updated from a previous post on Litquake at 20
This week San Francisco’s literary festival, Litquake, celebrates 25 years of supporting writers, publishers, bookstores and the literary arts here in the Bay Area.
Running October 10-26, Litquake is the big event of the year for the Bay Area’s literary community. The mostly free readings and panels during Litquake and Litcrawl have become starting places for some of our writers and remain a testing and resting ground for those with more experience in need of a little recharge. These days, I mostly write about books, but when the festival rolls around, it’s a chance to remind myself, I too am a writer of books.
The festival’s co-founders, Jack Boulware and Jane Ganahl are my kind of people: Journalists and authors by trade, they dared to dream beyond the newsroom and share their love of the writing life with their immediate community. As their cohort of writers grew to include novelists, memoirists, biographers, sexperts, technologists and performance poets, the festival grew and grew, blossoming into its current incarnation as year round foundation and a 10+ day fest, culminating with an evening LItcrawl. Boulware and Ganahl have since stepped down as directors and as of this year, the organization welcomes its new director, Norah Piehl. Litquake is also powered by a small staff and tons of volunteers.
Though the years, I’ve been lucky to participate in the annual festival as a reader. Litquake has always been a place to try out new ideas and styles and as a writer I’ve test run biography, memoir and poetry, to get a feel for how the work sits with an audience of listeners. Litquake month has also served as a time of the year to create new work, to reset and reclaim one’s writing life, and affirm, that we are still readers and writers, no matter where the day or our lives may take us.
In more recent years, I’ve volunteer-organized and curated readings at Litquake in support of independent bookstores, particularly during San Francisco’s gentrification crisis. In 2014 we celebrated 55 years of Marcus Books. In 2015 and 2016, we honored the Mission District booksellers Modern Times Bookstore Collective, Alley Cat, Dog Eared and Adobe Books with standing-room-only events at the Make Out Room as fundraisers for Litquake and the grassroots United Booksellers (UBSF has since disbanded, but not before publishing a series of chapbooks, The City Is Already Speaking in collaboration with poet laureate Kim Shuck and featuring contributions by Tongo Eisen-Martin, Alejandro Murguía and other Bay Area poets). This year, the festival honors bookstores citywide at its opening night fundraiser, the Bookseller’s Ball. We are lucky to have so many bookstores here in San Francisco (my go-to is Bird & Beckett Books and Records). Despite digitization, the pandemic, extreme rent and operating costs (like insurance), San Francisco’s independent bookstores are strong and thriving.
It was at Bird and Beckett in 2019, that we hosted a full house for a comeback discussion with author David Talbot on Between Heaven and Hell: The Story of My Stroke, which he survived in 2017 and lived to write about. Talbot, a longtime supporter of independent booksellers and up and coming authors, has since survived a second stroke. You may offer financial support to him and his family by linking here.
As a literary community, I like to think we are mindful of supporting authors in need, as well as our elder writers and readers. For the last five years, I’ve been associated with Litquake as a teaching artist with The Elder Project, a community writing program offered to older adults. Facilitating these groups, meeting writers and hearing their stories has been an unexpected source of inspiration. The program continues to grow and each season we welcome new writers at all levels of their practice. It’s a great joy and privilege to carry on the work, conceived by poet, Jessie Scrimager Galloway, with our participants and my fellow teaching artists.
I had hoped to return to this year’s festival to read from my new book, Len Chandler: Shadow Dream Chaser of Rainbows, along with some as yet unpublished work. Due to a conflict, I will not be reading as scheduled, though I hope to find an alternative venue to test drive the new writings. Stay tuned to this space for updates and until then, I will see you at the festival. As always, thanks for reading and for your support of this webpage.
Filed under: Book news, California, San Francisco News, books, bookstores, Litquake, reading, writing
Denise Sullivan 