Litquake
Encyclopedia
Litquake is San Francisco's
annual literary festival. Originally starting out as Litstock for a single day on July 16, 1999, it ran for two years under the same name before going dark in 2001 after 9/11. It re-emerged in 2002 with a new name, determined to make the most of the fact that according to USA Today
, San Francisco has the highest per capita consumption of both alcohol and books. Consisting of readings, discussions, and themed events held at different Bay Area venues, the annual festival features predominantly Bay Area authors but opens a limited number of slots for those from the outside, and kicks off during either the first or second weekend of October, depending on the year. The Litquake Literary Project produces the event, while Intersection for the Arts and others provide fiscal sponsorship.
The first year under the Litquake name, 2002, included over 60 authors and four venues. At the 2003 festival, 100 authors participated over four days. By 2004, the event had grown to 175 authors and nine days. The nine day 2005 festival included 250 Bay Area participating authors and 6,975 attendees. The 2006 festival hit the 7833 attendee mark and included over 300 authors as well as Litquake's first ever movie, the cartoon Best Book Ever.
2011's festival saw a total attendance of !6,581, a 23% increase over 2010.
Jack Boulware and Jane Ganahl are the co-founders and Artistic Directors, while Elise Proulx is the Executive Director.
In 2007, the venues were expanded for the first time to include locations outside of San Francisco. Opening night honored Armistead Maupin
with the introduction of the Barbary Coast
Award, The evening starred Amy Tan
, who surprised the audience by first appearing in kitschy Chinese peasant garb, only to re-emerge in an ensemble of black leather and a whip, Andrew Sean Greer's eloquent memory/narrative of his first introduction to Tales of the City, Father Guido Sarducci's mysteriously hilarious treatise on the effects of an over abundance of lemons in an Italian village, K. M. Soehnlein's rediscovery of a fantasia on Jackie Kennedy written by Maupin in 1980, Susie Bright
, cast members of Beach Blanket Babylon
, Jon Ginoli
, actress Laura Linney
, Pamela Ling and Judd Winick
, Michelle Tea
, as well as the late Ethel Merman
singing When the Lights Go Down in the City, by Journey
. Other notable participating Bay Area writers over the course of the 8 day festival included Kim Addonizio
, Kate Braverman
, Colby Buzzell
, Vikram Chandra
, Dave Eggers
, Daniel Handler
, Wesley Stace, Derek Kirk Kim, Noah Levine
, Mark Morford
, Peggy Orenstein
, Ann Patchett
, Ishmael Reed
, Lolly Winston, Jane Smiley
, George Smoot
, Gary Amdahl, Tamim Ansary
, Tom Barbash
, Frank Portman, and approximately 330 others.
A hallmark of Litquake is the broad range of authors, categories and readers represented. In 2007, that included Kidquake, Science and Religion, Jane Smiley
in conversation with Daniel Handler
(aka Lemony Snicket), an evening of original shorts written specifically on the theme of "The Lesser Evil," story telling at Porch Light - where authors are required to tell a story as opposed to reading one, panels on getting published, poetry, memoir, women authors, journalists, politics, science fiction, mystery, food and more
2008
The 2008 Litquake festival, October 3-11, included 11,186 attendees, more than 350 writers, several sold-out events, and the well-attended Lit Crawl. The winner of the 2009 Barbary Coast Award was Tobias Wolff in an evening held at the newly opened Daniel Libeskind designed Contemporary Jewish Museum. Among those on stage paying tribute to Wolff were emcee Michael Krasny, Tom Barbash, Stephen Elliott, Adam Johnson, Tom Kealy, Graham Leggat, Ann Packer, Tom Perrotta, George Saunders and the Word for Word Performing Arts Company.
