The 12th annual Litquake Festival launches into the stratosphere in San Francisco today with a diabolical opening party, The Devil’s Lexicon: Litquake’s Nod to the Dark Side of Literature! If you’re in the Bay Area or merely want to follow along, The Verdi Club, is a vintage Italian social hall, located at 2424 Mariposa in San Francisco.
Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 8 and 9, feature Off the Richter Scale, the latest incarnation of the themed reading hours that launched Litquake more than a decade ago. Open up new avenues of exploration with Writing in California Prisons,Thinking, Believing, Living: The Human as Being, and Writing the Wild. Or stay closer to home with two hours of writing about The Golden Gate and Beyond. The events run noon-4 pm each day at the Variety Preview Room (free admission).
On Saturday evening, you’ll need to flip a coin to decide which evening event to attend: novelist Thomas McGuane, in conversation with Litquake co-founder Jack Boulware? Or Guillermo Gómez-Peña (pictured) and Alejandro Murguía in Cross-Cultural Diatribes? On Sunday, October 9, Litquake invades North Beach with raucous readings at Vesuvio (4 pm) and Tosca Café (6 pm), as well as exclusive festival appearances by Jane Smiley, James Ellroy, andAdam Mansbach.
Monday, October 10, they’ll present ten different events throughout the day and evening, including The Best Novels You Haven’t Read at the California Book Club, The Intersection of Medicine and Literature at Heart Wine Bar, Porchlight’s Verdi Club Litquake edition, “Are We Good?” with Marc Maron and Jillian Lauren (pictured), and MFA Body Slam! at the Swedish American Hall, pitting the best scribblers from MFA writing programs throughout the Bay Area.
Originally hatched over beers at the Edinburgh Castle pub in 1999, Litstock debuted as a free one-day reading series in a fog-bound Golden Gate Park. Co-organizers and local writers Jane Ganahl and Jack Boulware quickly realized that booklovers wanted something more. Against the backdrop of a technology-crazed San Francisco, it was obvious that writers were still drawn to the city, and readers still craved and appreciated the written word.
In 2002 the festival was rechristened Litquake, and began expanding its programming to include all elements of the Bay Area literary scene. Taking a cue from a USA Today report that San Franciscans spend twice the nation’s average on books and booze, the festival inaugurated an immediately successful closing night Lit Crawl bacchanal of events throughout the city’s Mission District.
Popular demand drove Litquake to expand even further, adding more national and international authors, youth programs, classroom visits and book giveaways, a spring season of literary events, and special localized editions of the Lit Crawl now held each year in New York City and Austin.
Whether it’s poets reciting in a cathedral, authors discussing science versus religion in a library, or novelists reading in a beekeeping supply store, the goal remains the same: whet a broad range of literary appetites, present the literary fare in a variety of traditional and unlikely venues, and make it vivid, real, and entertaining. Now grown to the largest independent literary festival on the West Coast, Litquake continues its mission as a nine-day literary spectacle for booklovers, complete with cutting-edge panel discussions, unique cross-media events, and hundreds of readings.
Litquake seeks to foster interest in literature for people of all ages, 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.
Renee Blodgett is the founder of We Blog the World. The site combines the magic of an online culture and travel magazine with a global blog network and has contributors from every continent in the world. Having lived in 10 countries and explored nearly 80, she is an avid traveler, and a lover, observer and participant in cultural diversity.
She is also the CEO and founder of Magic Sauce Media, a new media services consultancy focused on viral marketing, social media, branding, events and PR. For over 20 years, she has helped companies from 12 countries get traction in the market. Known for her global and organic approach to product and corporate launches, Renee practices what she pitches and as an active user of social media, she helps clients navigate digital waters from around the world. Renee has been blogging for over 16 years and regularly writes on her personal blog Down the Avenue, Huffington Post, BlogHer, We Blog the World and other sites. She was ranked #12 Social Media Influencer by Forbes Magazine and is listed as a new media influencer and game changer on various sites and books on the new media revolution. In 2013, she was listed as the 6th most influential woman in social media by Forbes Magazine on a Top 20 List.
Her passion for art, storytelling and photography led to the launch of Magic Sauce Photography, which is a visual extension of her writing, the result of which has led to producing six photo books: Galapagos Islands, London, South Africa, Rome, Urbanization and Ecuador.
Renee is also the co-founder of Traveling Geeks, an initiative that brings entrepreneurs, thought leaders, bloggers, creators, curators and influencers to other countries to share and learn from peers, governments, corporations, and the general public in order to educate, share, evaluate, and promote innovative technologies.
