Litquake Festival: Weekend Highlights

12-1:30pm
Litquake Out Loud: Sistahs Taking Root Among the Stars
Litquake Out Loud highlights BIPOC & LGBTQ+ writers and thought leaders. This lineup is assembled by Sistah Scifi & its founder Isis Asare.
1:45-3:15pm
Litquake Out Loud: Jenny Qi
Bay Area poetry stalwart Jenny Qi brings together an inspirational group of local writers, all working to cultivate the next generation.
3:30-4:45pm
Litquake Out Loud: Madeleine Cravens
In their poems, novels, and short stories, Angie Sijun Lou, Khashayar Khabushani, sam sax, Hua Xi, and Rabia Saeed deftly merge lyric and narrative, a sense of playfulness with an intensity of subject matter.

Join Litquake and host Andrew Sean Greer for an unforgettable night of stories live onstage, with special guest readers Tate Donovan, Baron Vaughn, and Michaela Watkins reading stories by Michael Ian Black, Ian McEwan, Ben Philippe, and Simon Rich. Selected Shorts is a radio show and podcast broadcast on more than 150 stations around the country. The series began in 1985 and enjoys sold-out performances to this day. Selected Shorts was conceived with a simple premise: take great stories by well-known and emerging writers and have them performed by terrific actors of stage and screen. Featuring stories around a lively theme, the favorite works of a guest author, or a special collaboration, each Selected Shorts event is a unique night of literature in performance. $25 adv / $30 door

San Francisco's legendary Bay Area Pun-Off comedy show returns to Litquake once again: holding together a diverse community of wordplayers and countless unfortunate bystanders (and sitters). Bolstered by groans, eye rolls, and the ever-sought-after double-handed facepalm, the Pun-Off enters its seventh year with equal parts ironic triumph and gleeful apology. You are proudly invited to celebrate the contagious power of the pun, the lowest form of comedy, the highest form of intellect; a prized tool of parents, kindergarten teachers, Facebook trolls, and Witzelsucht patients everywhere! Doors at 7, show at 8pm. $10 adv / door

12-1:30pm
Litquake Out Loud: Full Circle with Giovanna Lomanto
Full Circle is a celebration of authors who have found their way to who they are through community, care, and creativity.
1:45-3:15pm
Litquake Out Loud: Black Freighter Press
Black Freighter Press is committed to the exploration of liberation by using art to transform consciousness and acting as a platform for Black and Brown writers to honor ancestry and propel radical imagination.
3:30-4:45pm
Litquake Out Loud: El Martillo Press
Featuring Ceasar K. Avelar, Margaret Elysia Garcia, Linda Ravenswood, and Vanessa Torres, and is assembled by guest curator El Martillo Press, and its co-founders Matt Sedillo and David Romero.

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. 2023 Dates: Oct. 5-21. www.litquake.org

Litquake is grateful for the support of the following funders who help make our programming possible. Institutional Giving: Bernard Osher Foundation, California Arts Council, Craig Newmark Philanthropies, Fleishhacker Foundation, Grants for the Arts, HarperOne, Joseph & Vera Long Foundation, Hawthornden Foundation, Margaret and William R. Hearst III Foundation, Literary Arts Emergency Fund, Miner Anderson Family Foundation, Mystery Writers of America, Northern California Chapter, National Endowment for the Arts, Center for the Art of Translation, Sam Mazza Foundation, San Francisco Office of Economic & Workforce Development; Individual Giving: Jared Bhatti, Lisa Brown and Daniel Handler, Evette Davis, Frances Dinkelspiel and Gary Wayne, Karyn DiGiorgio and Steve Sattler, Scott James and Gerald Cain, Nion McEvoy, Swinerton Family Fund, and Ellen Ullman Media Sponsors: San Francisco Chronicle, 7x7, KQED, SF Arts Monthly, Bay Area Reporter, Johnny Funcheap.