2009
In 2009 Litquake opened on October 9 with Black, White and Read: Litquake's Book Ball http://www.litquake.org/black-white-and-read-litquake%E2%80%99s-opening-night-book-ball/ to celebrate its 10th anniversary. Loosely based on Truman Capote's famous Black and White Ball of 1966, it's the first of a total of 98 scheduled event and was the first of three articles on the festival in The New York Timeshttp://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/10/litquake-bookworms-come-out-to-play/?scp=1&sq=litquake&st=cse. On the following Monday October 12th, the festival produced the event Journey to the End of the Bay: Punk Rockers Spill Their Guts in release of co-founder Jack Boulware's new book Gimme Something Better: The Profound, Progressive, and Occasionally Pointless History of Bay Area Punk from Dead Kennedys to Green Day. Litquake also produced its very first zine symposium with the event Underground Exposed, in which many long time SF zinesters discussed their experiences in underground publishing. 500 authors were featured over the 9 days of the festival, and true to Litquake form they all appeared in variety of venues that included 24 bars, 16 bookstores, 9 galleries, 8 theaters, 7 coffee shops, a barbershop, a cathedral, a messenger bag store, and a bee keeping supply shop along with libraries, restaurants, museums, and more. This strategy not only encourages each event to take on a unique personality based on the venue, but reflects Litquake's belief that writers and readers are an essential part of the San Francisco economy by driving traffic through the doors of participating businesses and organizations. The 2009 winner of the Barbary Coast Award was author Amy Tan, who was both honored and "braised" (as opposed to full-on roasted) on Wednesday, October 14, 2009, at the Herbst Theater. Guests included Armistead Maupin
, Andrew Sean Greer
, Roger McGuinn (of The Byrds), and Bonesetter's Daughter and soprano Zheng Cao among others. This too was written up in The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/18/books/18sfculture.html?_r=1 who drew parallels between the writing scene in San Francisco to the thriving theater scene in Chicago, aka the "city of big shoulders." The paper of record for much of the nation also wrote up the final night's event, the Lit Crawl, a three and a half hour literary pub crawl through the Mission District
2010
Without doubt, one of the highlights of the 2010 festival was the appearance by Tom Waits and Patti Smith among others, at the Barbary Coast Awards held in honor of Lawrence Ferlinghetti and City Lights Booksellers. At one point Waits sat at the piano and reminisced about City Lights, and sang a portion of the poem Coney Island of the Mind as he played a spontaneous accompaniment. In San Francisco to also perform at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Music Festival, Patti Smith took the stage with her longtime collaborator Lenny Kaye for a mesmeric version of "Wing." Over 450 authors were on deck for the 2010 festival, including Terry McMillan, Jonathan Lethem, Tobias Wolff and many more representing the diversity of both the reading and writing scene in the Bay Area.
2011
The 2011 festival was held October 7-15, 2011 and saw a total attendance of !6,581, a 23% increase over 2010. Among the highlights: Ishmael Reed receiving the Barbary Coast Award, Chelsea Handler in conversation, Jeffrey Eugenides, crime writers from Scandinavia for an evening of Nordic noir
, including Liza Marklund, Jørn Lier Horst and Tom Egeland, as well as a group of authors representing Young Ireland: Chris Binchy, Belinda McKeon, John Butler, Claire Kilroy and Lucy Caldwell. Also on deck, an afternoon of Words on the Waves on the houseboats of Sausalito. Over 830 appeared at this year's festival, 398 in 85 events during the main festival, and an additional 450 at the closing night Lit Crawl through the Mission District in 76 venues over the course of 3.5 hours. Other authors of note in 2011 included:
http://www.litquake.org/festival
San Francisco, California
San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...
annual literary festival. Originally starting out as Litstock for a single day on July 16, 1999, it ran for two years under the same name before going dark in 2001 after 9/11. It re-emerged in 2002 with a new name, determined to make the most of the fact that according to USA Today
USA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
, San Francisco has the highest per capita consumption of both alcohol and books. Consisting of readings, discussions, and themed events held at different Bay Area venues, the annual festival features predominantly Bay Area authors but opens a limited number of slots for those from the outside, and kicks off during either the first or second weekend of October, depending on the year. The Litquake Literary Project produces the event, while Intersection for the Arts and others provide fiscal sponsorship.
