoir about living between languages, navigating loss, and the search for belonging. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Literary Hub, Longreads, Guernica, Brevity, The Offing, Oldster Magazine, KHÔRA... Read More →
avatar for Margaret Juhae Lee

Margaret Juhae Lee

Margaret Juhae Lee is the author of Starry Field: A Memoir of Lost History. A former editor at The Nation magazine, she received a Bunting Fellowship from Harvard University and a Korean Studies Fellowship from the Korea Foundation. She attended the Tin House and Writer’s Hotel... Read More →
avatar for Leslie Absher

Leslie Absher

Leslie Absher is a journalist and essayist. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Salon, Ms., and other periodicals. She is the author of Spy Daughter, Queer Girl: In Search of Truth and Acceptance in a Family of Secrets. Her father joined the CIA before... Read More →
Sunday October 13, 2024 4:00pm - 5:00pm PDT
San Francisco Public Library Saroyan Gallery
  Writers Weekend

7:00pm PDT

Celebrating Defiance, Resisting Silence
Sunday October 13, 2024 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
SAGRADA
Co-presented with 48 Hills

This dynamic event showcases writers driven by urgency, addressing pressing issues with narratives that explore the ignored, overlooked, and under-represented. Eirinie Carson, Christopher D. Cook, Sabina Khan-Ibarra, Jesus Francisco Sierra, and Rowena Leong Singerwill share stories of resilience and resistance and delve deep into identity, activism, and the pursuit of justice, offering powerful insights into how American culture and politics impact their daily lives as members of under-represented communities. Celebrating Defiance promises an afternoon of powerful storytelling, inclusivity, and the amplification of voices that challenge the status quo. FREE, $10–15 suggested donation

Book sales for this event coordinated by Sagrada.
Authors and Participants
avatar for Eirinie Carson

Eirinie Carson

Eirinie Carson is a Black British writer living in California. She is a mother of two children, Luka and Selah. A member of the Writers Grotto in San Francisco, Carson is a frequent contributor to Mother magazine, and her work has also appeared in LitHub, Mortal Mag, Electric Literature... Read More →
avatar for Sabina Khan-Ibarra

Sabina Khan-Ibarra

Sabina Khan-Ibarra is a writer, poet, and teacher currently focused on completing her chapbook, New Vocabulary, and her novel, The Poppy Flower. Her work has been featured in various journals and anthologies, including Non-White and Women, Taboos and Transgressions. She is a member... Read More →
avatar for Christopher Cook

Christopher Cook

Christopher D. Cook is an author and award-winning journalist based in San Francisco. He has reported and written on social and economic justice issues for many national publications, including Harper's, the Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, The Economist, The Guardian, Mother Jones... Read More →
avatar for Rowena Leong Singer

Rowena Leong Singer

Rowena Leong Singer is a Chinese-Filipino writer who is published in The New York Times, Black Warrior Review, Narrative Magazine, and KQED’s Perspectives. She is the grand prize winner in literary fiction for the Book Pipeline Unpublished Contest, a semifinalist for the James Jones... Read More →
avatar for Jesus Francisco Sierra

Jesus Francisco Sierra

Jesus Francisco Sierra is a Cuban writer who settled in San Francisco and grew up in the Mission District. His work has appeared in Zyzzyva, Los Angeles Review of Books, Gulf Stream Literary Journal, The Bare Life Review, Solstice Literary Magazine, The Caribbean Writer, The Acentos... Read More →
Sunday October 13, 2024 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
SAGRADA
  Storytelling
 
Tuesday, October 15
 

7:00pm PDT

New Encounters of the Weird Kind: Fresh Voices in Sci-Fi and Fantasy
Tuesday October 15, 2024 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
Telegraph Hill Books
Join moderator and author of Dead Collections Isaac Fellman in conversation with science fiction and fantasy writers who have created worlds featuring ancient family magic, a dystopian San Francisco, and the far reaches of imagined universes. Kemi Ashing-Giwa’s This World is Not Yours, Evette Davis’s The Others, Hana Lee’s Road to Ruin, and Julia Vee’s Blood Jade are prime examples of contemporary science fiction and fantasy writing. This is an exciting opportunity to hear from several new voices in the world of genre fiction. FREE, $10-15 suggested donation
Book sales for this event coordinated by Telegraph Hill Books.
Moderators
avatar for Isaac Fellman

Isaac Fellman

Isaac Fellman is a writer and archivist from San Francisco. He is the Lambda Literary Award-winning author of Notes from a Regicide, forthcoming in 2025, as well as Dead Collections, The Two Doctors Górski, and The Breath of the Sun. 
Authors and Participants
avatar for Julia Vee

Julia Vee

Julia Vee is the author of the Seattle Slayers series and the Phoenix Hoard series. Julia attended U.C Berkeley and majored in Asian Studies. She is a graduate of Viable Paradise. She often writes with co-author Ken Bebelle. Their debut novel Ebony Gate, an Asian-inspired urban fantasy... Read More →
avatar for Evette Davis

Evette Davis

Evette Davis is a science-fiction and fantasy writer. Davis is the author of The Others, the first installment of The Council Trilogy, which was released in September. She is also the author of 48 States, which was named by Kirkus as one of the Best Indie Books of 2022, was a quarter-finalist... Read More →
avatar for Kemi Ashing-Giwa

Kemi Ashing-Giwa

Kemi Ashing-Giwa is the USA Today–bestselling, Compton Crook Award–winning author of the novel The Splinter in the Sky and the novel The King Must Die. Her newest book, the novella This World Is Not Yours, came out this year. She studied organismic and evolutionary biology and... Read More →
avatar for Hana Lee

Hana Lee

Hana Lee is a biracial Korean-American writer who also builds software for a living. She has an undying love for fantastical stories in all their forms, especially video games, and a habit of writing to moody indie rock playlists. Her short writing has appeared in Fantasy Magazine... Read More →
Tuesday October 15, 2024 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
Telegraph Hill Books
  Fiction

7:30pm PDT

Queering Myths: Caro De Robertis and Navid Sinaki
Tuesday October 15, 2024 7:30pm - 9:00pm PDT
City Lights Booksellers & Publishers
Acclaimed video artist Navid Sinaki’s debut novel, Medusa of the Roses, is a queer love story set amid the repressive policies of modern-day Iran. Informed by Hollywood noir, Persian folktales, and Greek myth, it’s been called “stunning” by Publishers Weekly. Caro De Robertis’s latest novel, The Palace of Eros, is about another pair of lovers, under threat not from the government but from the gods. Join these two accomplished novelists for a conversation about myth-inflected fiction, the queer love story as a vehicle for interrogating society, the intersections of desire and freedom, and much more. Moderated by novelist Jasmin Darznik. FREE, $10-15 suggested donation
Book sales for this event coordinated by City Lights.
Moderators
avatar for Jasmin Darznik

Jasmin Darznik

Jasmin Darznik is the New York Times bestselling author of three books, most recently The Bohemians. She is a professor and chair of the MFA program in creative writing at California College of the Arts in San Francisco.
Authors and Participants
avatar for Caro De Robertis

Caro De Robertis

Caro De Robertis is the award-winning and bestselling author of several books, including The Palace of Eros, The President and the Frog, Cantoras, and more. Their work has been translated into eighteen languages and has garnered numerous honors including a fellowship from the National... Read More →
avatar for Navid Sinaki

Navid Sinaki

Navid Sinaki is an artist and writer from Tehran who currently lives in Los Angeles. His works have been exhibited at museums and art houses around the world, including the Lincoln Center, British Film Institute, Cineteca Nacional in Mexico, and the Modern Museum in Stockholm. His... Read More →
Tuesday October 15, 2024 7:30pm - 9:00pm PDT
City Lights Booksellers & Publishers
  Fiction
 
