Litquake's Lit Cast

Sure, you might not have made the cut for "5 Under 35," but that certainly doesn't mean you need to give up on your dreams of writing and publishing a book! In the first installment of our ongoing "How They Did It" series, Litquake and LitCamp have brought together six authors who found their way to publishing success after the age of 40. Recorded live at Page Street Co-Working's space in Berkeley this spring, Alka Joshi, Anita Amirrezvani, Barbara Graham, Jacqueline E. Luckett, and Mark Ernest Pothier shared practical advice and inspiration in this lively discussion moderated by LitCamp's Janis Cooke Newman. 

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

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

Co-presented with MOAD. From The Guardian’s Georgina Lawton, a moving examination of how racial identity is constructed—through the author’s own journey grappling with secrets and stereotypes, having been raised by white parents with no explanation as to why she looked black. Raised in sleepy English suburbia, Georgina Lawton was no stranger to homogeneity. Her parents were white; her friends were white; there was no reason for her to think she was any different. But over time her brown skin and dark, kinky hair frequently made her a target of prejudice. In Georgina’s insistently color-blind household, with no acknowledgement of her difference or access to black culture, she lacked the coordinates to make sense of who she was.

This event is now available to watch on our YouTube page, along with the rest of our 2020 festival programming. Co-presented by City Lights Booksellers & Publishers “This notable achievement...is a harrowing account of how Sneed transforms violence and pain into an artist's life." —Claudia Rankine, author of Citizen: A Lyric In this collection of personal essays and poetry, acclaimed Brooklyn-based poet/performer Pamela Sneed details her coming of age in New York City during the late 1980s. Funeral Diva (City Lights) captures the impact of AIDS on Black Queer life, and highlights the enduring bonds between the living, the dying, and the dead. Sneed's poems not only converse with lovers past and present, but also with her literary forebears—like James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Audre Lorde—whose aesthetic and thematic investments she renews for a contemporary American landscape. Offering critical focus on matters from police brutality to LGBTQ+ rights, Funeral Diva confronts today's most pressing issues with acerbic wit and audacity. The collection closes with Sneed's reflections on the two pandemics of her time, AIDS and COVID-19, and the disproportionate impact of each on African American communities. Sneed discusses and reads from her work, alongside poet and Literary Hub editor Tommy Pico. FREE, $5-10 suggested donation Buy the authors' books: Pamela Sneed -- http://www.citylights.com/book/?GCOI=87286100510140&fa=description Tommy Pico -- https://bookshop.org/a/11096/9781947793576 Browse Litquake's bookstore here -- https://bookshop.org/shop/litquake

Co-presented by The Ruby and Left Margin Lit The best short stories evoke a whole world in a small space. But how do they get written? Join Litquake as we hear five writers (and readers) of short stories discuss their different approaches to writing the form. They'll discuss their own methods, philosophies, and techniques behind telling stories with economy and heart. With Yalitza Ferreras, Rachel Khong, Mimi Lok, Shruti Swamy, and C Pam Zhang. Remember to subscribe to Lit Cast to be notified the minute we release our episodes -- and subscribe to our Youtube channel to watch all of our archived readings and discussions from our 2020 Litquake festival. Follow us on social media @litquake.  Buy the authors' books at Litquake's bookstore here -- https://bookshop.org/shop/litquake

This event is now available to watch on our YouTube page, along with the rest of our 2020 festival programming. “Melchor’s English-language debut is a furious vortex of voices that swirl around a murder in a provincial Mexican town. Forceful, frenzied, violent, and uncompromising, Melchor’s depiction of a town ogling its own destruction is a powder keg that ignites on the first page and sustains its intense, explosive heat until its final sentence.” —Publishers Weekly One of Mexico’s most promising and prominent writers, Fernanda Melchor has created, in her debut novel Hurricane Season, a Gulf Coast noir drawing comparisons to everyone from Faulkner to Bolaño and Marlon James. NPR has called Hurricane Season "a mix of drugs, sex, mythology, small-town desperation, poverty, and superstition." The Los Angeles Review of Books describes  it as "a novel that sinks like lead to the bottom of the soul and remains there, its images full of color, its characters alive and raging against their fate.” Beginning with the discovery of a corpse, by a group of children playing near the irrigation canals, a Mexican village is propelled into an investigation of how and why the murder occurred. Join Fernanda Melchor as she reads from and discusses her work, with novelist and professor Yuri Herrera, author of several works including the recent nonfiction book A Silent Fury: The El Bordo Mine Fire. FREE, $5-10 suggested donation