The first year under the Litquake name, 2002, included over 60 authors and four venues. At the 2003 festival, 100 authors participated over four days. By 2004, the event had grown to 175 authors and nine days. The nine day 2005 festival included 250 Bay Area participating authors and 6,975 attendees. The 2006 festival hit the 7833 attendee mark and included over 300 authors as well as Litquake's first ever movie, the cartoon Best Book Ever.
2011's festival saw a total attendance of !6,581, a 23% increase over 2010.
Jack Boulware and Jane Ganahl are the co-founders and Artistic Directors, while Elise Proulx is the Executive Director.
Recent festivals
2007In 2007, the venues were expanded for the first time to include locations outside of San Francisco. Opening night honored Armistead Maupin
Armistead Maupin
Armistead Jones Maupin, Jr. is an American writer, best known for his Tales of the City series of novels, based in San Francisco.-Early life:...
with the introduction of the Barbary Coast
Barbary Coast, San Francisco, California
Barbary Coast was a red-light district in old San Francisco, California. Geographically it constituted nine blocks bounded by Montgomery Street, Washington Street, Stockton Street, and Broadway...
Award, The evening starred Amy Tan
Amy Tan
Amy Tan is an American writer whose works explore mother-daughter relationships. Her most well-known work is The Joy Luck Club, which has been translated into 35 languages...
, who surprised the audience by first appearing in kitschy Chinese peasant garb, only to re-emerge in an ensemble of black leather and a whip, Andrew Sean Greer's eloquent memory/narrative of his first introduction to Tales of the City, Father Guido Sarducci's mysteriously hilarious treatise on the effects of an over abundance of lemons in an Italian village, K. M. Soehnlein's rediscovery of a fantasia on Jackie Kennedy written by Maupin in 1980, Susie Bright
Susie Bright
Susannah "Susie" Bright is an American writer, speaker, teacher, audio-show host, and performer, all on the subject of sexuality....
, cast members of Beach Blanket Babylon
Beach Blanket Babylon
Steve Silver's Beach Blanket Babylon is America's longest-running musical revue. The show began its run in 1974, at Club Savoy Tivoli and has since moved to the larger Club Fugazi in the North Beach district of San Francisco...
, Jon Ginoli
Jon Ginoli
Jon Latimer Ginoli is an American guitarist. He is best known as a member of the band Pansy Division, which was founded by Ginoli and Chris Freeman in 1991. Pansy Division is known as one of the founding examples of the queercore genre of punk rock...
, actress Laura Linney
Laura Linney
Laura Leggett Linney is an American actress of film, television, and theatre. Linney has won three Emmy Awards, two Golden Globes, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. She has been nominated for three times for an Academy Award and once for a BAFTA Award...
, Pamela Ling and Judd Winick
Judd Winick
Judd Winick is an American comic book, comic strip and television writer/artist and former reality television personality...
, Michelle Tea
Michelle Tea
Michelle Tea is an American author, poet, and literary arts organizer whose autobiographical works explore queer culture, feminism, race, class, prostitution, and other topics. She is originally from Chelsea, Massachusetts and currently lives in San Francisco...
, as well as the late Ethel Merman
Ethel Merman
Ethel Merman was an American actress and singer. Known primarily for her powerful voice and roles in musical theatre, she has been called "the undisputed First Lady of the musical comedy stage." Among the many standards introduced by Merman in Broadway musicals are "I Got Rhythm", "Everything's...
singing When the Lights Go Down in the City, by Journey
Journey (band)
Journey is an American rock band formed in 1973 in San Francisco by former members of Santana. The band has gone through several phases; its strongest commercial success occurred between the 1978 and 1987, after which it temporarily disbanded...
. Other notable participating Bay Area writers over the course of the 8 day festival included Kim Addonizio
Kim Addonizio
Kim Addonizio is an award-winning American poet and novelist.-Life:Addonizio is the daughter of tennis champion Pauline Betz and sports writer Bob Addie....
