Lit Crawl San Francisco 2024: Full Schedule

Sponsored by California Humanities

One of the most anticipated literary nights of the year, Lit Crawl SF brings together authors and fans for the world’s largest FREE pop-up literary extravaganza! Check out our full schedule of 60+ events below.

arrow_back View All Dates

5:00pm PDT

826 Quarterly Release Party

Saturday October 26, 2024 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT

826 Valencia St

Join us in celebrating the release of 826's annual best-of publication: The 826 Quarterly! Students will read their work, which explore themes of belonging, place, and dreams for a better world.

Saturday October 26, 2024 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT
826 Valencia St 826 Valencia St, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA

PHASE 1

5:00pm PDT

Babylon Salon Presents: Come and Get It!

Saturday October 26, 2024 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT

The Sycamore

Come and get stories that are exuberant, comedic, historical, ecological, and otherworldly! A diverse lineup of writers from Babylon Salon, San Francisco's longest-running literary performance series. Babylon Salon’s organizers and friends share original work inspired by the groundbreaking authors who have graced their stage over the past seventeen years.

Speakers

Becca Berns

Becca Krock Berns is a writer and scientist. Her fiction has appeared in Carve and Peatsmoke, and she holds a PhD in neuroscience from Stanford University. Originally from the Chicago area, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and daughter.

Katie Flynn

Katie M. Flynn’s short fiction has appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, Tin House, Tor.com, and elsewhere. She’s been awarded Colorado Review’s Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction and the Steinbeck Fellowship in Creative Writing. Her first novel, The Companions, came out in... Read More →

Lauren C. Johnson

Lauren C. Johnson (she/her) attributes her upbringing in Florida, America’s weirdest state, to her interest in the ecological and surreal. She earned her MFA in creative writing at American University and lives in San Francisco, where she co-hosts Babylon Salon, a quarterly Bay... Read More →

Ryan Sloan

Ryan Sloan lives in Oakland and teaches writing at UC Berkeley. His work is published in LA Weekly, Joyland Magazine and Painted Bride Quarterly, among others. Recent residencies include Tin House, Vermont Studio Center & the Arctic Circle. When he's not epee fencing or building immersive... Read More →

Maury Zeff

Maury Zeff’s fiction and plays have been published and performed throughout the US and Europe. He won the 2021 Clark-Gross Novel Award, was a 2020 Pushcart Fiction nominee, and won third place in the 2024 O. Henry World Championship Pun-off. His play "Dada Teen Musical: The Play... Read More →

Saturday October 26, 2024 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT
The Sycamore 2140 Mission St, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA

PHASE 1

5:00pm PDT

Bauchhaar Travellers Present: Confluence of Place

Saturday October 26, 2024 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT

Adobe Books & Arts Cooperative

People search for a place where they want to be; carry places they come from. Places can be ideas detached from physicality. We will let poems tell stories of all things places can be or don’t want to be or cannot be. Come, listen to them! Expressed bilingually in English/Hindi.

Speakers

Pragya Jain

Pragya Jain, MD is an Internal Medicine physician at Kaiser Permanente in the Bay Area. She believes that poetry has the power to change the world by inspiring people, and instilling hope. Her book ‘Man ki Lahare’ (ripples from heart) was selected by the Literary Society of Rajasthan... Read More →

Anshu Johri

Anshu Johri authors short stories, poems, and plays in Hindi and English. She has published three poetry and short story collections in Hindi, and “Scraped”, a short story collection in English. She is a hardware engineer with a M.S in electrical engineering from San Jose State... Read More →

Swasti Johri

Swasti Johri is an undergraduate student at UC Berkeley. She is interested in studying the intersection between different academic conceptions of place, and the Bay Area's housing crisis. She has explored this interest through the school's interdisciplinary rhetoric program. She has... Read More →

Lalit Kumar

Lalit Kumar writes a regular column in 'India Currents magazine' sharing his passion for adventure and travel. His first book 'Years Spent: Exploring Poetry in Adventure, Life and Love' was among top 3 selects in ‘Indie Spotlight’ poetry genre by BookLife/Publishers Weekly. His... Read More →

Mighty Mike McGee

Mighty Mike McGee is a published, world traveling poet, comedian and educator from San José, California. He has performed on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, NPR’s Snap Judgment, and CBC Radio and Television. McGee was appointed Poet Laureate of Santa Clara County for 2018 & 2019 and serves... Read More →

Colleen Shoshana McKee

Colleen Shoshana McKee, an editor and English teacher, has lived in the Bay Area for thirteen years. She’s the author of six collections of poetry, fiction, and memoirs. Her latest book, Routine Bloodwork, was a finalist for the Charlotte Mew Award from Headmistress Press. Her website... Read More →

Robert Pesich

Robert Pesich is the author of Model Organism (Five Oaks Press, 2017) and Burned Kilim (Dragonfly Press, 2001). He co-edited the anthology Cuts from the Barbershop (Tollbooth Press, 2004). He curates the Well-RED Reading Series, works as editor/publisher at Swan Scythe Press and is... Read More →

Saturday October 26, 2024 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT
Adobe Books & Arts Cooperative 3130 24th St, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA

PHASE 1

5:00pm PDT

Bay Area Reporter Presents: What We Wrote During the Blip

Saturday October 26, 2024 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT

Martuni's

Order a strong cocktail at Martuni's as award-winning author and Bay Area Reporter Arts Editor Jim Provenzano presents writers who share works created during the pandemic, and a few with future-focused stories about the possible collapse of democracy.

