Dear Friends, 

One night during Litquake Festival 2020, former Richmond Poet Laureate CieraJevae Gordon took to the mic. “This is dedicated to y’all,” she said, smiling a moment before diving in. “If Roots could talk back, they’d say this place makes a home for love…” She roasted each poet lovingly one-by-one, praised their poems and personas, and spun a story of community between friends and poets. “Y’all have birthed a village,” she said at the end, “And truly it’s the Root Slam for me.” These poets, this audience, brought together briefly, but powerfully, to commune over a shared love. And it all happened over Zoom. 

We hope you came away from the past year of Litquake programs with a renewed sense of the power of story and storytelling, and the resilience of our beloved creative community. We sure have. Now help us shepherd the Bay Area literary family into the future. 
 

The Bay Area is coming back. How it will come back is the big question on everyone’s mind. Poets, writers, thinkers, storytellers of all shapes and varieties are the essential workers of this phase. Stories are a medium for empathy-raising, for discovery, and for the deep contemplation of the issues of the day. Litquake is here to ensure that they have a stage, and that they are heard. 

In 2020, we convened over 300 storytellers in front of an audience 30,000 strong, and doubled down on the democratization of storytelling in the Bay Area. After years of work, we are now a BIPOC-majority festival, with plenty still left to do. Last year, nearly every event was free. Our programs are as broad and all-encompassing as ever, from U.S. Poet Laureates conversing lyrically with Pulitzer Prize-winners, to elderly writers building community in their retirement homes, to local groups like Root Slam, who so beautifully epitomize what we are all about.

Like you, and like our community at large, Litquake is poised for a new beginning in 2021. Donate today and help us ensure that stories will continue to nourish and connect us.

About Litquake
Litquake seeks to foster interest in literature, perpetuate a sense of literary community, and provide a vibrant forum for Bay Area writing as a complement to the city's music, film, and cultural festivals. 2021 Dates: Oct. 7-23. www.litquake.org

Litquake is grateful for the support of the following funders who help make our programming possible. Institutional Giving: California Arts Council, California College of the Arts, California Institute of Integral Studies, Center for the Art of Translation, Chronicle Books, Craig Newmark Philanthropies, Grants for the Arts, HarperOne, Margaret and William R. Hearst III Foundation, Miner Anderson Family Foundation, Mystery Writers of America, Northern California Chapter, The Bernard Osher Foundation, Stanford Continuing Studies, Yerba Buena Gardens Festival, Zellerbach Foundation. Individual Giving: Frances Dinkelspiel and Gary Wayne, Margaret and Will Hearst, Scott James and Gerald Cain, Nion McEvoy, 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