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

This event is now available to watch on our YouTube page, alongside the rest of our 2020 festival programming. Co-presented by City Lights Booksellers & Publishers "From Basho to Mandela, Every Day We Get More Illegal takes us on an international tour for a lesson in the history of resistance...In ways subtle and sometimes proudly loud, this book makes it clear exactly why Juan Felipe Herrera continues to be recognized and sought after for his work."—Jericho Brown Join Litquake and City Lights in celebrating the publication of Juan Felipe Herrera’s Every Day We Get More Illegal. In this collection of poems, written during and immediately after two years on the road as United States Poet Laureate, Herrera reports back on his travels through contemporary America. Poems written in the heat of witness, and later, in quiet moments of reflection, coalesce into an urgent, trenchant, and yet hope-filled portrait. Every Day We Get More Illegal is a jolt to the conscience—filled with the multiple powers of the many voices and many textures of every day in America. Herrera, the nation’s first Latino Poet Laureate, will share his work, along with Jericho Brown, author of three collected works, of which The Tradition received the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. FREE, $5-10 suggested donation Buy books and support the poets: Juan Felipe Herrera -- http://www.citylights.com/book/?GCOI=87286100162250 Jericho Brown -- https://bookshop.org/a/11096/9781556594861 Browse Litquake's bookstore here -- https://bookshop.org/shop/litquake

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

“This is an unflinching book that illustrates the central, confounding American paradox—in a country that purports to root for the underdog, too often we exalt the rich and we punish the poor. With thorough reporting and extraordinary compassion, Kristof and WuDunn tell the stories of those who fall behind in the world’s wealthiest country, and find not an efficient first-world safety net created by their government, but a patchwork of community initiatives, perpetually underfunded and run by tired saints. And yet amid all the tragedy and neglect, Kristof and WuDunn conjure a picture of how it could all get better, how it could all work. That’s the miracle of Tightrope, and why this is such an indispensable book.” —Dave Eggers The Pulitzer Prize-winning authors of the acclaimed, best-selling Half the Sky, Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl Wudunn, now issue a plea—deeply personal and told through the lives of real Americans—to address the crisis in working-class America, while focusing on solutions to mend a half century of governmental failure. Their latest bestseller, Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope, draws us deep into an “other America,” from the lives of some of the children with whom Kristof grew up, in rural Oregon, to similar stories of needless working-class tragedy from the Dakotas, Oklahoma, New York, and Virginia. But amid the deaths from drugs, alcohol, suicide, or reckless accidents, there are stories about resurgence, among them: Annette Dove, who has devoted her life to helping the teenagers of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and Daniel McDowell, of Baltimore, whose tale of opioid addiction and recovery suggests that there are viable ways to solve our nation’s drug epidemic. With their superb, nuanced reportage, Kristof and WuDunn have given us a book that is both riveting and impossible to ignore. The authors discuss their work and share stories with Arlie Russell Hochschild, author of the recent New York Times bestseller Strangers in Their Own Land.

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

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

“One of the difficulties of being alive today, is that everything is absurd but fewer and fewer things are funny.” In her new essay collection Nothing Is Wrong and Here Is Why, acclaimed Washington Post satirist Alexandra Petri offers perfectly logical, reassuring reasons for everything that has happened in recent American politics that will in no way unsettle your worldview. Petri reports that the Trump administration is as competent as it is uncorrupted, white supremacy has never been less rampant, and men have been silenced for too long. The “woman card” is a powerful card to play! Q-Anon makes perfect sense! This Panglossian venture into our swampy present offers a virtuosic first draft of history—a parody as surreal and deranged as the Trump administration itself. Petri’s essays have become iconic expressions of rage and anger, read and liked and shared by hundreds of thousands of people. In conversation with Vox political reporter Jane Coaston.