Speakers

Yume Kim

Yume Kim is the author of Reserve the Right. She is both a Ruby Fellow recipient and a Bay Area Writing Project Fellow teaching fellow recipient at UC Berkeley. She is now working on her second manuscript, which includes poems that call out the toxicity that exists in academia.

Jim Provenzano

Jim Provenzano is the author of seven gay fiction novels, including a Lambda Literary Award winner and a finalist, a short story collection, plays and other works. A journalist in LGBTQ media for more than three decades, he is the Arts Editor with the Bay Area Reporter.

Horehound Stillpoint

Called "fully pornographic" by none other than Bambi Lake, "a breath of fresh air" (in a very stuffy concrete auditorium) by the SF Weekly, collected in over 30 anthologies, Horehound Stillpoint's work played to sold out audiences at the SF Fringe Festival 3 years in a row. The Inside... Read More →

Gaia Veenis

Gaia Patience Veenis is a prose writer from the North Bay currently residing in San Francisco. She’s working on a memoir called I’m Sorry I Have to Do This about her chaotic adolescence in the late ‘90s/Y2K era, including tales of running away at age 15, joining a street crew... Read More →

André Le Mont Wilson

André Le Mont Wilson (he/him) is a Black queer writer whose chapbook, Hauntings, won the 2022 Newfound Prose Prize. He published in Fruit: Queer Literary Journal, Fruitslice: A Queer Quarterly, Fourteen Poems: Queer Poetry Anthology, Beneath the Soil: Queer Survivor's e-Zine, and... Read More →

Saturday October 26, 2024 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT
Martuni's 4 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94103

PHASE 1

5:00pm PDT

California College of the Arts MFA Program Presents: Tell It to Me Straight

Saturday October 26, 2024 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT

The Chapel Parking Lot

Get ready for an hour of real talk and radical revelations. Truth serum will be flowing as we tell it straight slam style and dish out door prizes galore.

Saturday October 26, 2024 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT
The Chapel Parking Lot 777 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

PHASE 1

5:00pm PDT

Cult-Like

Saturday October 26, 2024 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT

Bernal Cutlery

Have you ever wanted a charismatic figure to release you from the burden of thought? How about actualizing your frequencies? Give us your unquestioned adoration and we’ll show you the power we all contain to create a cult. Will you become a member of ours by the final bow?

Speakers

Marya Brennan

Marya Brennan’s stories have appeared in Story Magazine, The Normal School, and The Florida Review. She recently completed a novel about disability, interdependence, and sisters set in an early 20th century traveling sideshow, and is currently writing another about motherhood, Better... Read More →

Sarah Cadorette

Sarah Rose Cadorette is an Oakland-based writer whose work has won prizes from The Southampton Review, Sonora Review, Blood Orange Review, and Emerson College. Their writing has appeared in Meridian, The Massachusetts Review, Barrelhouse, Desert Companion, and Abandon Journal. Sarah... Read More →

Vinita Goyal

Trained as an architect and urban planner, Vinita advances regenerative and restorative models that center the leadership of low income communities of color. She serves as Community Investment Director of Full Spectrum Labs, a US-based think tank, incubator, and accelerator, and on... Read More →

Kathryn Jaller

Kathryn Jaller is a writer and artist who has worked with words in the fields of museums, publishing, and design. Her labors of various kinds have been featured at SXSW, West Coast Craft, and in the New York Times. She lives in Berkeley with her human family who are nearly outnumbered... Read More →

Jolene Torr

Jolene Torr works in book publishing and has covered art and music for Vice, BUST, and Juxtapoz—as well as the defunct but beloved alt weeklies The Bay Guardian and SF Weekly. A Bay Area native, she lives in Oakland with the most beautiful angel baby cats on Earth.

Kathleen J. Woods

Kathleen J. Woods is the author of the pornographic novel White Wedding. She is an alum of CU Boulder’s MFA, the Writers Grotto Fellowship, the Tin House Summer Conference, and the Wellstone Center Residency. Her work has been featured in Electric Literature, Literary Hub, Pacifica... Read More →

Saturday October 26, 2024 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT
Bernal Cutlery 766 Valencia St, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA

PHASE 1

5:00pm PDT

La Raíz Magazine Empowerment Poetry

Saturday October 26, 2024 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT

Medicine for Nightmares

Five poets represent La Raíz Magazine with themes of culture, identity, and social justice issues, in English, Spanish, and Spanglish. Join us for empowering palabras: poetizing that subverts conventions. Featuring: Héctor F Castañeda, Jesse León Pantoja, arnoldo colibrí, Rubén Zamora, and Marvin Flores. Emceed by Founder/Editor Elizabeth Jiménez Montelongo.