Wednesday, October 16
 

7:00pm PDT

Are Writers of Color Allowed to Not Write about Race?
Wednesday October 16, 2024 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
Clio's
In Percival Everett’s novel Erasure and its film adaptation American Fiction, the character Monk hopes to write novels that represent the human experience, but he is advised by his publisher to “write something ‘Blacker.’” For Monk, the push and pull of artist and audience results in a rueful depiction of familial and professional lives, but at its heart, his story asks the question: what is a writer of color permitted to write about? In this panel, Pia Chatterjee, Vanessa Hua, Dominic Lim, and Yalitza Ferreras explore the question of writing beyond race in traditional publishing. FREE, $10–15 suggested donation
Book sales for this event coordinated by Clio's.
Authors and Participants
avatar for Pia Chatterjee

Pia Chatterjee

Pia Chatterjee is a writer, essayist, and a member of the SF Writers Grotto. Pia's novel in progress, ALL THE HAPPY FAMILIES was a finalist for Tin House's 2023 submissions for debut novels. Pia has won the Ledge Prize for fiction, was named the Emerging Fellow at San Francisco Writers... Read More →
avatar for Yalitza Ferreras

Yalitza Ferreras

Yalitza Ferreras is a recent Fiction Fellow at the University of Wisconsin’s Institute for Creative Writing. She has received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award and a Steinbeck Fellowship at San Jose State University. Her stories have appeared in Best American Short Stories... Read More →
avatar for Vanessa Hua

Vanessa Hua

Vanessa Hua is the author of the national bestsellers A River of Stars and Forbidden City, as well as Deceit and Other Possibilities, a New York Times Editors Pick. A National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow, she has also received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award... Read More →
avatar for Dominic Lim

Dominic Lim

Dominic Lim’s debut novel, All the Right Notes, has been named a 2023 best book by over 20 publications, including USA Today, Library Journal, Goodreads, and Entertainment Weekly, who called it “a swoony, joyful rom-com to take readers into a love story worthy of a Broadway stage... Read More →
Wednesday October 16, 2024 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
Clio's
  Discussion

7:00pm PDT

California's Fiercely Independent Literary Culture
Wednesday October 16, 2024 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
City Lights Booksellers & Publishers
Co-presented with City Lights Booksellers & Publishers and 48 Hills

Home to the Beats, the modern environmental movement, the Hollywood dream machine, and a population of immense cultural diversity, California has—unsurprisingly—given rise to a literary culture defined by a distinctive Left Coast sensibility. This rich writerly ferment is sustained by an array of fiercely independent literary organizations devoted to the flourishing ecosystem of ideas and art. In this panel, leading voices from the Golden State's literary landscape—Heyday publisher Steve Wasserman, City Lights chief buyer Paul Yamazaki, Alta Journal’s digital editor Beth Spotswood, and Litquake co-founder Jack Boulware—explore and celebrate the cultural work that booksellers, publishers, literary journals, book clubs, and festivals do in service of California's community of readers, writers, and thinkers. Nastia Voynovskaya of KQED will lead the conversation. FREE, $10-15 suggested donation

Book sales for this event coordinated by City Lights Bookstore.
Moderators
avatar for Nastia Voynovskaya

Nastia Voynovskaya

Nastia Voynovskaya is a Russian-born journalist raised in the Bay Area and Tampa, Florida. She's the associate editor at KQED Arts & Culture. She's the recipient of the 2018 Society of Professional Journalists-Northern California award for arts & culture reporting. In 2021, a retrospective... Read More →
Authors and Participants
avatar for Paul Yamazaki

Paul Yamazaki

Paul Yamazaki has been a bookseller at City Lights Booksellers & Publishers since 1970. He has been the principal buyer at City Lights Booksellers for more than 50 years. Yamazaki has served on the board of directors of several literary and community arts organizations, among them... Read More →
avatar for Steve Wasserman

Steve Wasserman

Steve Wasserman has been Publisher of Heyday since 2016 and is a former editorial director of Times Books/Random House; a past publisher and editorial director of Hill & Wang at Farrar, Straus & Giroux; and editor at large at Yale University Press. He is also a former editor of the... Read More →
avatar for Jack Boulware

Jack Boulware

Jack Boulware was a co-founder and executive director of San Francisco's Litquake literary festival. He runs the newsletter "What Jack Boulware Fails to Realize." Boulware works on book projects, contributes freelance articles, and performs readings. He lives in West Marin.
avatar for Beth Spotswood

Beth Spotswood

Beth Spotswood is Alta's founding digital editor. In addition to her work for Alta, Beth has contributed to 7x7 Magazine, San Francisco Magazine, Discovery Channel, KGO Radio, SFist, and the San Francisco Chronicle, where she penned a weekly column in the Thursday edition of the newspaper... Read More →
Wednesday October 16, 2024 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
City Lights Booksellers & Publishers
  Discussion

7:00pm PDT

Fall of the Florios: Stefania Auci with Sara Marinelli
Wednesday October 16, 2024 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
Telegraph Hill Books
Part of Litquake’s Words Around the World
Sponsored by the Italian Cultural Institute of San Francisco and Center for the Art of Translation/Two Lines Press

Join Stefania Auci and Sara Marinelli as they discuss Stefania’s latest book, Fall of the Florios, the magnificent conclusion of the bestselling Florios trilogy—an international sensation based on a real-life family, published in 40 countries and adapted into the TV series Lions of Sicily for Disney+ and Hulu. In Fall of the Florios, Auci chronicles the decline of Italy’s most powerful and notorious family against the ever-shifting social landscape of 1890s-1930s Sicily. For more than 60 years, the Florios have reigned supreme, establishing the city of Palermo as a European beacon of commerce, and making Sicily one of Italy’s most powerful regions. But now fate has taken a turn. Join the author in bilingual conversation with USF writing professor Sara Marinelli! FREE, $10-15 suggested donation
Book sales for this event coordinated by Telegraph Hill Books. 
Moderators
avatar for Sara Marinelli

Sara Marinelli

Sara Marinelli is a San Francisco based writer who grew up in Naples, Italy. She is a 2024-2025 Brown Handler Fellow at the San Francisco Public Library and a Teaching Artist at the San Francisco Opera. Her writing in English is published in New American Writing, Blue Mesa Review, and... Read More →
Authors and Participants
avatar for Stefania Auci

Stefania Auci

Stefania Auci, a Trapani-born, Palermo-adopted teacher, is author of The Florios of Sicily, a literary sensation that went on to sell over 1,500,000 copies in Italy alone before being published in over 40 countries and forming the basis of The Lions of Sicily, a successful series... Read More →
Wednesday October 16, 2024 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
Telegraph Hill Books
  Words Around the World
 
Thursday, October 17
 

6:30pm PDT

Left Margin Lit(quake)
Thursday October 17, 2024 6:30pm - 8:00pm PDT
Left Margin LIT
Co-presented with Left Margin LIT

Left Margin LIT is a creative writing workspace offering classes, camaraderie, and mentorship to East Bay writers of all backgrounds and experience levels. They see storytelling and poetry as vital elements of a healthy city: enriching dialogue, building community, and supporting a culture of creativity. They also have some of the best writing instructors in the biz, three of whom have new books that we’ll celebrate at this event: poet Brynn Saito’s Under A Future Sky, novelist Tomas Moniz’s All Friends Are Necessary, and poet Maw Shein Win’s Percussing the Thinking Jar. Doors at 6:00PM. FREE, $10-15 suggested donation
Book sales for this event coordinated by Pegasus Books.
Authors and Participants
avatar for Maw Shein Win