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

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

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

Please join us for this vivid and compelling evening with Alka Joshi, author of The Henna Artist, the May selection for Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine Book Club. Tune in and learn why Publishers Weekly calls this novel “eloquent and moving,” while Christian Science Monitor highlights its “vibrant characters, evocative imagery, and sumptuous prose.” A portrait of one woman’s struggle for fulfillment in a society pivoting between the traditional and the modern, The Henna Artist takes readers on a journey through 1950s Indian culture, a world that is at once lush and fascinating, stark and cruel. Escaping from an abusive marriage, seventeen-year-old Lakshmi makes her way alone to the vibrant pink city of Jaipur. There she becomes the most highly requested henna artist—and confidante—to the wealthy women of the upper class. But trusted with the secrets of the wealthy, she can never reveal her own. Alka Joshi reads from and discusses her book, with CCA professor and bestselling author Tom Barbash.  Books are available from your favorite indie bookstores, or order from bookshop.org!

From the #1 New York Times-bestselling author of the Sierra Leone child-soldier memoir, A LONG WAY GONE, comes this powerful new novel about young people living at the margins of society. LITTLE FAMILY portrays the lives of five youth who have improvised a household in an abandoned airplane, struggling to replace the homes they have lost with the one they have created together. Join us to celebrate release of this remarkable debut work of fiction from Ishmael Beah, whom Vanity Fair has called “arguably the most-read African writer in contemporary literature.” FREE, $5 suggested donation

Fiction writers Nayomi Munaweera, R.O. Kwon, Ingrid Rojas Contreras, and host Lauren Markham discuss both the challenges and urgency of fiction writing at this moment in time. How do we write during bleak times, and into the bleakness? How does the loss and grief of our current moment impact what we are writing about, how we write, and who we are writing for? What works or writers are we turning to right now, and how are we finding sustenance there? And perhaps most importantly, where might we be finding joy and how are we cultivating it—and what role could this joy play in our writing? This event is the first in a series of 10 events running through April 10. All authors' books available from your favorite indie bookstores, order from bookshop.org!

Let's connect our global literary community in a time of closed borders. Hear World Editions authors Adam Dalva, Esther Gerritsen, Adeline Dieudonné, Pierre Jarawan, Sisonke Msimang, and Amin Maalouf read from their works, discuss the current situation in their countries, and talk about what books mean to them during Covid-19. Adam Dalva’s writing has appeared in The New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, Tin House, and The Guardian. He teaches Creative Writing at Rutgers University and is a book critic for Guernica Magazine. Adam has received fellowships from the Atlantic Center for the Arts and the Vermont Studio Center. He is a graduate of NYU’s MFA Program, where he was a Veterans Writing Workshop Fellow. Adam’s bestselling comic book, Olivia Twist, was published by Dark Horse in Fall 2018. Esther Gerritsen is a Dutch novelist, columnist, and playwright. She made her literary debut in 2000. She is one of the most established, widely read, and highly praised authors in the Netherlands, and makes regular appearances on radio programs and at literary festivals. Esther Gerritsen had the honor of writing the Dutch Book Week gift in 2016, which had a print run of 700,000 copies. In 2014 she was awarded the Frans Kellendonk Prize for her oeuvre. Her book Craving was made into a film in 2018, and film rights have been sold for her novel Roxy, which was just published in English. Adeline Dieudonné is a Belgian author and lives in Brussels. Real Life, her debut novel, was published in France in Autumn 2018 and has since been awarded most of the major French literary prizes: the prestigious Prix du Roman FNAC, the Prix Rossel, the Prix Renaudot des Lycéens, the Prix Goncourt―Le Choix de la Belgique, the Prix des Étoiles du Parisien, the Prix Première Plume, and the Prix Filigrane, a French prize for a work of high literary quality with wide appeal. Dieudonné also performs as a stand-up comedian. Pierre Jarawan was born in 1985 to a Lebanese father and a German mother and moved to Germany with his family at the age of three. Inspired by his father’s imaginative bedtime stories, he started writing at the age of thirteen. He has won international prizes as a slam poet, and in 2016 was named Literature Star of the Year by the daily newspaper Abendzeitung. Jarawan received a literary scholarship from the City of Munich (the Bayerischer Kunstförderpreis) for The Storyteller, which went on to become a bestseller and booksellers’ favorite in Germany and the Netherlands. Sisonke Msimang is the author of Always Another Country: A memoir of exile and home. She is a South African writer whose work is focussed on race, gender and democracy. She has written for a range of international publications including the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Guardian, Newsweek and Al Jazeera. Born in Beirut in 1949, Amin Maalouf has lived in France since 1976. After studying sociology and economics, Maalouf joined the Lebanese daily An-Nahar, for which he travelled the world covering numerous events, from the fall of the Ethiopian monarchy to the last battle of Saigon. Forced to emigrate by the war in Lebanon, he settled in Paris, where he resumed journalism, and from where he started to travel again, from Mozambique to Iran and from Argentina to the Balkans. He became editor of the international edition of An-Nahar, then editor-in-chief of the weekly Jeune Afrique, before giving up all his posts to dedicate himself to literature. All authors' books available from your favorite indie bookstores, order from bookshop.org!

