Litquake is pleased to have Imani Cezanne, Vernon Keeve III, Achy Obejas, and Shruti Swamy as curators for this year's Out Loud series.Out Loud highlights the Bay Area’s BIPOC & LGBTQ+ writers and thought leaders and puts Litquake’s full event production resources into the hands of guest curators who produced a vibrant, impactful series of festival events.
Join us all afternoon on Saturday Oct. 16 as these curators & friends take the stage! Live music by Agua Pura!
The Revolution Poeticized Saturday, Oct. 16 · 12:00-1:00pm Yerba Buena Gardens Esplanade Sponsored by Yerba Buena Gardens Festival & Yerba Buena Community Benefit District
Poetry, by definition, is political. Therefore, poets cannot (and should not) strive to be apolitical but should constantly interrogate the ways their political views surface in their work. This showcase of Black Bay Area poets at Litquake Out Loud’s outdoor stage will explore poetry that engages in revolutionary themes, concepts, and ideas, and challenge each of us to reimagine what true political transformation looks like. Seats available but not guaranteed. Bring a blanket for the grass! FREE, $5-10 suggested donation (pre-registration encouraged)
The Hydra: A Series for Black and Brown Experimental Writers and the People Who Love Them Saturday, Oct. 16 · 1:15-2:00pm Yerba Buena Gardens Esplanade Sponsored by Yerba Buena Gardens Festival & Yerba Buena Community Benefit District
The Hydra returns for Litquake Out Loud to call forth five brave writers to read their works with the hopes of lulling the Hydra, which lives beneath Mt. Diablo, back to sleep. If you like to speculate whether monsters really exist, then this is the reading for you. Seats available but not guaranteed. Bring a blanket for the grass! FREE, $5-10 donation (pre-registration encouraged)
Three Voices, Three Worlds Saturday, Oct. 16 · 2:30-3:30pm Yerba Buena Gardens Esplanade Sponsored by Yerba Buena Gardens Festival & Yerba Buena Community Benefit District
Join us at Litquake Out Loud stage as three award-winning writers of diverse origins and methods, Achy Obejas, Carolina de Robertas and Ingrid Rojas Contreras, read from new and forthcoming works. Achy Obejas presents Boomerang/Bumerán, a unique and inspiring bilingual collection of lyrical poetry written in a bold, mostly gender-free English and Spanish that addresses immigration, displacement, love and activism. Contreras presents a new work of nonfiction, a family memoir about her grandfather, a curandero from Colombia who it was said had the power to move clouds, forthcoming from Doubleday in Summer of 2022. Carolina presents The President and The Frog, an incandescent novel—political, mystical, timely, and heartening—about the power of memory, and the pursuit of justice, from the acclaimed author of Cantoras. Seats available but not guaranteed. Bring a blanket for the grass! FREE, $5-10 donation (pre-registration encouraged)
Naming Our Ancestors: A Reading Saturday, Oct. 16 · 3:45-4:45pm Yerba Buena Gardens Esplanade Sponsored by Yerba Buena Gardens Festival & Yerba Buena Community Benefit District
Literary ancestors inspire and provoke, point the way forward, pull us into conversation. They might inspire imitation or rebellion—or both. Ultimately, a literary ancestor is one who helps call the writer home to herself. Join curator Shruti Swamy and authors Meng Jin, Yalitza Ferreras, Mimi Lok, and Claire Calderón on the Litquake Out Loud stage as they reflect on their own writer-ancestors, and share work that bears the influence of that relationship. Seats available but not guaranteed. Bring a blanket for the grass! FREE, $5-10 donation (pre-registration encouraged)
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, Swinerton Family Fund, 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