Speakers

Jesse Pantoja

arnoldo garcía-colibri

Ruben Zamora

A proud native of San José, Ca. A high school librarian and wilderness enthusiast, he writes about what he sees, and has seen, and the people along the way. Ruben has been published in the 2024 edition of La Raiz magazine, and won the prize for poetry. He is also a member of the... Read More →

Elizabeth Jiménez Montelongo

Elizabeth Jiménez Montelongo is a visual artist, poet, and facilitator based in the San Francisco Bay Area of California. Her work is influenced by her Indigenous Mesoamerican ancestry, Mexika (Aztec) artwork and philosophy, Mexican culture, Raza history, and her experiences as an... Read More →

Saturday October 26, 2024 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT
Medicine for Nightmares 3036 24th St, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA

PHASE 1

5:00pm PDT

Left Margin LIT Bootcampers: Writing Is a Team Sport!

Saturday October 26, 2024 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT

The Drawing Room Mission Street Annex

Four writers will read from their work to celebrate Left Margin LIT's 8 years as a writers' workspace in Berkeley. Come learn more about LML's vibrant, supportive, writing community!

Speakers

Rhea Bryce

Rhea Bryce is an emerging writer living in Berkeley, California. She studied creative writing at Stanford University. When she's not working at her job in software development, she is writing her novel, participating in workshops, and trying to convince her friends that they should... Read More →

Matt Heller

Matt Heller is a writer, teacher, and musician who lives in Berkeley. Originally from Tucson he has lived in the Bay Area for over thirty years. His short fiction has been published published in The Sun, Abdabs, and Sombrero. He is currently querying several novels and is a member... Read More →

Elizabeth (Lisa) Turner

Elizabeth Horner Turner’s work has been published widely, including in Best Small Fictions and Wigleaf's Top 50. Her new fiction chapbook, Horsemouth and Aquariumhead, just came out with Black Lawrence Press, and her poetry chapbook is titled The Tales of Flaxie Char. She's found... Read More →

Saturday October 26, 2024 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT
The Drawing Room Mission Street Annex 2675 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA, USA

PHASE 1

5:00pm PDT

Mixtopia Presents: Beyond Dystopia or That Which Does Not Kill Us Makes Us Stranger

Saturday October 26, 2024 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT

Gestalt Craft Beer Bar

Imagine a future that is neither a dystopian Max Mad nor a utopian Nirvana but a fermentation of the corpus of human knowledge in all languages inclusive of arts, somatic healing, technology, and culture. Our eclectic group of writers represent futuristic storytellers, psychedelic artists, historians of science, and recorders of information.

Speakers

Olja Dimitrijevic

Olja Dimitrijevic is the Director of Data Platform Engineering at the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization behind Wikipedia. Olja has been building software and data platforms for the past 25 years. She brings into her writing the experience of a third culture kid, someone... Read More →

Dylan Freitas-D'Louhy

Artist at heart, business minded, and creative nature. Enlivening the idea that “today is better than yesterday” and the abounding opportunity to improve our youniverse. Dylan is an always evolving multi-dimensional artist, author, and advocate. He continues all creative endeavors through... Read More →

Genie Love

Genie Love, aka The Genie, is an artist, performer, and musical innovator from San Francisco. He is an avant-garde multi-instrumentalist and the creator of the Crystal Mirror Space Experience (SFGATE: The Genie’s Crystal Mirror Space is SF’s Coolest Airbnb Experience).

S. S. Mausoof

S.S Mausoof has sinned all the way from Karachi to San Francisco. Writing credits include noir thriller like Kala Pul and The Warehouse/Nuit sans lune au Waziristan," based on the author’s travel and relief work as a Pakistani-American.

Fyza Parviz

Fyza Parviz Jazra is a Ph.D. student in the History Department at Stanford. Her field is the History of Science, and her research focuses on intellectual exchanges between the East and the West, European interest in the Arabic scientific culture, scientific manuscripts and instruments... Read More →

Saturday October 26, 2024 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT
Gestalt Craft Beer Bar 3159 16th St, San Francisco, CA 94103, USA

PHASE 1

5:00pm PDT

My Dream Job in the Book World

Saturday October 26, 2024 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT

Ritual Coffee Roasters

Literary salons, book parties, cheap wine . . . ah, the glamour of publishing! How do I get in? Bay Area Women in Publishing presents stories to help shine a guiding light on your own path. BAYWiP supports current and aspiring colleagues who identify as women or non-binary, helping them to build connections in the literary world.

Speakers

Olivia Ngai

After years of in-house experience at traditional book publishers, Olivia Ngai is now a freelance editor for publishers, agents, and independent authors. She has worked on a variety of books, from adult fiction and nonfiction to children's books, to comics and graphic novels.