A reading of dozens of tiny stories from micro-fictionistas, including guest readers, plus a discussion of the Art of Flash and prompts—including visual prompts—to write and submit your own, with a selection to be published on the Flash Fiction Collective Facebook page. Author bios: Jane Ciabattari, author of the short story collection Stealing the Fire, writes the Between the Lines column for BBC Culture. She is a former president of the National Book Critics Circle and a member of the Writers Grotto. Her reviews, interviews and cultural criticism have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the Guardian, Paris Review, the Washington Post and the Boston Globe, among other publications. Grant Faulkner is the Executive Director of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and the co-founder of 100 Word Story. He has published two books on writing, Pep Talks for Writers: 52 Insights and Actions to Boost Your Creative Mojo, and Brave the Page, a teen writing guide. He’s also published a collection of 100-word stories, Fissures, and Nothing Short of 100: Selected Tales from 100 Word Story. His stories have appeared in dozens of literary magazines, including Tin House, The Southwest Review, and The Gettysburg Review, and he has been anthologized in collections such as Norton’s New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction and Best Small Fictions. His essays on creativity have been published in The New York Times, Poets & Writers, Writer’s Digest, and The Writer. He serves on the National Writing Project’s Writer’s Council, Lit Camp’s Advisory Council, and Aspen Words’ Creative Council. He’s also the co-host of the podcast Write-minded. Kirstin Chen‘s second novel, Bury What We Cannot Take (Little A, March 2018), was named a best book of the year by Entropy, Popsugar, and Book Bub, and a top pick of the season by Electric Literature, The Millions, The Rumpus, Harper’s Bazaar, and InStyle. She is also the author of Soy Sauce for Beginners, an Amazon bestseller, an O, The Oprah Magazine “book to pick up now,” and a Glamour book club pick. She has received awards from the Steinbeck Fellows Program, Sewanee, Hedgebrook, the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, the Toji Cultural Foundation, and the National Arts Council of Singapore. Her writing has appeared in Real Simple, Literary Hub, Writer’s Digest, Manrepeller, Zyzzyva, and the Best New Singaporean Short Stories. She holds an MFA from Emerson College and a BA from Stanford University. Born and raised in Singapore, she lives in San Francisco, where she is working on a novel about the counterfeit handbag trade. She teaches creative writing at the University of San Francisco and in Ashland University’s Low-Residency MFA Program. Meg Pokrass is the U.K. based author of six flash fiction collections, an award-winning collection of prose poetry, and a novella-in-flash from the Rose Metal Press. Her latest is a flash fiction collection called The Dog Seated Next To Me, published in 2019 by Pelekinesis Press. A new novella in flash The Smell Of Good Luck will be published in 2020 by Flash: The International Short Short Story Press. Meg’s work has been recently anthologized in two Norton Anthology Readers: New Micro (W.W. Norton & Co, 2018) and Flash Fiction International (W.W. Norton & Co., 2015), The Best Small Fictions, 2018 and 2019, Wigleaf Top 50, Nothing Short Of 100, and has appeared in 350 literary magazines both online and in print including Electric Literature, Tin House, McSweeney’s, Five Points, Smokelong Quarterly, Tupelo Review. All authors' books available from your favorite indie bookstores, order from bookshop.org!

Celebrate ZYZZYVA's 35th anniversary issue with contributors Dave Madden, Lysley Tenorio, Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, and Kristen Iskandrian. Kristen Iskandrian is the author of the novel Motherest (Twelve). Her story “Good With Boys,” which appeared in Issue No. 109, was included in Best American Short Stories 2018. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama, and is co-owner of Thank You Books, a new independent bookstore. Lysley Tenorio is the author of the forthcoming novel The Son of Good Fortune (Ecco) and the story collection Monstress (Ecco), named a Book of the Year by the San Francisco Chronicle. Dave Madden is the author of the story collection If You Need Me I’ll Be Over There (Indian University Press) and The Authentic Animal: Inside the Odd and Obsessive World of Taxidermy (St. Martin’s). Meg Hurtado Bloom's writing has appeared in Split Lip, Lumen Magazine, and other publications. Her poetry also appeared in ZYZZYVA's Bay Area Issue (No. 117). Margaret Wilkerson Sexton is the author of two novel, A Kind of Freedom (Counterpoint), which was long-listed for a National Book Award, and The Revisioners (Counterpoint), which won an NAACP Image Award in February. All authors' books available from your favorite indie bookstores, order from bookshop.org!

