It’s a quake that’s been promised,
And all the best writers will be quaking or shaking
So get ready to tremble get ready to shake,
The hour has come.
— Lawrence Ferlinghetti
San Francisco’s 2012 literary fest-ival, “Litquake,” will feature 163 events and more than 850 authors together in celebration of the written word. Highlights include literary heavyweights U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Hass to California Poet Laureates Juan Felipe Herrera and Al Young, San Francisco Poet Laureate Alejandro Murguía, Pushcart Prize winner Lysley Tenorio, Pulitzer Prize-winner J.R. Moehringer, Nobel Prize-nominee Ngugi WA Thiong’o, and One City One Book author Rebecca Solnit.
Events range from book-themed art exhibitions, podcasts, writing workshops, and opportunities to hear and meet San Francisco literary figures. Don’t miss the culminating event, Lit Crawl, first added to the event in 2004, which now attracts around 6,000 participants and has been duplicated worldwide — a crawl across the City through bars, cafes, bookstores, parking lots, Laundromats, and even a bee-keeping supply shop and a police station — a romping mob riot of poetry, ideas and fun.
Litquake 2012: various Bay Area locations, Oct. 5–13, tickets at www.litquake
.org, discounts available. Check the website for updates as additional events are continually added.
— S. Anderson
