Seismic Salon with Juan Luis Herrera
Thurs. April 29th, 5-6:15 pm PST
Zoom

Seismic Salons are a series of fundraisers offering conversation time with A-list authors for 10 lucky participants. All proceeds benefit Litquake's on-going programs.

To close out National Poetry Month, Litquake is thrilled to welcome former U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera to our Seismic Salon, where he will answer questions from readers, aspiring poets and anyone who wants to know life is like for a U.S. Poet Laureate,. Herrera also served as California State Poet Laureate from 2012-2014. His many published collections include the recent Every Day We Get More Illegal; Notes on the Assemblage; Senegal Taxi; and Half of the World in Light: New and Selected Poems, a recipient of the PEN/Beyond Margins Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award; and 187 Reasons Mexicanos Can’t Cross The Border: Undocuments 1971-2007. Herrera is also a performance artist and activist on behalf of migrant and indigenous communities and at-risk youth. $100, a tax deductible donation.

Seismic Salon with Natalie Baszile
Thurs. May 6th, 5-6:15 pm PST
Zoom

Seismic Salons are a series of fundraisers offering conversation time with A-list authors for 10 lucky participants. Thank you to these authors for donating their time!

Litquake is excited to welcome Natalie Baszile, author of the New York Times bestseller Queen Sugar (now a series on OWN network) to our Seismic Salon series! Natalie has made the leap from fiction to nonfiction in her newest book, We Are Each Other’s Harvest: Celebrating African American Farmers Land and Legacy. This anthology of poetry, essays, and interviews examines Black people’s connection to the American land, from Emancipation to today. Natalie has a M.A. in Afro-American Studies from UCLA, and is a graduate of Warren Wilson College’s MFA Program for Writers. Queen Sugar was named one of the San Francisco Chronicle’s Best Books of 2014, and nominated for an NAACP Image Award. Her nonfiction work has appeared in Lenny Letter, The Bitter Southerner, O, The Oprah Magazine, The Rumpus, and a number of anthologies. $100, a tax deductible donation.

Forest Gander: Twice Alive
Thurs. May 13th, 5-6 pm PST
Zoom
Co-presented with City Lights Booksellers & Publishers

Litquake is thrilled to present this launch event for the new poetry collection Twice Alive (New Directions), by Pulitzer Prize winner Forrest Gander, as part of our Epicenter series. With these searing ecological love poems, Gander addresses the exigencies of our historical moment and the intimacies, personal and environmental, that bind us to others and to the world. Drawing from his training in geology and the tradition of Sangam literature, Gander invests these poems with an emotional intensity that illuminates our deep-tangled interrelations. Forrest will read from and discuss his work. Audience Q&A to follow. Registration required. Spots are limited. FREE, $10-15 suggested donation

About Litquake
Litquake’s diverse live programs are created with the aim of inspiring critical engagement with the key issues of the day, bringing people together around the common humanity encapsulated in literature, and perpetuating a sense of literary community, as well as a vibrant forum for Bay Area writing. We believe in literature as a public good, so we work to produce events that are accessible to all. www.litquake.org

Litquake is grateful for the support of the following funders who help make our programming possible. Institutional Giving: Adobe Employee Community Fund, Bill Graham Memorial Foundation, California Arts Council, California Humanities, Craig Newmark Philanthropies, Fleishhacker Family Foundation, Grants for the Arts, Margaret and William R. Hearst III Foundation, Mary A. Crocker Trust, Miner Anderson Family Foundation, Mystery Writers of America, Northern California Chapter, National Endowment for the Arts, The Bernard Osher Foundation, Zellerbach Foundation. Individual Giving: Frances Dinkelspiel and Gary Wayne, Margaret and Will Hearst, Scott James and Gerald Cain, Craig Newmark, and Nicole Miner and Robert Mailer Anderson. Media Sponsors: San Francisco Chronicle, 7 X 7, KQED, Bay Area Reporter, Johnny Funcheap, and KALW 91.7