Maw Shein Win

Maw Shein Win's most recent poetry collection is Percussing the Thinking Jar. Her prior collection, Storage Unit for the Spirit House, was nominated for the Northern California Book Award in Poetry, longlisted for the PEN America Open Book Award, and shortlisted for CALIBA's Golden... Read More →
avatar for Brynn Saito

Brynn Saito

Brynn Saito is the author of three collections of poetry and two chapbooks. She is the recipient of the Benjamin Saltman Award and was a finalist for the Northern California Book Award, the Milt Kessler Poetry Book Award, and the Paterson Poetry Prize. Saito’s writing has appeared... Read More →
avatar for Tomas Moniz

Tomas Moniz

Tomas Moniz is a Latinx writer living in East Oakland, CA. His debut novel, Big Familia, was a finalist for the 2020 PEN/Hemingway and the LAMBDA. His new novel, All Friends Are Necessary, was published June 2024. He teaches at Berkeley City College and the Antioch MFA program.
Thursday October 17, 2024 6:30pm - 8:00pm PDT
Left Margin LIT
  Discussion

7:00pm PDT

Bone-Chilling Nordic Noir: An Interview with Thomas Enger
Thursday October 17, 2024 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
Telegraph Hill Books
Part of Litquake's Words Around the World
Sponsored by NORLA, Norway House, and Center for the Art of Translation/Two Lines Press

Internationally bestselling crime-writing duo Thomas Enger and Jørn Lier Horst have been called “two of the most distinguished writers of Nordic Noir” (Financial Times). Stigma, their fourth collaboration, finds deeply scarred homicide detective Alexander Blix and his collaborator, journalist Emma Ramm, trying to catch an escaped German prisoner—while Blix himself is behind bars. Whether you’re new to Enger’s work or you’re already a fan of the series critics have called “an international sensation” (Vogue), you’ll want to catch this thrilling conversation with Enger and Randal Brandt, curator of the California Detective Fiction Collection at UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library. FREE, $10-15 suggested donation
Book sales for this event coordinated by Telegraph Hill Books.
Moderators
avatar for Randal Brandt

Randal Brandt

Randal S. Brandt is a librarian at the University of California, Berkeley, where he catalogs rare books and is the curator of the Bancroft Library’s California Detective Fiction Collection. His book, The Tule Marsh Murder, will be released this coming September.
Authors and Participants
avatar for Thomas Enger

Thomas Enger

Born in 1973, he lives in Oslo, divorced. He has two kids (ages 18 and 23). He has degrees in sports, history, and journalism. He worked as a journalist for about 10 years before making his debut as an author in 2010. Since then he's written 16 novels, published in well over 30 countries... Read More →
Thursday October 17, 2024 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
Telegraph Hill Books
  Words Around the World
 
Friday, October 18
 

6:00pm PDT

The Literature of War and Peace: A Symposium, Part Two
Friday October 18, 2024 6:00pm - 8:00pm PDT
Feldman's Books
Co-presented with Feldman's Books

Join renowned writers and scholars including Polina Barskova, Ulia Gosart, Patrick Hunt, Jessica Semaan, and Tobias Wolff in a panel discussion, readings, and Socratic dialogue on the complex topic of war and peace. Featuring musical guests Effie Zilch and others performing original songs and classic 1960s anti-war music. Feldman's is proud to partner with local schools in creating 1,000 paper cranes to send to Hiroshima and Nagasaki as an international gesture of peace. In honor of this partnership, attendees of this event will be sent home with one paper crane as a token of remembrance. FREE, $20 suggested donation
Book sales for this event coordinated by Feldman's Books.
Authors and Participants
avatar for Polina Barskova

Polina Barskova

Polina Barskova is a scholar and a poet, author of thirteen collections of poems and three books of prose in Russian. Her collection of creative nonfiction, Living Pictures, received the Andrey Bely Prize in 2015 and which has been translated into German and English. She edited the... Read More →
avatar for Ulia Gosart

Ulia Gosart

Ulia Gosart (Popova) is a scholar, writer and human rights activist. She grew up in Ukraine, and studies in Kiev University of Culture and Arts, Ukraine; her PhD is from UCLA. She teaches at the School of Information at San Jose State University. Since the start of the full-scale... Read More →
avatar for Patrick Hunt

Patrick Hunt

Patrick Hunt is an award-winning archaeologist, explorer, author, and National Geographic grantee. He earned his Ph.D. in Archaeology from the Institute of Archaeology, University College London (University of London), and has taught at Stanford University for over thirty years. Hunt... Read More →
avatar for Jess Semaan

Jess Semaan

Jess Semaan is a queer Lebanese poet, psychotherapist, group facilitator and speaker. She researches, writes and speaks on subjects of healing from complex trauma, immigration, war and belonging. Her first poetry book Child of the Moon sold over 15,000 copies. Her second book Your... Read More →
avatar for Tobias Wolff

Tobias Wolff

Tobias Wolff’s books include the memoirs This Boy’s Life and In Pharaoh’s Army: Memories of the Lost War; the short novel The Barracks Thief; the novel Old School, and four collections of short stories. He has also edited several anthologies, among them Best American Short Stories... Read More →
Friday October 18, 2024 6:00pm - 8:00pm PDT
Feldman's Books
  Discussion

7:30pm PDT

The Ache for Ancestral Healing: The Roadmap Back
Friday October 18, 2024 7:30pm - 9:00pm PDT
SAGRADA
Co-presented with 48 Hills

To thrive in the present we must connect to the past, but when that past is fragmented by colonization, oppression, and the pressure to assimilate, how can we tap into the wisdom of the generations that came before us? What did our elders know that we are struggling to rediscover? Using traditions that range from curanderismo to community outreach, Sandhya Rani Jha, Alie Jones, Shanthi Sekaran, and Atava Garcia Swiecicki discuss the path before us and the answers within us. Moderated by SFSU professor of journalism Venise Wagner. This event opens and closes with a healing meditation offered by Sagrada Arts proprietor Rebecca Sanders. $25

Book sales for this event coordinated by Sagrada.
Moderators
avatar for Venise Wagner

Venise Wagner

Venise Wagner has been a professor of journalism at San Francisco State University since 2001. Before her appointment, she worked 12 years as a journalist for a variety of California daily newspapers covering border issues, religion and ethics, education, and the Bay Area’s Black... Read More →
Authors and Participants
avatar for Sandhya Jha

Sandhya Jha

Founder and former director of the Oakland Peace Center, Sandhya Jha (they/them) is a twenty-year resident of Oakland and a decades-long community organizer and activist currently working on a PhD in Philadelphia. Inspired by what they learned about the sustaining power of ancestors... Read More →
avatar for Alie Jones

Alie Jones

Alie Jones is a self-care advocate, writer, artist, and Creole mermaid. She believes that the best writing spaces are generative and embodied. Jones is deeply inspired by scholars like bell hooks, Ntozake Shange, June Jordan, and Gloria Anzaldúa. As an educator, she explores the... Read More →
avatar for Rebecca Sanders

Rebecca Sanders

Rebecca Sanders has been a practicing witch and intuitive healer for over twenty years. She has been a lifelong student of ceremonial and angel magic. Classically trained as a vocalist at The Colburn School, Rebecca loves using sound as a healing modality to transform the energetic... Read More →
avatar for Shanthi Sekaran

Shanthi Sekaran

Shanthi Sekaran is a novelist and television writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Salon. Her novel Lucky Boy was named an Indie Next Great Read, an Amazon Editor's Pick and a Best Book of 2017 by NPR, Barnes & Noble, Library Journal... Read More →
avatar for Atava Garcia Swiecicki

Atava Garcia Swiecicki

Atava Garcia Swiecicki is dedicated to remembering the healing traditions of her ancestors and supporting others to reconnect with their own ancestral medicine. She loves helping people build relationships with plants, whom she considers some of our greatest teachers and healers... Read More →
Friday October 18, 2024 7:30pm - 9:00pm PDT
SAGRADA
  Discussion
 