Marthine Satris

Heyday Books

Marthine Satris has worked in independent Bay Area publishing for over a decade. She is now Heyday's senior acquisitions editor, with a particular focus on nature-focused books. Books she’s edited have won literary prizes, been San Francisco Chronicle bestsellers, and received praise... Read More →

Chithra Vedantam

Chithra Vedantam is a Field sales and support representative at Ingram Content Group where she enjoys working with independent publishers and bookstores. She is passionate about championing diversity in the publishing industry and believes everyone deserves to see themselves in b... Read More →

Saturday October 26, 2024 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT
Ritual Coffee Roasters 1026 Valencia St, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA

PHASE 1

5:00pm PDT

Objet Petit a: writers explore unattainable object of desire through poetry and prose

Saturday October 26, 2024 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT

The SFPL Bookmobile

Come hear the writing that will make you laugh, cringe, feel dizzy or loved. Writing will stay with you as you walk away to do other things; Writing that will make you contest status quo and our own comfort zone.

Speakers

Brian Ang

Brian Ang wrote The Totality Cantos (Atelos 2022) and is Bookstore Manager for the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library. totalitycantos.net includes the complete text and a generator that randomizes assemblages of its one thousand sections. Current poetic project: A Thousand... Read More →

Emily Dezurick-Badran

Emily Dezurick-Badran is a writer and librarian from San Francisco. Her work has appeared in Electric Literature, Tin House Online, Wigleaf, and elsewhere. When not writing, she plays roller derby. She’s currently working on a TV pilot and a novel. She’s just excited to be he... Read More →

Torsa Ghosal

Torsa Ghosal is the author of a book of literary criticism, Out of Mind (Ohio State University Press), and an experimental novella, Open Couplets (Yoda Press, India). Her fiction, essays, and translation have appeared in The Brooklyn Review, Massachusetts Review, Berkeley Fiction... Read More →

Moazzam Sheikh

Moazzam Sheikh works as a librarian at SFPL and is the author of A Footbridge to Hell Called Love and Unsolaced Faces We Meet In Our Dreams, two novellas which make up half of his San Francisco Quartet. He is also the author of two collections of short stories, and in 1997 guest-edited... Read More →

Saturday October 26, 2024 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT
The SFPL Bookmobile

PHASE 1

5:00pm PDT

Ode to Sad Girl Poetry

Saturday October 26, 2024 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT

Sour Cherry Comics

Join this generative interactive panel of poets as they expand on the nature of confessional Sad Girl poetry. Delve into the spicy world of five multilingual authors: Sandy Shakes, Diosa Xochiquentzalcoatl, Annaliciia Aguilar, Anastasia Helena Fenald, and Paola Gutiérrez. This session aims to be a hybrid experience, braiding together a mini-workshop experience as well as a poetry performance.

Speakers

Annalicia Aguilar

Annalicia Aguilar is a Mexican American/mixed-race Indigenous poet, screenwriter, playwright, and educator. She obtained her MFA in Screenwriting for Film and Television from AMDA College of the Performing Arts. When she isn't writing or performing poetry, you can find her blasting... Read More →

Sandy Cornejo

Sandy Shakes is a Chicana spoken TRUTH artist home grown in Boyle Heights. She has spoken her truth on stages in San Diego, El Paso, New Mexico and across LA county neighborhoods. She writes brown stories to make sure brown voices never go unheard again. Check out her 2024 debut collection... Read More →

Anastasia Fenald

Anastasia Helena Fenald (b.1992) is a second-generation Ukrainian-Hispanic-American poet from California’s windy High Desert. She is the author of "The Art of Job Hunting: A Dramedy in Verse" (Riot of Roses Publishing House 2023). She spends her time reading fanfiction, performing... Read More →

Paola Gutiérrez

Paola Gutiérrez is a preschool teacher born and raised in México, currently living in Orange County, CA. Author, podcaster, public speaker, cuenta cuentos & aztec dancer.She self published two bilingual children's books, I don't like broccoli/No me gusta el brócoli in 2022, Yo... Read More →

Diosa Xochiquetzalcoatl

Diosa Xochiquetzalcóatl, or Diosa X for short, is a multilingual and multidimensional spoken word artist and international poetiza. She is a seasoned language arts educator with a Bachelor’s in English and a Master’s in Cross-Cultural Teaching. Diosa X has been published in a... Read More →

Saturday October 26, 2024 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT
Sour Cherry Comics 3187 16th St, San Francisco, CA 94103, USA

PHASE 1

5:00pm PDT

Page Street Co-working Presents Without a Net: 20 Super-short, Uncurated, Uncensored, Unrehearsed Pieces, Freshly Written in the Last Hour

Saturday October 26, 2024 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT

The Drawing Room Annex - Sponsored by Page Street

You know how most Lit Crawl events are carefully curated and rehearsed? This isn't that. Join us as 20 writers read no-more-than-2-minute pieces they wrote an hour ago at the Page Street tailgate. 20 surprise readers. 20 surprise pieces. No telling what might happen...

Speakers

Janis Cooke Newman

Janis Cooke Newman is the author of a memoir and two award-winning novels. She is also the founder of LitCamp and Page Street Co-Working for Writers.