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

Co-presented by Litquake and MoAD In honor of the post-mortem publication of Zora Neal-Hurston’s short story anthology Hitting a Straight Lick With a Crooked Stick: Stories From The Harlem Renaissance, we put together a reading at the Museum of African Diaspora here in San Francisco. After reading pieces of their favorite stories from the book, local authors, educators, and activists spoke to a sold out crowd about the legacy of Zora Neale Hurston and how it has influenced contemporary literary culture. With a Q&A to wrap the whole thing up, this night was one for remembrance and celebration. We have it all here for you, on this episode of Lit Cast. Featuring: UC Berkeley African American studies professor Chiyuma Elliott, poet and CCA professor Tonya M. Foster, and bestselling novelist Margaret Wilkerson Sexton. Moderated by writer and radio journalist Jenee Darden.

Anna Wiener discusses her new memoir, Uncanny Valley, with author Mike Isaac.  This podcast was recorded at Green Apple Books on January 27, 2020

Towards the end of 2019, we attended one of the many incredible readings held at Oakland-based Wolfman Books. To celebrate  Trebor Healey’s new collection, Falling, we packed in to Wolfman’s 40th street storefront to hear stories that confronted populism, immigration, and queer identity. Supported by intimate tales from Alvin Orloff’s memoir, Disasterama: Adventures in the Queer Underground 1977-1997, and new work from Oakland-based choreographer and poet Brontez Purnell, the night was filled with touching memories, bold questions, and a lot of laughs.

Who doesn't love a glimpse behind the facades of troubled Silicon Valley giants? In the tradition of Brad Stone’s Everything Store and John Carreyrou’s Bad Blood, award-winning investigative reporter Mike Isaac’s Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber delivers a gripping account of Uber’s rapid rise, its pitched battles with taxi unions and drivers, the company’s toxic internal culture, and the bare-knuckle tactics it devised to overcome obstacles in its quest for dominance. Roger McNamee's Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe is the story of a noted tech venture capitalist, early mentor to Mark Zuckerberg, and Facebook investor, who woke up to the serious damage Facebook is doing to our society and set out to try to stop it. Moderated by The New Yorker's Anna Wiener. 

Eureka! We did it! From this year’s 20th Litquake festival, we present some of our favorite Bay Area authors reading from THEIR favorite Californian wordsmiths live at the Swedish American Hall in San Francisco. Listen to this festival kick off with a raucous night of readings by Charlie Jane Anders, Natalie Baszile, Elaine Castillo, Ingrid Rojas Contreras, Daniel Handler, Adam Johnson, Chang-rae Lee, Beth Lisick, Ishmael Reed, and Tobias Wolff, presenting from the works of writers who inspired them -- from Dashiell Hammett to Daniel Alarcón. Hosted by Isaac Fitzgerald, with live music from the Patrick Wolff Quartet and a special appearance by Karl the Fog. It’s a literary overload you don’t want to skip.

In this very special episode of Lit Cast, we're proud to feature the only recording Lawrence Ferlinghetti reading his original work "Lit.quake?" - plus a few more - at Litquake 2002.     Litquake's 20th anniversary festival will take place October 10-19, 2019. For all the latest updates, follow us @litquake on Facebook and Twitter!

From the Litquake archives! During our 2018 festival, National Book Award–nominated Rachel Kushner joined Litquake for an evening on her New York Times bestselling novel The Mars Room. This novel tells the story of Romy Hall, who’s at the start of two consecutive life sentences at Stanville Women’s Correctional Facility, deep in California’s Central Valley. As James Wood said in The New Yorker, Kushner’s fiction “succeeds because it is so full of vibrantly different stories and histories, all of them particular, all of them brilliantly alive.” This event features Kushner in conversation with San Francisco Chronicle culture columnist Caille Millner, complemented by appearances from the Voice of Witness collection Six by Ten: Stories from Solitary editor Mateo Hoke and contributor Mohammed Ali. Recorded live at the Make Out Room on Thursday, October 18, 2018. Litquake's 20th anniversary festival will take place October 10-19, 2019. For all the latest updates, follow us @litquake on Facebook and Twitter!