Saturday, October 19
 

11:00am PDT

Out Loud: West Coast Prophecies & War Cries
Saturday October 19, 2024 11:00am - 12:15pm PDT
Yerba Buena Gardens
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
Authors and Participants
avatar for Lourdes Figueroa

Lourdes Figueroa

Lourdes Figueroa is a queer Chicanx oral poet and an award winning poetry filmmaker whose work is a dialogue of her lived experience when her family worked in el azadón—tilling of the soil under the blistering sun. She is the author of the chapbooks yolotl, Ruidos=Learn Speak, and... Read More →
avatar for Mimi Tempestt

Mimi Tempestt

Mimi Tempestt (she/they) is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, and daughter of California. She has a MA in Literature from Mills College, and is currently a doctoral candidate in the Creative/Critical PhD in Literature at UC Santa Cruz. Her first book, the monumental misrememberings... Read More →
avatar for Tori Gesualdo

Tori Gesualdo

Tori Gesualdo is a graduate of Emerson College with a BFA in Writing, Literature and Publishing, and an intern at the Los Angeles Review of Books.
avatar for soledad con carne

soledad con carne

soledad con carne is a casually queer, intergalactic Oakland/Ohlone-based chicanx punk poet, working/poor multiple high school drop-out, analog zinester, co-host of the City Lights First Fridays series, poet laureate of the San Fernando Valley, and blatant smoker sharing-trauma-with-their-mother... Read More →
Saturday October 19, 2024 11:00am - 12:15pm PDT
Yerba Buena Gardens
  Litquake Out Loud

11:00am PDT

Litquake's Small Press Book Fair
Saturday October 19, 2024 11:00am - 4:00pm PDT
Yerba Buena Gardens
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
Saturday October 19, 2024 11:00am - 4:00pm PDT
Yerba Buena Gardens
  Litquake Out Loud

12:45pm PDT

Out Loud: When The Smoke Comes: The Ballot Won’t Save Us
Saturday October 19, 2024 12:45pm - 2:00pm PDT
Yerba Buena Gardens
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
Authors and Participants
avatar for Hernan Ramos

Hernan Ramos

Hernan De La Cruz Ramos (they/them) is a 29 year old emo boi from the unceded Munsee-Lenape lands, currently residing on the unceded Ohlone-Chochenyo lands (Northern New Jersey and Oakland, CA, respectively). They are a writer and educator with an MFA in Poetry from University of... Read More →
avatar for María Esquinca

María Esquinca

María Esquinca is a poet and journalist. A fronteriza, she was born in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico and grew up in El Paso, Texas. She’s currently a producer for The Bay podcast, a production of KQED. Prior to that, she was New York Women’s Foundation IGNITE Fellow with... Read More →
avatar for Darius Simpson

Darius Simpson

Darius Simpson is a New Afrikan writer, educator, performer, and skilled living room dancer from Akron, Ohio. Much like the means of production, he believes poetry must be used for the positive social, political, and economic development of the majority of society. He aims to inspire... Read More →
avatar for Meilani Clay

Meilani Clay

Meilani Clay is a writer, mama, and educator from Oakland, CA. Her work has appeared in Nomadic Press’s Patrice Lumumba: An Anthology of Writers on Black Liberation, and online literary journal The Ana. Her debut poetry collection, and the creek don’t rise, was the winner of the... Read More →
Saturday October 19, 2024 12:45pm - 2:00pm PDT
Yerba Buena Gardens
  Litquake Out Loud

2:30pm PDT

Out Loud: Escape
Saturday October 19, 2024 2:30pm - 3:45pm PDT
Yerba Buena Gardens
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
Authors and Participants
avatar for RAWdance

RAWdance

Now in its 20th year, RAWdance is an award-winning contemporary dance company known for transforming theaters and public spaces through a mix of performance, curation, collaboration, and film. The company’s charged and nuanced works have been presented by the Joyce Theater, Jacob’s... Read More →
Saturday October 19, 2024 2:30pm - 3:45pm PDT
Yerba Buena Gardens
  Litquake Out Loud

4:00pm PDT

The Rise of the Book Ban & the Freedom to Read
Saturday October 19, 2024 4:00pm - 4:45pm PDT
KQED
RSVP/Buy Tickets
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.
Moderators
avatar for Brian Watt

Brian Watt

Brian Watt is KQED's morning radio news anchor. He joined the KQED News team in April of 2016. Prior to that, he worked as a Reporter for KPCC in Los Angeles and a producer at Marketplace. During eight years at KPCC, Brian covered business and economics, and his work won several awards... Read More →
Authors and Participants
avatar for Maggie Tokuda-Hall

Maggie Tokuda-Hall

Maggie Tokuda-Hall has an MFA in creative writing from USF. She is the author of the 2017 Parent's Choice Gold Medal winning picture book, Also an Octopus, illustrated by Benji Davies. The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea is her debut young adult novel, which was an NPR, Kirkus, School... Read More →
avatar for Maia Kobabe

Maia Kobabe

Maia Kobabe is a nonbinary queer cartoonist, a kpop fan, a voracious reader, and a daydreamer. You can learn an astonishing number of intimate details about em in Gender Queer: A Memoir and in eir short comics and writing published in The Nib, The New Yorker, The Washington Post... Read More →
avatar for Michael Lambert

Michael Lambert

Michael Lambert is the City Librarian for the City and County of San Francisco. He was appointed in March 2019 by Mayor London Breed. He is the first Asian American to lead the San Francisco Public Library. During his tenure, he has championed increased and equitable access to libraries... Read More →
avatar for Becka Robbins

Becka Robbins

Becka Robbins is the founder and director of Books Not Bans, and events manager at Fabulosa Books, San Francisco’s queerest bookstore. A voracious reader, she’s also a former learning specialist and taught dyslexic middle school students for over a decade. She’s also a musician... Read More →
Saturday October 19, 2024 4:00pm - 4:45pm PDT
KQED
  Discussion
 
Sunday, October 20
 

12:00pm PDT

Out Loud: A Celebration of Queer Poetics
Sunday October 20, 2024 12:00pm - 1:15pm PDT
Yerba Buena Gardens
Sponsored by Yerba Buena Gardens Festival
Co-presented with 48 Hills

A space in motion that embraces love and tenderness to celebrate queer poetics and recognizes the miraculousness of the queer BIPOCX tongue. From the margins of hxstory, we have continuously broken open lung, redefining the poem and her purpose over and over again, making your larynx in our image. We are thousands upon thousands years old. We are the queer at the tip of your tongue, sculpting the language of each other's bodies. This year, the Pocho Chicanx Poetxs Lourdes Figueroa and Baruch Porras Hernandez team up to bring you a kaleidoscope of voices—MK Chavez, Hilary Cruz Mejia, Jessica Ke'mani, Syd Staiti, Yeva Johnson, and Evelyn Donaji & Camellia Boutros—that have formed and continue to form the Bay Area literary landscape. We seek to tremble your vagus nerve. FREE, $10-15 suggested donation
Authors and Participants
avatar for MK Chavez

MK Chavez

MK Chavez is an art monster, siguanaba, writer, and educator. Chavez’s writing explores mixed-race identity, social justice, environmental resilience, horror cinema, magic, ritual, and the creative process. Chavez’s work has been recognized with the Pen Josephine Miles Award... Read More →
avatar for Jessica Ke’mani

Jessica Ke’mani

Jessica Ke’mani (pronounced Keh-Mani)  is a queer Oakland-born poet. Ke’mani self identifies as a reunified adoptee, meaning they are back in connection with their birth family. Ke’mani is the author of the new poetry chapbook, Power of Our Wombs, released by Nomadic Press... Read More →
avatar for Lourdes Figueroa