, Kate Braverman
Kate Braverman
Kate Braverman is an American novelist, short story writer, and poet, originally from Los Angeles, California.-Life:Braverman has a BA in Anthropology from University of California, Berkeley and an MA in English from Sonoma State University...
, Colby Buzzell
Colby Buzzell
Colby Buzzell is an American author, blogger and former United States Army soldier.Buzzell grew up in San Ramon, California and enlisted in the United States Army at the age of 26. Prior to joining the Army he described his life as engaging in a lot of drinking, drug use, dead-end jobs and a...
, Vikram Chandra
Vikram Chandra
Vikram Chandra is an Indian writer. His first novel, Red Earth and Pouring Rain, won the 1996 Commonwealth Writers' Prize, Best First Book....
, Dave Eggers
Dave Eggers
Dave Eggers is an American writer, editor, and publisher. He is known for the best-selling memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and for his more recent work as a screenwriter. He is also the co-founder of the literacy project 826 Valencia.-Life:Eggers was born in Boston, Massachusetts,...
, Daniel Handler
Daniel Handler
Daniel Handler is an American author, screenwriter and accordionist. He is best known for his work under the pen name Lemony Snicket.-Personal life:...
, Wesley Stace, Derek Kirk Kim, Noah Levine
Noah Levine
Noah Levine is an American Buddhist teacher and the author of the books Dharma Punx: A Memoir and Against the Stream. As a counselor known for his philosophical alignment with Buddhism and punk ideology, he identifies his Buddhist beliefs and practices with both the Theravada and Mahayana traditions...
, Mark Morford
Mark Morford
Mark Morford is a columnist and culture critic for the San Francisco Chronicle and SFGate.com. His opinion column is called Notes & Errata and is published weekly. His topics vary from sex and deviance to popular culture, technology, spirituality, music and politics.- Background :Morford's online...
, Peggy Orenstein
Peggy Orenstein
Peggy Orenstein is the author of the New York Times best-selling memoir, Waiting for Daisy: A Tale of Two Continents, Three Religions, Five Infertility Doctors, An Oscar, an Atomic Bomb, A Romantic Night, and One Woman's Quest to Become a Mother .Previous books include, Flux: Women on Sex, Work,...
, Ann Patchett
Ann Patchett
Ann Patchett is an American author. She received the Orange Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award in 2002 for her novel Bel Canto. Patchett's other novels include Run, The Patron Saint of Liars, Taft, and The Magician's Assistant, which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize...
, Ishmael Reed
Ishmael Reed
Ishmael Scott Reed is an American poet, essayist, and novelist. A prominent African-American literary figure, Reed is known for his satirical works challenging American political culture, and highlighting political and cultural oppression.Reed has been described as one of the most controversial...
, Lolly Winston, Jane Smiley
Jane Smiley
Jane Smiley is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist.-Biography:Born in Los Angeles, California, Smiley grew up in Webster Groves, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis, and graduated from John Burroughs School. She obtained an A.B. at Vassar College, then earned an M.F.A. and Ph.D. from the...
, George Smoot
George Smoot
George Fitzgerald Smoot III is an American astrophysicist, cosmologist, Nobel laureate, and $1 million TV quiz show prize winner . He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2006 for his work on COBE with John C...
, Gary Amdahl, Tamim Ansary
Tamim Ansary
Mir Tamim Ansary is an Afghan-American author and public speaker. He is the author of West of Kabul, East of New York, a book published shortly after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and is a columnist for the encyclopedia website Encarta.- Early life and education :Ansary was born in...
, Tom Barbash
Tom Barbash
Tom Barbash is an American writer of fiction and nonfiction, educator and critic. He is the author of the novel The Last Good Chance and the bestselling nonfiction work On Top of the World: Cantor Fitzgerald, Howard Lutnick & 9/11: A Story of Loss & Renewal...
, Frank Portman, and approximately 330 others.
