| Hello Litquakers,
As organizers, publishers, and fans, we have to ask ourselves what is the purpose of literature? Entertainment? Education? Catharsis? A fantasy novel can be a very real salve in a time of need. A dense biography can transport us at the end of a long day. Poetry can ground us in truth. Literature, like all art, is ever-shifting, offering unique gifts and alchemical reactions to each person. What we do know is that literature has the power to foster community around the issues of today and illuminate new solutions. Below are a few events in our 2023 lineup that we think do this especially well. |
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| The current fervor around book banning might feel like something that's happening elsewhere, but its stifling effects have hit writers right here at home. As part of Banned Books Week, a panel of children’s and YA authors discuss what it's like to write as a creator whose work has been banned or censored. |
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| Tech and the literary world converge as ZYZZYVA Editor-in-Chief Oscar Villalon moderates a panel of Silicon Valley technologists and authors on how AI will change our writing process. Will writing become entirely automated, or will AI mainly be an assistive tool? What issues are present in both the training and use of AI in writing? |
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| Litquake and City Lights celebrate the publication of Justin Torres's new novel Blackouts. This work of fiction that sees through the inventions of history and narrative. An extraordinary work of creative imagination, it insists that we look long and steady at the world we have inherited and the world we have made—a world full of ghostly shadows and flashing moments of truth. |
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| In 1987, there were 206 lesbian bars in America. Today, only a couple dozen remain. How and why did this happen? What has been lost—or possibly gained—by such a decline? What transpires when marginalized communities become more accepted and mainstream? In Krista Burton's insightful and hilarious travelogue Moby Dyke: An Obsessive Quest to Track Down the Last Remaining Lesbian Bars in America, she attempts to answer these questions firsthand. Join Litquake for a conversation between Krista and writer/performer Beth Lisick, held at San Francisco’s own Wild Side West. |
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| In this forward-looking panel, an artist, a historian, and a journalist walk into a bar to share their insights about our state's ecological future, including its greatest imminent threats and its best possibilities for regeneration. Together, these thinkers will extrapolate what this future may look like—and what it could look like were we to dispel our apathy and embrace our collective ability for change. |
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Litquake Weekly Literary news, upcoming events, and whatever else we’re looking at... “Litquake is back with a special edition of Porchlight at the Verdi Club with Tricks Up My Sleeve.” Chronicle subscribers can win tickets to our annual storytelling series, featuring Amy Schneider, Ahmed Nadji, Dominic Lim, and others • San Francisco Chronicle
“Until recently, comedy has been seen as so quintessentially human that it was assumed A.I. would kill humanity before it would at a club.” For now, ChatGPT3 continues to bomb at open mics, roast battles, and writers’ rooms everywhere, but can it learn to make us laugh in years to come? • The New York Times
“We’ve got people doing poems on aircraft carriers over the loudspeaker. It is absolutely insane the direction that we’re headed in our military.” A conservative senator from Alabama says poetry is too “woke” for the military • HuffPost
“This fall, for all his achievements in championing books and reading, Yamazaki will receive the prestigious Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community, presented annually by the National Book Foundation.” After 50 years working as a book buyer at City Lights, Paul Yamazaki is being recognized on a national stage • Los Angeles Times
“Each poem engages with its author’s local landscape—be it the breathtaking variety of flora in a national park, or a lone tree flowering persistently by a bus stop...” Ada Limon’s upcoming anthology You Are Here features previously unpublished works by 50 contemporary poets • Literary Hub |
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