Saturday October 26, 2024 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT
The Drawing Room Annex - Sponsored by Page Street 599 Valencia St, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA

PHASE 1

5:00pm PDT

Passionate Thinking in Diaspora with Writers from Ukraine, Russia, and Moldova

Saturday October 26, 2024 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT

Manny’s

We’re a group of immigrant writers with roots in the former Soviet Union coming together to share writing about our home countries, immigrant communities, complicated identities, and more. War continues to shape our stories, and so does food, nature, parenthood, and love. Passionately told, these stories nourish our communal resilience.

Speakers

Nina Rodenko

Nina Rodenko is the winner of the 2022 Clark-Gross Scholarship Award for her debut novel, The United Selves of Veronica, which is currently in its final draft. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Bookstr, Prometheus Dreaming, and Watershed Review. Born in Ukraine, Nina now... Read More →

Karolina Letunova

Karolina Letunova grew up in Western Siberia. She has an MFA from the Helen Zell Writers' Program at the University of Michigan. Her work appears or is forthcoming in AGNI, The Cincinnati Review, The Kenyon Review, The Threepenny Review. She is a 2023-2024 California Arts Council... Read More →

Maggie Levantovskaya

Maggie Levantovskaya is a writer and Teaching Professor in the English department at Santa Clara University. She was born in Kyiv, Ukraine, and grew up in San Francisco. Her creative nonfiction and journalism have appeared in The Rumpus, Michigan Quarterly Review, Longreads, Catapult... Read More →

Margarita Meklina

Leningrad-born Margarita Meklina now faces the situation when her current publisher, NLO, is afraid to print her work due to the expanded anti-LGBTQ laws. Her earlier book, written in collaboration with Lida Yusupova, LOVE HAS FOUR HANDS, was removed from Russian bookstores due to... Read More →

Yuliya Patsay

Yuliya Patsay is a Soviet-born, San Francisco-raised, teller of stories- most of which are at least half true.She loves rolling fog, dim sum and a receptive audience. She lives in “Little Russia” with her husband, two kids, and enough mishpuha close by to keep her wildly ente... Read More →

Tatyana Sundeyeva

Tatyana Sundeyeva is a writer originally from Moldova. She has published short fiction and essays in Fractured Literary, Oyster River Pages, Cleaver, and Hadassah Magazine. Her story about the civil war in Moldova was nominated for Best Microfiction 2023. You can find her at Taty... Read More →

Sasha Vasilyuk

Sasha Vasilyuk is a journalist and author of a debut novel, Your Presence Is Mandatory (Bloomsbury) that will also come out in Italy, France, Germany, Finland, Israel and Brazil. Her nonfiction has been published in the New York Times, CNN, Harper’s Bazaar, KQED, and elsewhere... Read More →

Olga Zilberbourg

Olga Zilberbourg’s LIKE WATER AND OTHER STORIES (WTAW Press) explores “bicultural identity hilariously, poignantly,” according to The Moscow Times and deals with bisexuality and immigrant parenthood. Zilberbourg co-moderates the San Francisco Writers Workshop and is a co-founder... Read More →

Saturday October 26, 2024 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT
Manny’s 3092 16th St, San Francisco, CA 94103, USA

PHASE 1

5:00pm PDT

Perverts Put Out: Read Smart Sex at Good Vibes

Saturday October 26, 2024 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT

Good Vibrations

Literate smut peddlers from one of SF's longest-running reading groups—entertaining you for 25+ years!--descend on iconic toy store Good Vibes for sexy/kinky/smart stories, essays, and poetry. PPO, based at the Center for Sex & Culture, will open your mind and make you think [sexy thoughts]!

Speakers

Sherilyn Connelly

Press, SF Weekly

Sherilyn Connelly is a San Francisco-based writer and librarian. Her fourth book, Beautiful Ghosts: A Queer Memoir of San Francisco, was published by Exposit Books in 2021.

Carol Queen

Carol Queen PhD is a writer, cultural sexologist, theorist of deep sex-positivity, Sexologist for Good Vibes, and the co-founder/director of the Center for Sex & Culture. She won a Lambda Literary award a long time ago and is working on a memoir (thanks, SFAF!)

Saturday October 26, 2024 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT
Good Vibrations 603 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

PHASE 1

5:00pm PDT

Red Light Lit

Saturday October 26, 2024 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT

Make-Out Room

Red Light Lit presents an evening of provocative poetry and prose exploring the raw edges of love, lust, and heartbreak. Writers perform with a live musical score, delivering their heart through a blend of words and music.

Speakers

Christine No

Giovanna Lomanto

Jennifer Lewis

Saturday October 26, 2024 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT
Make-Out Room 3225 22nd St, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA

PHASE 1

5:00pm PDT

The Afrosurreal Writers Workshop of Oakland Presents: Reexamining our Past, Exploring our Present, Dreaming our Future

Saturday October 26, 2024 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT

Bissap Baobab SF

For more than a decade, a small group of Black writers in Oakland, The Afrosurreal Writers Workshop, have supported each other in world building in poetry, fiction and memoir.