Litquake’s proud to present a special episode of Lit Cast Live featuring one of our own, Julia Flynn Siler, in conversation on her newest book The White Devil’s Daughters: The Women Who Fought Slavery in San Francisco’s Chinatown. In a narrative hailed as “eye-opening” by Kirkus Reviews, Siler tells the story of both the abolitionists who challenged the corrosive anti-Chinese prejudices of the time and the young women who dared to flee their fate. She relates how the women who ran the Cameron House defied contemporary convention by physically rescuing children from the brothels where they worked or by snatching them off ships as they were being smuggled in–and how they helped bring the exploiters to justice. This event was recorded live at the Mechanics’ Institute in San Francisco on Wednesday, July 12.  Litquake's 20th anniversary festival will take place October 10-19, 2019. For all the latest updates, follow us @litquake on Facebook and Twitter!

One of Esquire, The Rumpus, The Millions, Literary Hub and Electric Literature's Most Anticipated Books of 2019, Chia-Chia Lin’s debut novel The Unpassing explores community, identity, and the myth of the American dream through a Taiwanese immigrant family of six struggling to make ends meet on the outskirts of Anchorage, Alaska. Lit Cast is proud to feature Chia-Chia as she reads an excerpt from her novel and goes deep into her writing process, influences, and more with her former Iowa MFA classmate Jamel Brinkley. This episode was recorded live at Green Apple Books on the Park on May 30, 2019. Litquake's 20th anniversary festival will take place October 10-19, 2019. For all the latest updates, follow us @litquake on Facebook and Twitter!

Following the success of his T.S. Elliot-prizewinning poetry collection Night Sky With Exit Wounds, Ocean Vuong’s debut novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous was heralded as one of the most hotly anticipated books of 2019 by Publishers Weekly, the LA Times, The Guardian, and many more. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, written as a letter from a son to his mother, is both a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity and a testament to the power of agency over one’s own story. This episode of Lit Cast features Vuong in conversation with San Francisco literary legend Rebecca Solnit, recorded live at Green Apple Books on the Park on June 18, 2019.  Litquake's 20th anniversary festival will take place October 10-19, 2019. For all the latest updates, follow us @litquake on Facebook and Twitter!

From the Litquake archive! In this recording from our 2018 festival, the Bay Area’s long-running Porchlight storytelling series returns with "advice"-themed tales from Steve Almond, Dickson Lam, Sands Hall, Sisonke Msimang, Maggie Rowe, and Betty Charbonnet Reid Soskin, the nation's oldest park ranger. This event was co-hosted by Arline Klatte and Beth Lisick, and recorded live at the Swedish American Hall on October 15, 2018. Litquake's 20th anniversary festival will take place October 10-19, 2019. For all the latest updates, follow us @litquake on Facebook and Twitter!  

MacArthur and Guggenheim fellow Karen Russell’s new short story collection, Orange World, was declared “hilarious, exquisite, first-rate” by The New York Times Book Review and “one of the most innovative, inspired short-story collections of the past decade” by NPR. Lit Cast Live proudly features Russell in conversation with Zoetrope editor Michael Ray at Green Apple Books on the Park in San Francisco on May 21, 2019. Litquake's 20th anniversary festival will take place October 10-19, 2019. For all the latest updates, follow us @litquake on Facebook and Twitter!    

Back in April, Litquake celebrated National Poetry Month by hosting a group of esteemed poets at one of San Francisco’s famous landmarks. This event was hosted by D.A. Powell, whose honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, and featured incredible poets like Robert Hass, former Poet Laureate of the United States and winner of a Pulitzer prize; Brenda Hillman, Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets; Henri Cole, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry; Barbara Jane Reyes; Paola Capo-Garcia; and Marcello Hernandez Castillo. Our newest Lit Cast Episode features readings from these fantastic poets on a very special occasion that brought the power of poetry into the historic walls of Grace Cathedral. Litquake's 20th anniversary festival will take place October 10-19, 2019. For all the latest updates, follow us @litquake on Facebook and Twitter! This event was recorded live at Grace Cathedral on April 13th, 2019.