A hallmark of Litquake is the broad range of authors, categories and readers represented. In 2007, that included Kidquake, Science and Religion, Jane Smiley
Jane Smiley
Jane Smiley is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist.-Biography:Born in Los Angeles, California, Smiley grew up in Webster Groves, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis, and graduated from John Burroughs School. She obtained an A.B. at Vassar College, then earned an M.F.A. and Ph.D. from the...
in conversation with Daniel Handler
Daniel Handler
Daniel Handler is an American author, screenwriter and accordionist. He is best known for his work under the pen name Lemony Snicket.-Personal life:...
(aka Lemony Snicket), an evening of original shorts written specifically on the theme of "The Lesser Evil," story telling at Porch Light - where authors are required to tell a story as opposed to reading one, panels on getting published, poetry, memoir, women authors, journalists, politics, science fiction, mystery, food and more
2008
The 2008 Litquake festival, October 3-11, included 11,186 attendees, more than 350 writers, several sold-out events, and the well-attended Lit Crawl. The winner of the 2009 Barbary Coast Award was Tobias Wolff in an evening held at the newly opened Daniel Libeskind designed Contemporary Jewish Museum. Among those on stage paying tribute to Wolff were emcee Michael Krasny, Tom Barbash, Stephen Elliott, Adam Johnson, Tom Kealy, Graham Leggat, Ann Packer, Tom Perrotta, George Saunders and the Word for Word Performing Arts Company.
2009
In 2009 Litquake opened on October 9 with Black, White and Read: Litquake's Book Ball http://www.litquake.org/black-white-and-read-litquake%E2%80%99s-opening-night-book-ball/ to celebrate its 10th anniversary. Loosely based on Truman Capote's famous Black and White Ball of 1966, it's the first of a total of 98 scheduled event and was the first of three articles on the festival in The New York Timeshttp://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/10/litquake-bookworms-come-out-to-play/?scp=1&sq=litquake&st=cse. On the following Monday October 12th, the festival produced the event Journey to the End of the Bay: Punk Rockers Spill Their Guts in release of co-founder Jack Boulware's new book Gimme Something Better: The Profound, Progressive, and Occasionally Pointless History of Bay Area Punk from Dead Kennedys to Green Day. Litquake also produced its very first zine symposium with the event Underground Exposed, in which many long time SF zinesters discussed their experiences in underground publishing. 500 authors were featured over the 9 days of the festival, and true to Litquake form they all appeared in variety of venues that included 24 bars, 16 bookstores, 9 galleries, 8 theaters, 7 coffee shops, a barbershop, a cathedral, a messenger bag store, and a bee keeping supply shop along with libraries, restaurants, museums, and more. This strategy not only encourages each event to take on a unique personality based on the venue, but reflects Litquake's belief that writers and readers are an essential part of the San Francisco economy by driving traffic through the doors of participating businesses and organizations. The 2009 winner of the Barbary Coast Award was author Amy Tan, who was both honored and "braised" (as opposed to full-on roasted) on Wednesday, October 14, 2009, at the Herbst Theater. Guests included Armistead Maupin
Armistead Maupin
Armistead Jones Maupin, Jr. is an American writer, best known for his Tales of the City series of novels, based in San Francisco.-Early life:...
, Andrew Sean Greer
Andrew Sean Greer
Andrew Sean Greer is an American novelist and short story writer.He is the bestselling author of The Story of a Marriage, which The New York Times has called an “inspired, lyrical novel,” and The Confessions of Max Tivoli, which was named one of the best books of 2004 by the San Francisco...