Speakers

Wandra Williams

A mad+crazy+cool nerd hailing from The Rich who spent so much time at the City of Richmond's Public Library that it could have been claimed as a home address. As a life-long reader, and freshly minted Afrosurrealist, her goal is to unleash a torrent of Black-Centric narratives like... Read More →

Coleman Conner

Coleman Conner is an Architectural Designer whose work fuses sustainability with advanced technology. His experience ranges from airports to skyscrapers, but his passion lies in envisioning the future—whether it’s on Earth, the Moon, Mars, or beyond. You can explore more of his... Read More →

Ellen McBarnette

Ellen McBarnette, an Afrosurreal storyteller, had her earliest tales transcribed by her mother on the back of envelopes. An active participant in the SF literary community, Ellen has led the Afrosurreal Writers Workshop of Oakland for five years. Her novella, “Negrita” is published... Read More →

LaMar Mitchell

LaMar Mitchell AKA Khalifa was born and raised in Oakland, CA. He is a poet, screenwriter, and novelist and professional tornado chaser. He aspires to be one of the greatest Surrealists who ever lived. His first poetry chapbook, "Psychedelic Existentialism", will be available soon... Read More →

Saturday October 26, 2024 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT
Bissap Baobab SF 2243 Mission St, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA

PHASE 1

5:00pm PDT

The Algorithm That Moves: Uncanny Possibilities for AI Poetry

Saturday October 26, 2024 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT

Noisebridge

What can AI do for poetry? Not much if you rely on ChatGPT. That bot’s makers worked to keep it tame. But we’re taking the chains off. Get ready for an explosive evening of participatory versifying as inhuman minds lead us in an uncanny new direction for the literary arts.

Speakers

Alicia Guo

Larry Ebert

Musician, writer, innovator, humorist, and teacher. Larry Ebert is researching the human factors aspects of Artificial Intelligence, particularly AI's impact in the arts and in pedagogy, exploring issues related to authenticity, human (cognitive) reliance, and consciousness. Larry... Read More →

Laird Harrison

A genre-nonconforming writer, Laird Harrison has published essays in Salon and The Nation, poetry in Catamaran and Chinquapin, journalism in Time and Reuters. WUNC and KQED have broadcast his radio scripts. In 2012, Verdant Books published his novel, Fallen Lake, the story of two... Read More →

Halim Madi

Halim is a queer Lebanese poet and programmer using the web as a tool to create digital poetry and electronic literature. His work combines the physical and digital to create intimate person-to-person interactions, contrasting with the impersonal nature of the web. His practice examines... Read More →

Saturday October 26, 2024 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT
Noisebridge 272 Capp St, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA

PHASE 1

5:00pm PDT

The Brown Handler Residents Present: Dispatches from the Stacks

Saturday October 26, 2024 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT

Blondie's Bar

For six years, the Friends of the Library's Brown Handler Residency has nurtured emerging voices. This year, the Residents share fresh, provocative stories that delve into identity and place, navigating the uncharted territories between reality and imagination. Join us for a journey through the spaces in-between.

Speakers

Sara Marinelli

Sara Marinelli is an Italian writer living in San Francisco. Her writing in English is published in New American Writing, Blue Mesa Review, Pummarol; her work in Italian appears in Nazione Indiana, Leggendaria, Alias. A Brown Handler Fellow and a Teaching Artist at the San Francisco... Read More →

Sarah Matsui

Sarah Matsui is the winner of the 2021 Sewanee Review Nonfiction Contest, the 2022 Fractured Lit Contest, and the 2023 Bread Loaf Katharine Bakeless Nason Award. Her poems and essays have appeared in the San Francisco Asian Art Museum, The Southern Review, The Seventh Wave, and Pleiades... Read More →

E. Okobi

Ekene “E” Okobi is an interdisciplinary artist working across performance, education and research.

Ploi Pirapokin

Ploi Pirapokin is a Hong Kong raised, Thai speculative fiction writer, whose work explores imperialism in Asia, and revenge. She is featured in Tor.com, Pleiades, Ninth Letter, Sycamore Review, Gulf Stream Magazine, The Art and Craft of Stories from Asia: A Writer's Guide and Anthology... Read More →

Marina Hope Wilson

Marina Hope Wilson is the author of the chapbook, Nighttime (Cooper Dillon Books, 2024). Her poems have appeared in journals such as The Massachusetts Review, $, Bodega, Stirring, and SWWIM Every Day. Marina is a 2024-25 Friends of the San Francisco Public Library Brown-Handler Artist-in-Residence... Read More →

Saturday October 26, 2024 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT
Blondie's Bar 540 Valencia St, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA

PHASE 1

5:00pm PDT

The Fabulist Presents: Cosmic Debris—An Evening of Passionate Conviction and Informed Skepticism

Saturday October 26, 2024 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT

Shotwell's Saloon

“I want to believe!”—but should you? In this perilous time of deception, demagoguery, and suckers born every minute, The Fabulist has assembled a knockout lineup of Bay Area writers, poets, and activists who wield fantastical fictions to say true things about our beating human hearts—and who tell true tales to confront exploitative popular narratives.