Lourdes Figueroa

Lourdes Figueroa is a queer Chicanx oral poet and an award winning poetry filmmaker whose work is a dialogue of her lived experience when her family worked in el azadón—tilling of the soil under the blistering sun. She is the author of the chapbooks yolotl, Ruidos=Learn Speak, and... Read More →
avatar for Hilary Cruz Mejía

Hilary Cruz Mejía

Hilary Cruz Mejía is a poeta and callejera scholar from the coastal waters of Guatemala. Her work is the lineage of her nightmares entangled in the landscapes of fear and resistance. You can find some of their work in the digital mundo as well as the wind mundo. Outside of writing... Read More →
avatar for Baruch Porras Hernandez

Baruch Porras Hernandez

Baruch Porras Hernandez has been called a Flan come to life, and is a writer-stand up comedian originally from Toluca, Mexico who came here to steal all your jobs and make out with all of the hot dads. He is the author of Lovers of the Deep Fried Circle, I Miss You Delicate, Sluts... Read More →
avatar for Syd Staiti

Syd Staiti

Syd Staiti is director of Small Press Traffic since 2019. Staiti's books include The Undying Present (Krupskaya, 2015) and Seldom Approaches (The Elephants, 2023). Staiti is a member of Light Field, a collective that presents an annual film festival of recent and historical moving... Read More →
avatar for Yeva Johnson

Yeva Johnson

Yeva Johnson is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet, writer, and musician whose work appears or is forthcoming in Bellingham Review, Obsidian, sin cesar, Sinister Wisdom, Yemassee, and elsewhere.  Johnson explores interlocking caste systems and possibilities for human co-existence... Read More →
avatar for Evelyn Donají & Camellia Boutros

Evelyn Donají & Camellia Boutros

Evelyn Donají and Camellia Boutros, folk musicians in the diasporic musical traditions of Veracruz and Palestine respectively, come together to offer a modern and Mission-based interpretation of Son Jarocho. In performing with the Arabic oud and the jarana Jarocha, the duo highlight... Read More →
Sunday October 20, 2024 12:00pm - 1:15pm PDT
Yerba Buena Gardens
  Litquake Out Loud

1:00pm PDT

Teenquake Write-In
Sunday October 20, 2024 1:00pm - 2:30pm PDT
Black Bird Bookstore and Café
Every writer starts somewhere—and we’re giving young writers ages 12–18 a space and tools to get started. Spend an afternoon writing together in community at the beautiful, cozy Black Bird Bookstore! Anna Gabrielle Casalme of Novelly, a platform that publishes diverse literature by young people, will facilitate writing prompts and offer advice on what it takes to grow as a writer and maybe even get your work published someday! There’ll be time for sharing work, asking questions, getting to know other young writers, and drinking hot chocolate—your first mug’s on us! FREE
Authors and Participants
avatar for Anna Gabriella Casalme

Anna Gabriella Casalme

Anna Gabriella Casalme is the proud daughter of Filipino immigrants and a kid-lit writer based in San Francisco. She is the founder and Managing Director of Novelly, which is on a mission to publish and celebrate literature by diverse youth authors. Anna received her MSc in Childhood... Read More →
Sunday October 20, 2024 1:00pm - 2:30pm PDT
Black Bird Bookstore and Café
  Teenquake

1:45pm PDT

Out Loud: Finding Home
Sunday October 20, 2024 1:45pm - 3:00pm PDT
Yerba Buena Gardens
Sponsored by Yerba Buena Gardens Festival
Co-presented with 48 Hills

Finding Home follows the journeys of authors who have fought for their sense of belonging, safety, and nourishment by overcoming adversity, reframing their identity, and building community. These poets will be sharing pieces that celebrate the full breadth of the human experience and what "home" means to them. Rhea Joseph presents Lorrie Chang, Papi Grande, Serena Chan, and Denise Masiel. FREE, $10-15 suggested donation
Authors and Participants
avatar for Serena Chan

Serena Chan

A facilitator and experience designer by day, Serena channels her cancer moon for her big feels and poetry. You can often find her daydreaming in a cafe, playing in the ocean, or trail running with her pup.
avatar for Denise Masiel

Denise Masiel

Denise Masiel is a Caribbean-American essayist and poet from Texas. She is a storyteller dedicated to the art of capturing feelings of warmth, passion, and visceral emotions in her work. Her poetry has been published in The Ana and Mujer Manifesto, and she is an active spoken word... Read More →
avatar for Papi Grande

Papi Grande

Pap1Grand3 is a multidisciplinary performance artist from Oakland California. He is known for his spectacular stage presence as well as exploring themes of evolution, love and dedication. Grande has been striding across the community, many stages, more than a few faces. His motto... Read More →
avatar for Lorrie Chang

Lorrie Chang

Lorrie Chang is a truth seeker/speller, spoken word poet, urban planner, professional curiosity pimp (researcher), untamed dancer, and spiritual wanderer. She worked nationally to grow communities with social and cultural fabric as the foundation (“Creative Placeknowing/Placemaking... Read More →
avatar for Rhea Joseph

Rhea Joseph

Rhea Joseph is a poet, curator, and event producer who comes from a family of artists and entrepreneurs. She lives in San Francisco, but writes from a global perspective, intertwining her experience of growing up in India and blooming in Boston. Joseph finds power through community... Read More →
Sunday October 20, 2024 1:45pm - 3:00pm PDT
Yerba Buena Gardens
  Litquake Out Loud

3:30pm PDT

Out Loud: Nor Do I Wish to Speak: A Storytelling and Poetry Picnic
Sunday October 20, 2024 3:30pm - 4:45pm PDT
Yerba Buena Gardens
Sponsored by Yerba Buena Gardens Festival
Co-presented with 48 Hills

Join a conversation among poets in the lineage of June Jordan's Poetry for the People who write and speak into liberation struggles from America to Palestine. Noor Brody presents Dina Omar, Tehmina Khan, and more. FREE, $10-15 suggested donation
Authors and Participants
avatar for Noor Khashe Brody

Noor Khashe Brody

Noor Khashe Brody has always lived in the California East Bay. They are a graduate of June Jordan’s Poetry for the People. Alongside two friends, they co-founded Tritone, a monthly reading series in Oakland.
avatar for Tehmina Khan

Tehmina Khan

Tehmina Khan is a daughter of Indian immigrant scientists who has spent her adult life writing, teaching, resisting, and mothering. She has taught science to preschoolers, citizenship to octogenarians, and poetry translation to elementary school students; she currently teaches College... Read More →
avatar for Dina Omar

Dina Omar

Dina Omar is a lecturer at UC Berkeley who teaches Palestinian poetry. She is a doctoral candidate at Yale University in Anthropology and Gender and Women’s studies. While studying for her Masters degree at Columbia University, Dina was part of the ad hoc organizing committee that... Read More →
Sunday October 20, 2024 3:30pm - 4:45pm PDT
Yerba Buena Gardens
  Litquake Out Loud
 
Monday, October 21
 

7:00pm PDT

Cellophane Bricks: Jonathan Lethem with Rita Bullwinkel
Monday October 21, 2024 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
City Lights Booksellers & Publishers
RSVP/Buy Tickets
Co-presented with City Lights Booksellers & Publishers

