Forget Outside Lands, forget Portola, forget Hardly Strictly—when the annual Litquake lineup is released, we more introverted festival nerds already have our Pink Pony Club hats on and our giant foam fingers waving, yelling “Boooooooks!” Quietly, of course. “Boooooooks!“
This year’s schedule—October 9-25, concluding with the legendary all-day Litcrawl through the Mission and beyond—is one of the best yet. Featuring events with 500+ authors and performers, Litquake’s spicy expansion of what a literary festival can be (and where) stretches out over music (indie hero Jens Lekman’s “Songs for Other Peoples’ Weddings” kick things off at Swedish American Hall; later there’s “Tortured Poets: An Ode to Taylor Swift“), film (“Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America” featuring a Fists of Fury screening; “John Candy: A Life in Comedy” with Uncle Buck), childrens’ programming (“Kidquake: Upper Elementary“), food (“Disaster, With a Side of Noodles“; “Our Farmworking Hands Helped Harvest the Feast“; ), even floral exploration (“Poppy State: Commune with California” at the SF Botanical Gardens).
And then there’s pure literary love itself: Marathon readings of Moby Dick and Bastard Out of Carolina (by the recently passed queer icon Dorothy Allison); an evening with US Poet Laureate Ada Limón; appearances by hot-hot authors Brandon Taylor, Thomas Schlesser, Harmonia Rosales, Patricia Smith, and Jacob Silverman; favorites like Susan Orlean, Rebecca Solnit, Susie Bright, W. Kamau Bell, Dave Tynan, and Saeed Jones; ZYZZYVA Turns 40!; tons of programs with a social justice bent like Life After Cars: Freeing Ourselves from the Tyranny of the Automobile with KALW and Poetry as Resistance: Ahmad Shamlou’s Enduring Voice—even an appearance by yours truly, truly humbled to be interviewing the great Sarah Schulman alongside a performance by the incredible Skywatchers dance troupe in The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity: A Tenderloin Workshop at Counterpulse.
48 Hills is proud to be a media sponsor of this year’s Litquake, and we’ll have lots more coverage, giveaways, and special events announcements along the way. But first, check out the schedule, mark your calendars, and grab tickets while they last at www.litquake.org.
