Litquake's Lit Cast

Recorded live at Litquake Festival 2025 Shortly after the 60-year celebration of The Grateful Dead at Golden Gate Park, experts, intimates, and fans gathered at The Lost Church in San Francisco to continue spreading the love and sharing the memories. Litquake co-founder, journalist, and author Jack Boulware moderated a deadhead line up including Amelia Davis, David Gans, Jim Newton, and Dennis McNally. Enjoy! Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/fUlvS0CcmMI?si=K5sZ8pfLo6_j1bSM

Recorded live at  KALW during Litquake Festival 2025 Sarah Goodyear and Doug Gordon, co-authors of the book Life After Cars and hosts of "The War on Cars" podcast, discuss the idea of building infrastructure that isn't centered around the automobile. In conversation with KALW's Sunni Khalid, they discuss the history of car-centric culture and outline the ways in which it contributes to inequality, climate crisis, and even the loneliness epidemic. They also offer glimpses at cities tackling the problem in novel and effective ways and offer practical tips for navigating the (car-free) road ahead.   

Recorded live during Litquake Festival 2025 A beautiful evening was had with U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón as she read and discussed Startlement, an essential collection spanning nearly twenty years of emphatic, fearlessly original poetry from one of America's most celebrated living writers. With no shortage of awards and accolades to her name (MacArthur Genius and Time Woman of the Year, anyone?), Limón looked back on her distinguished career and shared radiant new work for the first time. In conversation with Matthew Zapruder. 

Recorded live at Litquake Festival 2025 Outdoor enthusiast Josh Jackson had never heard of "BLM land" before a casual recommendation from a friend led him to a free campsite in the desert—and the revelation that over 15 million acres of land in California are owned collectively by the people. Recorded live at KALW during Litquake Festival 2025, Jackson discusses his new book, The Enduring Wild, which takes us on a road trip spanning thousands of miles, crisscrossing the Golden State to seek out every parcel of public wilderness therein. Jackson tells of the Indigenous peoples who have called them home for millennia, of the threats that imperil them today, and of the grassroots organizers and political champions who have rallied to uphold mandates to protect these natural treasures for generations to come. In conversation with KALW's Marissa Ortega-Welch.  

Recorded live at Litquake 2025 What happens when a work becomes unbound by language, medium, and format? How does meaning and experience shift? These are the questions we explore in this recording from Litquake Festival 2025. Writer, editor, and voice director Camilo Garzón and special guests, Noelle de la Paz, Monica Cure, and Amanda Nazareno, guide a listening party through three immersive audio adaptations: an Ecuadorian horror story about altitude sickness transformed into auditory terror, Romanian poetry layered with kitsch and nostalgia, and a Japanese short story with sounds and voices pushing the limits of reality. These multiple translations—from language, to audio, to the stage—unbind narrative from any single form, transcending the boundaries of medium, translation, and performance. 

Recorded live at Counterpulse in San Francisco during Litquake Festival 2025.  Award-winning writer and cultural critic Sarah Schulman discusses the themes in her book, The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity. In conversation with 48 Hills' Mark Bieschke, she delves into the intricate and often misunderstood concept of solidarity to provide a new vision for what it means to engage in this work—and why it matters.

Recorded live at the Gray Area Theater during Litquake Festival 2025 With bylines in The Nation, the New Republic, and The Baffler, financial reporter Jacob Silverman has had his eyes on Silicon Valley for years. Now, in his deeply researched book, Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley, he traces the tech world's reactionary turn. Elon Musk, as Silverman illustrates, is only the most recent and high-profile example of this rightward lurch. In what Kirkus has called "a book to trouble your dreams," Silverman traces the promise of political influence, the enticements of deregulation, and the lure of technofascism. Silverman's partner in this vital conversation is Alex Hanna, Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute and co-author of The AI Con. 

The Bay Area's long-running Porchlight storytelling series returned to Litquake once again for this special edition, featuring tales on the theme of Touched by an Angel: Stories of Mentors, Teachers, Guardians, and Influencers.  Featuring off the cuff stories by Litquake co-founder Jack Boulware and memoirists Nico Lang, Adam Nimoy, Eugene Rodriguez , Dawn Silva, and Christina Vo. Co-hosted by Arline Klatte and Beth Lisick. With music by Marc Capelle.  Interested in learning more about Litquake? Visit us at www.litquake.org Connect with us on Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky!

Generation Women returns to Litquake with a powerful night of live, multigenerational storytelling. Founded by author Georgia Clark in 2017, this series amplifies underheard voices and fosters intergenerational connection. In this special festival edition, one woman or non-binary storyteller from each decade—20s through 70s+—shares an original, true story inspired by the evening's theme. Featuring performances by Eirinie Carson, Susan Kiyo Ito, Giovanna Lomanto, Jenny Pritchett, Rachel Levin, and Jane Smiley. Hosted by writer and curator Samantha Schoech. Interested in learning more about Litquake? Visit us at www.litquake.org Connect with us on Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky!

Recorded at The Lost Church during Litquake 2024, this magical evening features DIY witch and literary icon Michelle Tea in conversation with The Witching Year author Diana Helmuth, guided by writer and artist MK Chavez—plus a special onstage gathering in the second half. Interested in learning more about Litquake? Visit us at www.litquake.org Connect with us on Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky!  