With his new book Cellophane Bricks: A Life in Visual Culture, Jonathan Lethem showcases his talents as one of modern literature’s most eclectic critical minds. This rapturous, ravenous celebration of visual art and storytelling gathers a lifetime of Lethem's art-writing, along with stunning, full-color images from the author's own collection and elsewhere. Here we tour Lethem's fictions in response to (and in exchange for) artworks by his friends; his meditations on comics and graffiti art; his collaborations with artists and interventions into visual culture, and his portrait of the museum that was and continues to be his home, untethered from geography. This new book also coincides with the anniversary re-release of Lethem’s award-winning detective novel Motherless Brooklyn. Join the author in conversation with Litquake veteran Rita Bullwinkel, author most recently of Booker Prize–longlisted Headshot! FREE, $10-15 suggested donation
Book sales for this event coordinated by City Lights Bookstore.
Authors and Participants
avatar for Jonathan Lethem

Jonathan Lethem

Jonathan Lethem is a novelist, short story writer, and essayist. His over twenty-five books have been translated into over thirty languages. He lives in Los Angeles and Maine. His most recent novel, Cellophane Bricks: A Life in Visual Culture was released earlier this year. 
avatar for Rita Bullwinkel

Rita Bullwinkel

RITA BULLWINKEL IS THE AUTHOR OF HEADSHOT AND BELLY UP, A STORY COLLECTION THAT WON THE BELIEVER BOOK AWARD. SHE IS A 2022 RECIPIENT OF A WHITING AWARD, THE EDITOR OF MCSWEENEY'S QUARTERLY, A CONTRIBUTING EDITOR AT NOON, THE CREATOR OF ORAL FLORIST, AND A PICADOR GUEST PROFESSOR OF... Read More →
Monday October 21, 2024 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
City Lights Booksellers & Publishers
  Memoir

7:00pm PDT

Page Street Presents Golden State: Stories about Life on the Left Coast
Monday October 21, 2024 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
Page Street
Co-presented with the writers of Page Street

Join Janis Cooke Newman and fifteen talented writers from the Page Street community as they read original under-three-minute pieces, written just for Litquake. In keeping with the evening’s California theme, Saintsbury Winery will be on hand pouring California wine, and Marin French will be serving up California cheese. Don't miss this one—you might even walk away with a hot-off-the press copy of California's own Alta Journal. Doors at 6:30PM. FREE, $10–15 suggested donation
Authors and Participants
avatar for Janis Cooke Newman

Janis Cooke Newman

Janis Cooke Newman is the author of the two novels and a memoir. She is also the founder of LitCamp and Page Street.
Monday October 21, 2024 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
Page Street
  Storytelling
 
Wednesday, October 23
 

7:00pm PDT

Tough Broads
Wednesday October 23, 2024 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
Clio's
What would you call Amy Appelhans Gubser, who, at age 55, became the first-ever person to swim from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Farallon Islands (that’s 29.6 miles) through shark-infested waters? We’d call her one tough broad. Author Caroline Paul would agree. In her new book Tough Broad: From Boogie Boarding to Wing Walking—How Outdoor Adventure Improves Our Lives as We Age, Paul combines vivid anecdotes with the latest science to relate how and why older women can and should lead healthier, more daring lives. Join these two adventurers for a lively conversation—prepare to be inspired! FREE, $10-15 suggested donation
Book sales for this event coordinated by Clio's.
Authors and Participants
avatar for Amy Appelhans Gubser

Amy Appelhans Gubser

Amy Applehans Gubser is a pediatric nurse, grandmother, and long-distance swimmer. In May 2024 she became the first person in history to complete a treacherous 29.7-mile solo swim through freezing, shark-infested waters without a wetsuit. Gubser completed the grueling feat of endurance... Read More →
avatar for Caroline Paul

Caroline Paul

Caroline Paul is the author of seven books, including the New York Times bestseller The Gutsy Girl and Lost Cat, A True Story of Love, Desperation and GPS Technology, which as been translated into 15 languages. Her latest book is Tough Broad, From Boogie Boarding to Wing Walking... Read More →
Wednesday October 23, 2024 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
Clio's
  Storytelling

7:00pm PDT

Love In All Its Forms: Hanne Ørstavik with Kristin Keane
Wednesday October 23, 2024 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
Telegraph Hill Books
Part of Litquake’s Words Around the WorldSponsored by NORLA Norwegian Literature Abroad and Center for the Art of Translation/Two Lines Press

A single mother forgets her son’s birthday. A theology student excavates the past. A woman reminisces on her marriage, as her cancer-stricken husband enters his final months of life. The work of National Book Award finalist and 2019 PEN Translation Prize winner Hanne Ørstavik explores an ever-evolving theme of complex love, and how it can be intertwined with insecurity, fear, and self-discovery. Ørstavik will revisit her English-translated books Ti Amo, The Pastor, and her literary breakthrough Love, plus a sneak peek of her latest novel—not yet published in the United States—Stay With Me. Join the author in conversation with Stanford doctoral fellow Kristin Keane about the recurrent exploration of love throughout Ørstavik’s 30-year literary career. FREE, $10-15 suggested donation
Book sales for this event coordinated by Telegraph Hill Books.
Authors and Participants
avatar for Kristin Keane

Kristin Keane

Kristin Keane writes about time, memory, and the nature of literacy. She is the author of An Encyclopedia of Bending Time and Luminaries, and her essays have, or will appear in, outlets such as The Believer, The Washington Post, Ploughshares, New England Review, Creative Nonfiction... Read More →
avatar for Hanne Ørstavik

Hanne Ørstavik

Hanne Ørstavik published the novel Cut in 1994 and embarked on a career that would make her one of the most remarkable and admired authors in Norwegian contemporary literature. Her literary breakthrough came three years later with the publication of Love (Kjærlighet), which in 2006... Read More →
Wednesday October 23, 2024 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
Telegraph Hill Books
  Words Around the World

7:30pm PDT

Grace Notes: Poets at Grace Cathediral
Wednesday October 23, 2024 7:30pm - 9:00pm PDT
Grace Cathedral
Take a midweek pause, find stillness, and bask in the words of four phenomenal poets, whose verses will soar to the vaulted ceiling in magnificent Grace Cathedral. A. Van Jordan (When I Waked, I Cried to Dream Again), Dorianne Laux (Life on Earth), Ruben Quesada (Brutal Companion), and Alice Templeton (The Infinite Field) will read work from their latest collections, in one of Litquake’s most beloved annual events, curated by D.A. Powell and Preeti Vangani. FREE, $10-15 suggested donation
Book sales for this event coordinated by Green Apple Books.
Moderators
avatar for D.A. Powell

D.A. Powell

D. A. Powell is the author of five collections, including Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry. His honors include the Kingsley Tufts Prize in Poetry, the Shelley Memorial Prize from the Poetry Society of America... Read More →
avatar for Preeti Vangani

Preeti Vangani

Preeti Vangani is a poet and writer from Mumbai, living in San Francisco. She is the author of the poetry book Mother Tongue Apologize, winner of the RL India Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in Poem-a-Day, Threepenny Review, Gulf Coast, Prairie Schooner, The Georgia Review among... Read More →
Authors and Participants
avatar for A. Van Jordan

A. Van Jordan

A. Van Jordan is the author of five collections of poetry: Rise, which won the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Award; M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A, which was listed as one the Best Books of 2005 by The London Times; Quantum Lyrics; and The Cineaste. Jordan has been awarded a Whiting Writers Award... Read More →
avatar for Dorianne Laux

Dorianne Laux

Dorianne Laux’s sixth collection, Only As the Day is Long: New and Selected Poems was named a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Her fifth collection, The Book of Men, was awarded The Paterson Prize. Her fourth book of poems, Facts About the Moon, won The Oregon Book... Read More →
avatar for Ruben Quesada

Ruben Quesada

Ruben Quesada’s latest poetry collection, Brutal Companion, winner of the Barrow Street Press Editors  Prize, was published in October 2024. He edited the anthology Latinx Poetics: Essays on the Art of Poetry, which won an Independent Publisher Book Award in 2023. Quesada’s work... Read More →
avatar for Alice Templeton