Award-winning poet Franny Choi recently passed through San Francisco on tour for her second collection, Soft Science, which uses the myth of the cyborg to explore queer, Asian American femininity through a series of Turing test-inspired poems. Our newest Lit Cast episode features Choi joining local poet (and frequent Litquake collaborator!) sam sax for an electrifying evening of readings from Soft Science and sax’s recent collection Bury It - plus a few brand-new, heretofore unpublished gems.   This episode was recorded live at The Bindery on April 25, 2019.

Litquake and The Bindery present Evan James reading from his debut novel, Cheer Up, Mr. Widdicombe. In a return of a not-so-prodigal son, author Evan James comes to San Francisco on book tour for his comedy of manners debut novel that tells the story of a family summer on Puget Sound. Conjuring a Wes Anderson-meets-John Updike vibe, it tells a tale filled with tennis, a personal assistant in search of romance, a preppy screenwriter with a penchant for pills, a landscape gardener named Marvelous Matthews, and a bewitching self-help author, all attempting to find that elusive something that will, as Marie Kondo says, “spark their joy.” Recorded live at The Bindery.  Litquake's 20th anniversary festival will take place October 10-19, 2019. For all the latest updates, follow us @litquake on Facebook and Twitter!

Back in March, Mitchell S. Jackson came to San Francisco on tour for his latest book, Survival Math: Notes on an All-American Family. With a poet’s gifted ear, a novelist’s sense of narrative, and a journalist’s unsentimental eye, Mitchell S. Jackson candidly explores his tumultuous youth in the other America. Survival Math takes its name from the calculations Mitchell and his family made to keep safe—to stay alive—in their community, a small black neighborhood in Portland, Oregon blighted by drugs, violence, poverty, and governmental neglect. This event was recorded live at The Bindery on March 12, 2019. Litquake's 20th anniversary festival will take place October 10-19, 2019. For all the latest updates, follow us @litquake on Facebook and Twitter!

To celebrate our 100th(!) episode, we've got an extra-special recording from Litquake’s 2018 festival: an evening of freewheeling conversation between San Francisco literary legends Amy Tan and Armistead Maupin. Bestselling author of The Joy Luck Club and The Valley of Amazement, Amy Tan’s most recent novel is Where the Past Begins; Armistead Maupin, whose series Tales of the City helped change our cultural conversation about being gay in America, has just released the paperback edition of Logical Family. This event was recorded live at the Swedish American Hall on October 19, 2018. Litquake's 20th anniversary festival will take place October 10-19, 2019. For all the latest updates, follow us @litquake on Facebook and Twitter!    

Fantasy and science fiction stories have long embraced the darker themes of a dystopian future. Do these narratives speak to our fears of what the future will bring, or do they reflect the current reality in which the authors live and write? Is futuristic fiction pure escapism, or can it alter our destiny? In this episode of Lit Cast Live, Bay Area authors Charlie Jane Anders (All the Birds in the Sky; The City in the Middle of the Night), and Meg Elison (The Book of the Unnamed Midwife) explore these questions and more in a discussion moderated by Nilgun Bayraktar, a writer and professor at California College of the Arts. This Litquake event was recorded live at the San Francisco Public Library during their Night of Ideas on February 2, 2019. Note - due to technical issues at the time of recording, the audio for some parts of this this episode may appear slightly distorted. Lit Cast greatly appreciates our listeners understanding. 

A rising star in today’s Nigerian novel boom, the trans and non-binary Akwaeke Emezi has brought us Freshwater, an autobiographical debut written with stylistic brilliance, exploring the metaphysics of identity and being, plunging the reader into the mysteries of self. Emezi was named one of the National Book Foundation's '5 under 35' for 2018 and Freshwater was long-listed for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize. In convo with Whiting Award-winning novelist Esmé Weijun Wang. Recorded live at the Museum of African Diaspora during Litquake Festival 2018. Sponsored by California College of the Arts.

Back in the summer, author Melissa Broder dropped into The Bindery to read and discuss her hilarious debut novel, The Pisces, and we were there to capture it. “A modern-day mythology for women on the verge,” according to the New York Times, The Pisces is the absrud and erotic recounting of one woman’s star-crossed relationship with a folkloric beau. Broder is the author of the essay collection So Sad Today and four poetry collections, including Last Sext. She writes the "So Sad Today" column at Vice, the astrology column for Lenny Letter, and the "Beauty and Death" column on Elle.com. In conversation with The Millions editor and The Golden State novelist, Lydia Kiesling. Recorded live at The Bindery.

