Litquake 2024

Sponsored by St. Mary’s College of California’s MFA Program

This celebration of poetry collates a half-dozen poets’ stylings, live on our darkest, dankest stage. Featuring multi-hyphenate award winners Kim Addonizio, Sarah Ghazal Ali, Charif Shanahan, Zeina Hashem Beck, and Danusha Lamérisfor a lurid evening of ebullient verse. Doors at 6:30PM. $12 adv / $15 door.
Book sales for this event coordinated by Dog Eared Books

Co-presented with 48 Hills

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

Book sales for this event coordinated by Dog Eared Books.

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.

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

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.

Co-presented with Kearny Street Workshop

Happy 25th anniversary, APAture! Samesies! The only festival to put the focus on emerging Asian Pacific American artists returns from Oct 12th to Nov. 9th. This year’s theme is RETURN, from the Palestinian right to return, the call for Indigenous Land Back, the various migrant histories and struggle for justice in our Pacific Islander and Asian communities, and the returns we face in our own personal lives. 2024's literary showcase features celebrated writer Maw Shein Win, author of Percussing the Thinking Jar, and emerging writers from the APA community, including Noelani Piters, Megan Noble, and many others. $12