Three acclaimed writers—Morgan Parker, Carvell Wallace, and sam sax—offer bold, deeply personal takes on healing in a world that resists it. From mental health and identity to queerness and survival, their recent works reimagine what self-love can look like today. Interested in learning more about Litquake? Visit us at www.litquake.org Connect with us on Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky!  

Recorded live at Litquake Festival 2024, this episode celebrates Wild Life, the latest from the minds behind Atlas Obscura. Editor Cara Giaimo, journalist Marissa Ortega-Welch, and Oakland Zoo's Amy Gotliffe share stories of Earth's most awe-inspiring creatures—and why they matter. Interested in learning more about Litquake? Visit us at www.litquake.org Connect with us on Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky!  

Recorded during Litquake Festival 2024, journalist Alison Owings and Del Seymour—founder of Code Tenderloin and former unhoused advocate—share a powerful conversation about recovery, resilience, and community transformation. Featuring a special performance by Skywatchers! Interested in learning more about Litquake? Visit us at www.litquake.org Connect with us on Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky!

On the eve of the 2024 presidential election, journalist Paola Ramos joined us to discuss her urgent new book, Defectors: The Rise of the Latino Far Right. In conversation with KALW's Angie Coiro, Ramos explores the complex forces—identity, race, disillusionment, and political trauma—driving a growing number of Latino voters toward conservative candidates and causes.  Interested in learning more about Litquake? Visit us at www.litquake.org Connect with us on Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky!

In the third of our "How They Did It" series from summer of 2024, we heard from four talented novelists who have blended fact with their fiction, with dazzling results. Novelist Jasmin Darznik moderated a wide-ranging conversation with novelists Karen Joy Fowler, Dawn Tripp, and Gail Tsukiyama. We gathered once again at the Page Street Co-Working space in Berkeley with our co-presenter LitCamp and book sales by Mrs. Dalloway's Bookstore. 

Another from the archives! A staple of Litquake for nearly two decades, the Bay Area's long-running Porchlight storytelling series returned once again to Litquake Festival 2023 for this special edition, featuring tales on the theme of Tricks Up My Sleeve: Invisible Magic. With authors Derrick Brown, Dorothy Lazard, Dominic Lim, Ahmed Naji, and Dan Stuart. Porchlight is co-hosted as always by Arline Klatte and Beth Lisick, and with music by Marc Capelle.   

Litquake Festival 2021 saw us return to San Francisco's gothic and gorgeous Grace Cathedral for the first time post-COVID. This event, which has now been going for almost 10 years is always a special evening. In 2021, Grace Notes featured Sandra Lim, Forrest Gander, Miguel Murphy, and Derrick Austin with Danusha Lameris' poems read by TS Leonard as Danusha was sick that night. Grace Notes has been curated and hosted by D.A. Powell since its inception, and is now co-curated by Preeti Vangani. Check out our upcoming Grace Notes event during Litquake Festival 2024 on Wed. 10/23. 

Together with Green Apple Books, we copresented the launch party celebrating R.O. Kwon's highly-anticipated second novel, EXHIBIT, the exhilarating, blazing-hot story of a woman caught between her desires and her life. On this night in May at San Francisco's historic Verdi Club, Kwon was in conversation with friend and fellow author Ingrid Rojas Contreras. 

Writing anything for public consumption is an act of bravery, but writing memoir and autobiography requires next-level courage. How can you share a true story that demands to be told—even if it might harm relationships, revisit trauma, unearth secrets—and portray your own life honestly and vulnerably, without the benefit of an Instagram filter? In the this "How They Did It" conversation, co-presented by Litquake and LitCamp and recorded at Page Street Co-Working, we'll hear from five intrepid authors of recent memoirs, all of whom took the heroic step of committing their fascinating stories to the page. Eddie Ahn (Advocate), Sylvia Brownrigg (The Whole Staggering Mystery), Margaret Juhae Lee (Starry Field), Susan Lieu (The Manicurist's Daughter), and Carvell Wallace (Another Word for Love) bravely unfurl stories of family, memory, ambition, healing, and love. Our moderator is Rachel Howard, author of the memoir The Lost Night. What did they risk on the page? What, if anything, do they regret? And how can they stir other would-be memoirists to take up the mantel of bravery and write their stories, no matter the stakes?

In early April, we celebrated IAIA with a reading from students, alumni, and faculty at Green Apple Books on the Park. You're gonna hear from Tracey Abeyta, a current Institute student pursuing a MFA in Fiction; alumna Jennifer Elise Foerster; recent IAIA graduate, Ibe Liebenberg; and Deborah Jackson Taffa, the director of the MFA Creative Writing program at IAIA.   

We're going way back to Litquake Festival 2012. It was a Sunday evening early in the festival at Z Space, the same Sunday that Hardly Strictly Bluegrass wrapped. That night, Hardly Strictly lent us some special guests with My Morning Jacket's Jim James enjoying from the stands. On stage to celebrate Woody Guthrie's 100th birthday, we had Jay Farrar of Son Volt and Uncle Tupelo fame, as well as surprise guest alt-country legend Steve Earle who closed the night out.  Keep an ear/eye out for more archival recordings and stories as we count down to the 25th anniversary Litquake Festival, October 10-26, 2024. 

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."

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? 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.