Litquake's "Lit Cast Live" series of events at Bay Area bookstores continues with Elaine Castillo and her debut novel, "America Is Not The Heart". In illuminating the violent political history of the Philippines in the 1980s and 1990s and the insular immigrant communities that spring up in the suburban United States, Castillo delivers an incisive and powerful story about the promise of the American dream and the unshakable power of the past. This appearance was recorded live at Green Apple Books on the Park in San Francisco. Sponsored by California College of the Arts. ww.facebook.com/litquake  https://twitter.com/Litquake

Litquake's "Lit Cast Live" series of events at Bay Area bookstores continues with Sloane Crosley, New York Times–bestselling author of "Look Alive Out There"―a brand-new collection of essays filled with her trademark hilarity, wit, and charm. The characteristic heart and punch-packing observations are back, but with a newfound coat of maturity. A thin coat. More of a blazer, really. In conversation with Daniel Mallory Ortberg. This appearance was recorded live at Green Apple Books on the Park in San Francisco.  ww.facebook.com/litquake  https://twitter.com/Litquake  

Litquake's "Lit Cast Live" series of events at Bay Area bookstores continues with the charming, witty, and always-incisive Meg Wolitzer and her new novel The Female Persuasion, which chronicles the highs and lows of power, loyalty, hero worship, womanhood and ambition.  At its heart, The Female Persuasion is about the flame we all believe is flickering inside of us, waiting to be seen and fanned by the right person at the right time. This appearance was recorded live at The Bindery in San Francisco.  ww.facebook.com/litquake  https://twitter.com/Litquake  

Litquake's "Lit Cast Live" series of events at Bay Area bookstores continues with the daring and wise, hilarious and tender, Cheston Knapp and his exhilarating collection of seven linked essays, Up Up, Down Down, which tackles the Big Questions through seemingly unlikely avenues. Taken together, the essays in Up Up, Down Down amount to a chronicle of Knapp’s coming-of-age, a young man’s journey into adulthood, late-onset as it might appear. He presents us with formative experiences from his childhood to marriage that echo throughout the collection, and ultimately tilts at what may be the Biggest Q of them all: what are the hazards of becoming who you are?This appearance was recorded live at Green Apple on the Park in San Francisco. Sponsored by California College of the Arts. https://www.facebook.com/litquake  https://twitter.com/Litquake  

Litquake's "Lit Cast Live" series of events at Bay Area bookstores continues with Samantha Irby on tour for her second essay collection, MEATY. After attracting thousands of loyal readers to her notoriously hilarious blog, bitchesgottaeat.com, Samantha Irby first exploded onto the printed page with WE ARE NEVER MEETING IN REAL LIFE, her debut collection of essays about trying to laugh her way through failed relationships, taco feasts, bouts with Crohn's disease, and more. Every essay is crafted with that distinctive voice hailed by Kirkus Reviews as "raunchy, funny, and vivid...strap in and get ready for a roller-coaster ride to remember." This appearance was recorded live at The Booksmith in San Francisco. Sponsored by California College of the Arts. https://www.facebook.com/litquake  https://twitter.com/Litquake

Litquake's "Lit Cast Live" series of events at Bay Area bookstores continues with Leslie Jamison, on tour for her new book THE RECOVERING: Intoxication and its Aftermath. Jamison has been compared to such iconic writers as Joan Didion and Susan Sontag. Yet her utterly singular voice also offers something new. With enormous empathy and wisdom, Jamison has given us nothing less than the story of addiction and recovery in America writ large, a definitive and revelatory account that will resonate for years to come. This appearance was recorded live at Green Apple Books on the Park in San Francisco. Sponsored by California College of the Arts. https://www.facebook.com/litquake  https://twitter.com/Litquake

Litquake's "Lit Cast Live" series of events at Bay Area bookstores continues with Morgan Jerkins, on tour for her new book THIS WILL BE MY UNDOING: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America. This highly-anticipated collection of linked essays interweaves Jerkins' incisive commentary on pop culture, feminism, black history, misogyny, and racism with her own experiences to confront the very real challenges of being a black woman today. Jenkins is currently a contributing editor at Catapult and a Book of the Month judge. This appearance was recorded live at The Booksmith in San Francisco. Sponsored by California College of the Arts. https://www.facebook.com/litquake  https://twitter.com/Litquake