Alice Templeton

Alice Templeton’s poetry collection The Infinite Field was published in April 2024. Her chapbook Archaeology won the 2008 New Women’s Voices Prize in Poetry from Finishing Line Press, and her poems have appeared in Asheville Poetry Review, Bellingham Review, Calyx, Nimrod, Poetry... Read More →
Wednesday October 23, 2024 7:30pm - 9:00pm PDT
Grace Cathedral
  Poetry
 
Thursday, October 24
 

6:00pm PDT

The Forgetters: Greg Sarris and Leslie Carol Roberts
Thursday October 24, 2024 6:00pm - 7:00pm PDT
Book Club of California
RSVP/Buy Tickets
Greg Sarris—tribal leader, scholar, teacher, and activist—has always kept stories, and storytelling, at the center of his ambitious life’s work. In his latest book, The Forgetters, he goes to the root of storytelling, in a loosely interwoven collection told by two “crow sisters” and inspired by creation myths of the Southern Pomo and Coast Miwok peoples of Northern California. Called “incandescent” by Publishers Weekly, these are stories that feel both timeless and firmly grounded, both enduring and urgent. Joining Sarris in conversation is author, journalist, and professor Leslie Carol Roberts, founder of the ECOPOESIS Project. The public program will be preceded at 5:30 by a reception for Book Club of California members and their guests. FREE; pre-registration required for either the in-person event or the livestream on Zoom
Book sales for this event coordinated by Medicine for Nightmares Booksstore.
Moderators
avatar for Leslie Carol Roberts

Leslie Carol Roberts

Leslie Carol Roberts is a journalist, author, and essayist who has reported the news from every continent, including four months in Antarctica with Greenpeace. A professor, former Dean of Design, and MFA Writing chair at California College of the Arts, Leslie founded the ECOPOESIS... Read More →
Authors and Participants
avatar for Greg Sarris

Greg Sarris

Greg Sarris is currently serving his sixteenth term as Chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria and his first term as board chair for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. His publications include Keeping Slug Woman Alive, Grand Avenue, Watermelon... Read More →
Thursday October 24, 2024 6:00pm - 7:00pm PDT
Book Club of California
  Fiction

6:00pm PDT

Apocrypha Press at Golden Sardine
Thursday October 24, 2024 6:00pm - 8:00pm PDT
Golden Sardine
Apocrypha is a poetry magazine and book publisher based out of North Beach wine bar and poetry bookstore Golden Sardine. Apocrypha’s mission is to honor poets and writers of the past while shining a spotlight on the current generation of poets. 2024 marks their first full-length book releases, How to Draw a Guillotine and 22 Madrigals. Lauren Elizabeth Parker will be joined by Apocrypha editors Brandon Loberg, Andrew Paul Nelson, Caitlin Skye Wild, and Scott M. Bird to discuss building an art community in the face of a grand legacy in an ever changing city, followed by a reading. FREE, $10-15 suggested donation
Moderators
avatar for Lauren Parker

Lauren Parker

Lauren Parker is a writer, zinemaker, and visual artist. She’s the author of We Are Now the Thing in the Woods, The Dark Way Down, and a forthcoming deck of spells. She is an editor and overall rabble-rouser for Apocrypha Press. 
Authors and Participants
avatar for Andrew Paul Nelson

Andrew Paul Nelson

Andrew Paul Nelson is a poet living in North Beach San Francisco where he co-owns Golden Sardine Wine & Poetry Bar with his wife Caitlyn. He is the co-founder of Coit Tower Poetry Club and Apocrypha Press & Poetry Magazine. His book of poems How to Draw A Guillotine was released in... Read More →
avatar for Caitlyn Skye Wild

Caitlyn Skye Wild

Caitlyn Skye Wild is half of Golden Sardine, a wine bar and poetry book store in North Beach, just a stone’s throw from their full-time job as a bookseller at City Lights Bookstore. She is also a founding member of Coit Tower Poetry Club, a monthly reading series happening every... Read More →
avatar for Scott Bird

Scott Bird

Scott Bird is a poet, painter, musician and activist in San Francisco, California. He is the youngest member of the Revolutionary Poets Brigade of San Francisco and co-editor of their annual international poetry anthology. He’s also on the editing team for Apocrypha Press and has... Read More →
avatar for Brandon Loberg

Brandon Loberg

Since 2007, Brandon Loberg has published The 16th & Mission Review, a submission-based literary journal featuring writing performed at the 16th & Mission street arts workshop and distributed free of charge. To facilitate production of the Review, Loberg organized seven7h tangent... Read More →
Thursday October 24, 2024 6:00pm - 8:00pm PDT
Golden Sardine
  Poetry

6:00pm PDT

African Book Club: The Road to the Salt Sea with Samuel Kọláwọlé
Thursday October 24, 2024 6:00pm - 8:00pm PDT
Museum of the African Diaspora
RSVP/Buy Tickets
Part of Litquake’s Words Around the World
Co-presented with Museum of the African Diaspora

Join MoAD and Litquake for a conversation with Nigerian author Samuel Kọláwọlé as he discusses his debut novel, The Road to the Salt Sea, a searing exploration of the global migration crisis that moves from Nigeria to Libya to Italy, from an exciting new literary voice. This program is presented as part of MoAD's African Book Club series, dedicated to reading and promoting 21st-century literature by and about Africans. Kọláwọlé will be in conversation with author, professor, host, and co-founder of African Book Club, Faith Adiele. FREE, $10-15 suggested donation
Book sales for this event coordinated by The Museum of African Diaspora.
Moderators
avatar for Faith Adiele

Faith Adiele

Faith Adiele co-founded and hosts MoAD’s African Book Club, and her monthly column for Detour: Best Stories in Black Travel is syndicated in The Miami Herald. An award-winning memoirist, she contributes to the CALM app, HBO-Max, Alta Magazine, Hyperallergic and others, and her recent... Read More →
Authors and Participants
avatar for Samuel Kọláwọlé

Samuel Kọláwọlé

Samuel Kọláwọlé was born and raised in Ibadan, Nigeria. His work has appeared in AGNI, Georgia Review, The Hopkins Review, Gulf Coast, Washington Square Review, Harvard Review, Image Journal, and other literary publications. He has received numerous residencies and fellowships... Read More →
Thursday October 24, 2024 6:00pm - 8:00pm PDT
Museum of the African Diaspora
  Words Around the World

7:00pm PDT

Mojave Ghost: Forrest Gander with Jane Hirshfield
Thursday October 24, 2024 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
City Lights Booksellers & Publishers
RSVP/Buy Tickets
Co-presented with City Lights Booksellers & Publishers


In this latest novel-poem, Pulitzer Prize winner Forrest Gander takes us between his birthplace in the Mojave Desert and his current Northern California home, where tumultuous memories coalesce with the present. Gander, trained as a geologist, walked along much of the 800-mile San Andreas Fault toward the desolate town of his birth and found himself crossing permeable dimensions of time and space, correlating his emotions and the stricken landscape with other divisions: the fractures and folds underlying not only our country, but any self in its relationship with others. Join Forrest  in conversation with fellow poet Jane Hirshfield. FREE, $10-15 suggested donation
Book sales for this event coordinated by City Lights.
Authors and Participants
avatar for Forrest Gander

Forrest Gander

Forrest Gander, a writer and translator with degrees in geology and literature, was born in the Mojave Desert and lives in northern California. His books, often concerned with ecology, include Twice Alive: an Ecology of Intimacies; Be With, winner of the Pulitzer Prize; and the desert... Read More →
avatar for Jane Hirshfield