Speakers

Chris Carlsson

Chris Carlsson, co-director of the multimedia history project Shaping San Francisco, is a writer, publisher, editor, teacher, and community organizer. He is the primary curator for Foundsf.org, the digital archive of San Francisco history organized by Shaping San Francisco. For the... Read More →

MK Chavez

MK Chavez is an art monster, writer, and educator. Chavez’s writing explores mixed-race identity, social justice, environmental resilience, horror cinema, magic, ritual, and the creative process. Chavez’s work has been recognized with the Pen Josephine Miles Award, the San Francisco... Read More →

Eva Galperin

Eva Galperin is a writer, security researcher, privacy activist, and occasional aerialist who has lived in San Francisco since the 1980's.

Mukethe Kawinzi

Mukethe Kawinzi [www.mukethekawinzi.com] is a shepherd and the author of 'saanens, nubians, one lamancha' (Winner, Quarterly West Chapbook Contest) and 'rut' (Ghost City Press). 'The Field Nig Blues,' her collection of tales, songs, and other forms, is forthcoming from KERNPUNKT Press... Read More →

Loren Rhoads

Author, Automatism Press

Loren Rhoads writes space opera, dark fantasy, and horror, sometimes all at once. 222 Cemeteries to See Before You Die, her newest book, is gleefully morbid nonfiction. See if you can find the contradiction in any of this at lorenrhoads.com.

Saturday October 26, 2024 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT
Shotwell's Saloon 3349 20th St, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA

PHASE 1

5:00pm PDT

The Writers Grotto Celebrates Thirty Years with Words to Save the World

Saturday October 26, 2024 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT

Teeth Bar SF

Words to Save the World features sixteen diverse members of The Writers Grotto sharing words of inspiration, intrigue, and urgency. Join us as we celebrate THIRTY (30!) YEARS of building literary community in the Bay Area and beyond. Check us out at www.writersgrotto.org.

Speakers

Chino Lee Chung

Brad Balukjian

Brad Balukjian is an entomologist and freelance journalist based in Concord. His work has been published in National Geographic, Rolling Stone, Smithsonian, and many others. His latest book, The Six Pack, chronicles his 12,525-mile road trip to track down famous pro wrestlers of the... Read More →

Leslie Kirk Campbell

Leslie Kirk Campbell’s short story collection, The Man with Eight Pairs of Legs (Sarabande), won the 2020 Mary McCarthy Prize for Short Fiction. Author of Journey into Motherhood (Riverhead), Leslie has published features in the San Francisco Chronicle Magazine. She teaches at Ripe... Read More →

Christopher Cook

Christopher D. Cook is an author and award-winning journalist based in San Francisco. His writing has appeared in national publications such as Harper's, the Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, The Economist, The Guardian, Mother Jones, The Christian Science Monitor, The Nation, The... Read More →

Tara Dorabji

Tara Dorabji is the author of the novel, Call Her Freedom, The Books Like Us Grand Prize Winner, which is available for pre-order at Simon and Schuster. Her documentary film series on human rights defenders in Kashmir won awards at over a dozen film festivals throughout Asia and the... Read More →

Audrey Ferber

Audrey Ferber's short stories and essays have appeared in the NY Times, the SF Chronicle, LILITH Magazine, INTIMA, New World Writing, First Person Singular, upcoming in Flash Fiction Magazine and elsewhere.

Anoop Judge

Born and raised in New Delhi, Anoop is the author of four novels, THE RUMMY CLUB which won the 2015 Beverly Hills Book Award, THE AWAKENING OF MEENA RAWAT, an excerpt of which was nominated for the 2019 Pushcart Prize, NO ORDINARY THURSDAY, and MERCY and GRACE. Her essays and short... Read More →

Sabina Khan-Ibarra

Sabina Khan-Ibarra is a writer, poet, and teacher. She is currently working on completing her chapbook titled 'A New Vocabulary' and her novel, 'The Poppy Flower.' Her poetry, short stories, and creative nonfiction have been published in various journals like and anthologies. She... Read More →

June Martin

June Martin is the author of the novel LOVE/AGGRESSION, short stories in X-R-A-Y, BULL, New Session, and other lit mags, and the artist of a few scattered comic zines. She was a 2024 Lambda Literary fellow.

Jessica Martinez

Jessica Martinez makes the “Get Over It, Go Out With Somebody Else” zine series, which celebrates breakups using quotes from Wayne’s World. She also writes children’s books, novels and screenplays. Her play “Schooltown Funk,” a satire on public school teaching, had a sold-out... Read More →

Louise Nayer

Louise Nayer is the award winning author of six books including two books of poems. Burned: A Memoir was an Oprah Great Read and her latest memoir is Narrow Escapes. She has been an educator for over 40 years and is a member of the San Francisco Writer's Grotto. She has given numerous... Read More →

Elizabeth Svoboda

Elizabeth Svoboda is an award-winning science writer and contributor to Scientific American, Discover, Aeon, the Boston Globe, and Greater Good. She is the author of What Makes a Hero? (Penguin Random House) and The Life Heroic (Lerner), and she is working on a book about the art... Read More →

Eleanor Vincent

Eleanor Vincent’s memoir Disconnected: Portrait of a Neurodiverse Marriage is forthcoming from Vine Leaves Press. It shows her gradual discovery that her husband was neurodivergent and describes how she survived the challenges of a high-conflict marriage. Her earlier memoir, Swimming... Read More →