, Roger McGuinn (of The Byrds), and Bonesetter's Daughter and soprano Zheng Cao among others. This too was written up in The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/18/books/18sfculture.html?_r=1 who drew parallels between the writing scene in San Francisco to the thriving theater scene in Chicago, aka the "city of big shoulders." The paper of record for much of the nation also wrote up the final night's event, the Lit Crawl, a three and a half hour literary pub crawl through the Mission District
2010
Without doubt, one of the highlights of the 2010 festival was the appearance by Tom Waits and Patti Smith among others, at the Barbary Coast Awards held in honor of Lawrence Ferlinghetti and City Lights Booksellers. At one point Waits sat at the piano and reminisced about City Lights, and sang a portion of the poem Coney Island of the Mind as he played a spontaneous accompaniment. In San Francisco to also perform at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Music Festival, Patti Smith took the stage with her longtime collaborator Lenny Kaye for a mesmeric version of "Wing." Over 450 authors were on deck for the 2010 festival, including Terry McMillan, Jonathan Lethem, Tobias Wolff and many more representing the diversity of both the reading and writing scene in the Bay Area.
2011
The 2011 festival was held October 7-15, 2011 and saw a total attendance of !6,581, a 23% increase over 2010. Among the highlights: Ishmael Reed receiving the Barbary Coast Award, Chelsea Handler in conversation, Jeffrey Eugenides, crime writers from Scandinavia for an evening of Nordic noir
Nordic noir
Nordic noir, a type of "Scandie lit", refers to the literature genre of Scandinavian crime fiction. According to The Independent, "Nordic crime fiction carries a more respectable cachet... than similar genre fiction produced in Britain or the US". Language, heroes and settings are three...
, including Liza Marklund, Jørn Lier Horst and Tom Egeland, as well as a group of authors representing Young Ireland: Chris Binchy, Belinda McKeon, John Butler, Claire Kilroy and Lucy Caldwell. Also on deck, an afternoon of Words on the Waves on the houseboats of Sausalito. Over 830 appeared at this year's festival, 398 in 85 events during the main festival, and an additional 450 at the closing night Lit Crawl through the Mission District in 76 venues over the course of 3.5 hours. Other authors of note in 2011 included:
- Donnell Alexander – Journalist and author part of the Afro Surrealism movement (Litquake debut)
- Chris Adrian – Author of The Great Night and pediatric oncologist
- Brian Christian – Poet and author of The Most Human Human (Litquake debut)
- James Ellroy – Master of noir in-conversation with Janis Cooke Newman
- Jefferey Eugenides – Author of the The Virgin Suicides, Middlesex and the upcoming The Marriage Plot (Litquake debut)
- Christa Faust – Mystery “Neo pulp” author (Litquake debut)
- Julia Glass – Author of Three Junes and The World Whole World Over; and I see You Everywhere (Litquake debut)
- Guillermo Gómez-Peña – Author and performance artist
- Sara Gran – Crime and thriller author (Litquake debut)
- Andrew Sean Greer – Author of The Confessions of Max Tivoli and The Story of a Marriage
- Daniel Handler – Author who also moonlights as Lemony Snicket when the mood suits
- Chuck Klosterman – Nationally known essayist with a bent for pop culture and consulting editor for Grantland.com (Litquake debut)
- Jillian Lauren – Former stripper and escort who ultimately fled her life in the harem of the Prince of Brunai and wrote the memoir, Some Girls: My Life in a Harem
- Adam Mansbach – Fiction writer responsible for Go the F**k To Sleep among other more literary works
- Cyra McFadden – Beloved Bay Area author, columnist and satirist who first came to prominence in the late 70s with The Serial: A Year in the Life of Marin County (Litquake debut)
- Marc Maron – Comedian and Broadcaster live on stage
- Tom McGuane – Novelist, screenwriter and essayist in conversation with Litquake cofounder Jack Boulware (Litquake debut)
- Christopher Moore – Author and satirist
- Alejandro Murguia – Poet, short story writer and teacher at SF State and two time American Book Award winner
- Mary Roach – Author deservedly known for her one-word titles such as Stiff, Spook and Bonk
- Karen Russell – New Yorker “ 20 Under 40” alum and author of the collection Swamplandia (Litquake debut)
- Melanie Rae Thon – Noted American author’s work will be part of Stories on Stage (Litquake debut)
- Dan Woodrell – Author who elevated “rural noir” to the status of literature with his novel Winter’s Bone (Litquake Debut)
http://www.litquake.org/festival