Jane Hirshfield

Writing “some of the most important poetry in the world today” (The New York Times Magazine), JANE HIRSHFIELD is the author of ten collections and is one of American poetry’s central spokespersons for concerns of the biosphere. Hirshfield’s honors include fellowships from... Read More →
Thursday October 24, 2024 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
City Lights Booksellers & Publishers
  Poetry

7:00pm PDT

The Art/Craft/Work of Translation
Thursday October 24, 2024 7:00pm - 9:00pm PDT
The Writers Grotto
Part of Litquake’s Words Around the WorldCo-presented with Center for the Art of Translation/Two Lines Press

Translator Sophie Hughes describes translation as “a playful pursuit of equilibrium across an entire work, an exhilarating and, yes, joyful balancing act of loyalties: to sense, to significance, and to style.” Writer and translator May Huang who translates from Chinese; Sabrina Jaszi, a writer and translator working from Russian, Uzbek, and Ukrainian languages; and Japanese translator and professor Andrew Way Leong talk about their own “playful pursuits” and “balancing acts” in their translation practices and offer insight into their methods and projects. Moderated by Giovanna Lomanto. FREE, $10-15 suggested donation
Book sales for this event coordinated by Telegraph Hill Books.
Moderators
avatar for Giovanna Lomanto

Giovanna Lomanto

Giovanna Lomanto is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and photographer who has published three poetry collections, two chapbooks, and a limited edition art book. Her latest collection, driver’s seat echo, is available now. A recent graduate of the MFA program at New York University... Read More →
Authors and Participants
avatar for Andrew Leong

Andrew Leong

Andrew Way Leong is assistant professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley. He translates Japanese-language literature written by Japanese Americans. His most recent translations include two stories in The Literature of Japanese American Incarceration, edited by... Read More →
avatar for May Huang

May Huang

May Huang is a translator and writer from Hong Kong. Her translation of Derek Chung's A Cha Chaan Teng That Does Not Exist was published in 2023 via Zephyr Press. Her writing and translations have appeared in Words Without Borders, World Literature Today, Circumference, Electric... Read More →
avatar for Sabrina Jaszi

Sabrina Jaszi

Sabrina Jaszi is a translator, editor, and writer in Oakland, CA. Together with Roman Ivashkiv, she translated Andriy Sodomora’s The Tears and Smiles of Things. Other work of hers has been published by the New York Review of Books, the Paris Review, Subtropics, The Dial, and Words... Read More →
Thursday October 24, 2024 7:00pm - 9:00pm PDT
The Writers Grotto
  Words Around the World
  • Free Free
  • about Giovanna Lomanto is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and photographer who has published three poetry collections, two chapbooks, and a limited edition art book. Her latest collection, <em>driver’s seat echo</em>, is available now. A recent graduate of the MFA program at New York University, her work has been supported by the SFMOMA, Litquake, KQED, and various reading series around the Bay Area. She currently serves as the co-publisher of the small press <em>Game Over Books</em>, and is dedicated to bringing Queer &amp; BIPOC voices to the forefront of the arts scene.
 
Friday, October 25
 

7:00pm PDT

Taboo Autofiction: Christine Angot with Cécile Alduy
Friday October 25, 2024 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
Telegraph Hill Books
Part of Litquake’s Words Around the WorldCo-presented with Villa Albertine and sponsored by Center for the Art of Translation/Two Lines Press

Villa Albertine and Litquake present French author Christine Angot in a discussion of her influential novels Incest and The Impossible Love. In Incest, Angot explores her personal turmoil through a fragmented narrative about a woman named Christine, grappling with the end of a relationship and the trauma of her father's incestuous abuse. In contrast, The Impossible Love delves into the passionate yet doomed romance between Angot's parents, Rachel and Pierre, set against the backdrop of 1950s France. Angot's discussion with Stanford professor Cécile Alduy will offer insights into her powerful storytelling and the deep emotional landscapes she navigates in her work. FREE, $10-15 suggested donation
Book sales for this event coordinated by Telegraph Books.
Moderators
avatar for Cecile Alduy

Cecile Alduy

Cecile Alduy is a Professor of French literature and culture at Stanford University and an Associated Scholar at Sciences Po-Paris, France. A native from Paris, Dr. Alduy is a specialist of French literature and cinema, feminist and gender studies, and political discourse analysis... Read More →
Authors and Participants
avatar for Christine Angot

Christine Angot

CHRISTINE ANGOT is one of the most controversial authors writing today in France. Since the 1999 publication of Incest, Angot has remained at the center of public debate and has continued to push the boundaries of what society allows an author to express. Born in 1958 in Châteauroux... Read More →
Friday October 25, 2024 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
Telegraph Hill Books
  Words Around the World
 
Saturday, October 26
 

2:00pm PDT

Atlas of Perfumed Botany: Jean-Claude Ellena with John McMurtrie and Jane Marchant
Saturday October 26, 2024 2:00pm - 3:00pm PDT
San Francisco Botanical Gardens, Fragrance Garden
Part of Litquake’s Words Around the World
Co-presented with Villa Albertine and The Gardens of Golden Gate Park
Sponsored by Center for the Art of Translation/Two Lines Press

Iconic French perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena, known as the creative force and “nose” behind Les Jardins d'Hermès, joins writers (and botany enthusiasts) John McMurtrie and Jane Marchant in conversation. Like his book, Atlas of Perfumed Botany, this discussion is sure to trace the cartography of particular fragrances, examine historical connections, and contemplate cultural exchange.  Scent connoisseurs won’t want to miss master perfumer Ellena for this intimate discussion as he looks back on his influential career and considers the innovative ways perfume can influence a better understanding of our natural environment, and positive outcomes for our ecological futures. FREE with SFBG admission

A previously published version of this event listed the event start time as 1:00pm. The event will open to the public at 2:00pm, following a private reception for Litquake and Villa Albertine donors. We sincerely apologize for any confusion!
Moderators
avatar for Jane Marchant

Jane Marchant

Jane Marchant is an interdisciplinary storyteller working with writing, photography, plants, and collage. Her work has appeared in ZYZZYVA, Guernica, Apogee, Kweli, Catapult, Evergreen Review, and elsewhere. She’s at work on a memoir in the form of an Encyclopedia of Botany of the... Read More →
avatar for John McMurtrie

John McMurtrie

John McMurtrie is an independent book editor. He is senior editor of the literary journal Zyzzyva, a contributing editor of the quarterly literary travel magazine Stranger’s Guide, and an editor for McSweeney’s Publishing. His new book Literary Journeys: Mapping Fictional Travels... Read More →
Authors and Participants
avatar for Jean-Claude Ellena

Jean-Claude Ellena

Jean-Claude Ellena, the “nose” of the luxury brand Hermès for fourteen years, has been the Creative Director of Fragrance at the perfume house Le Couvent since 2019. Karin Doering-Froger, a faculty member at the Atelier de Sèvres, has illustrated many novels and travel guides... Read More →
Saturday October 26, 2024 2:00pm - 3:00pm PDT
San Francisco Botanical Gardens, Fragrance Garden
  Words Around the World

5:00pm PDT

Lit Crawl San Francisco
Saturday October 26, 2024 5:00pm - 11:00pm PDT
RSVP/Buy Tickets
Sponsored by California Humanities

One of the most anticipated literary nights of the year, Lit Crawl SF brings together authors and fans for the world’s largest free pop-up literary event! Our 2024 Lit Crawl San Francisco will see 60+ events sprout up all over the Mission District. Our biggest in 5 years! FREE

FULL LIT CRAWL SF SCHEDULE NOW AVAILABLE! 

Saturday October 26, 2024 5:00pm - 11:00pm PDT
  Performance
 
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111 Minna Gallery and Event Space
4 Star Theater
447 Minna St
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Black Bird Bookstore and Café
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