Lenore Weiss

Lenore serves as the Creative Nonfiction (CNF) Editor for the Mud Season Review and lives in Oakland, California with Zebra the Brave, Granola the Shy, and John the Mighty. Her environmental novel Pulp into Paper was published this year on Earth Day as was a new poetry collection... Read More →

Stephanie Wildman

Stephanie Wildman, author of five children’s books, became a Professor Emerita after serving as the John A. and Elizabeth H. Sutro Chair at Santa Clara Law. She is a grandmother, mother, spouse, friend, good listener, who can sit “criss-cross apple sauce” thanks to her yoga... Read More →

Saturday October 26, 2024 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT
Teeth Bar SF 2323 Mission St, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA

PHASE 1

5:00pm PDT

USF's Invisible City Presents: Constellations of the Seemingly Mundane

Saturday October 26, 2024 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT

Latin American Club

How have the stars aligned for a perfect moment? How does the simple allow us to build the complex? Join the editors and writers of Invisible City, USF's student-run literary magazine, for a night of stories about how the simplest moments become the tapestry of stars we call this life. In works of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, we'll mine the mundane for the profoundest truth and allow the cosmos to be a reprieve from the busy.

Saturday October 26, 2024 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT
Latin American Club 3286 22nd St, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA

PHASE 1

5:00pm PDT

Veins & Tributaries: A Reading with Diasporic Burmese American Writers

Saturday October 26, 2024 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT

Red Poppy Art House

Explore literary tributaries branching from the Burmese diaspora with poetry, fiction, and memoir. Five authors, each drawing from their ancestral roots in Myanmar, will read new work that explores the intricate geo-political themes of identity, displacement, and legacy.

Speakers

Maw Shein Win

Maw Shein Win's full-length poetry collection Percussing the Thinking Jar (Omnidawn) is forthcoming in Fall 2024. Her collection Storage Unit for the Spirit House (Omnidawn, 2020) was nominated for the Northern California Book Award in Poetry. She teaches poetry in the MFA Program... Read More →

Michelle Dunn Marsh

Michelle Dunn Marsh is a first generation American of Indo-Burmese and Irish descent. She is the author of Seeing Being Seen: A Personal History of Photography and editor of The Kid Contracts, a book of family essays. She holds an MS in publishing from Pace University, and a BA from... Read More →

Audrey T. Williams

Founder, Ancestral Futures

Audrey T. Williams is a Black American poet/writer with Indo-Burmese heritage. She earned her MFA from CCA and is an independent scholar of speculative literary arts. She is Founder at AncestralFutures.org and her poetry is published and forthcoming in several magazines as well as... Read More →

Kenneth Wong

Kenneth Wong is a Burmese-American author, translator, and language teacher. Born and raised in Rangoon (Yangon), Burma (Myanmar), he currently lives in San Francisco, California; and teaches Burmese language at UC Berkeley. His essays, short stories, articles, and poetry translations... Read More →

Saturday October 26, 2024 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT
Red Poppy Art House 2698 Folsom St, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA

PHASE 1

5:00pm PDT

Warp and Weft

Saturday October 26, 2024 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT

Et Al

A multi-genre group of South Asian writers—poets, journalists, short story writers, and novelists—navigate migration, history, belonging, authenticity, and identity in their lived experiences and work. In this session, these writers will weave these concepts together as they explore the nuances of South Asian storytelling and the challenges and opportunities it affords.

Speakers

Anita Felicelli

Anita Felicelli is the author of the forthcoming short story collection How We Know Our Time Travelers (December, 2024). Her books include Chimerica: A Novel and the award-winning Love Songs for a Lost Continent. Anita edits Alta Journal‘s California Book Club. She served on the... Read More →

Devi Laskar

Devi S. Laskar is a poet, novelist, photographer, former newspaper reporter and lifelong TarHeel. She is the author of the award-winning The Atlas of Reds and Blues, and recently, Circa. Her third novel, Midnight, At The War is forthcoming from Mariner Books.

Shikha Malaviya

Shikha Malaviya is a poet, writer & mentor. Her book of historical persona poetry, Anandibai Joshee: A Life in Poems (HarperCollins India, 2023) is a unique retelling of the life of India's first female medical doctor and the first Indian woman to study medicine in the United States... Read More →

Sophia Naz

Sophia Naz has authored Bark Archipelago (Weavers Press, San Francisco & Red River India 2023), Open Zero (Yoda Press 2021) Shehnaz, (Penguin Random House 2019), Pointillism (Copper Coin 2017), Date Palms (City Press 2017), Peripheries (Cyberhex 2015). She is a Pushcart Prize nom... Read More →

Jaya Padmanabhan

Jaya Padmanabhan is an editor at the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism and a journalist with bylines in The New York Times, PBS Next Avenue, The San Francisco Examiner, and more. Jaya is the author of “Transactions of Belonging,” a collection of short stories published... Read More →

Saturday October 26, 2024 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT
Et Al 2831A Mission St, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA

PHASE 1