Litquake

Inside the West Coast’s grandest homage to books

BY ANGELA HILL

Litquake’s co-founders — writers

Jane Ganahl and Jack Boulware

— remain as surprised as anyone that a half-lit idea, hatched in 1999 over a couple of beers at Edinburgh Castle (the pub in San Francisco’s Tenderloin, not the actual Scotland one), has since swelled to the largest independent literary festival on the West Coast.

But it’s true. With an abiding philosophy to shake things up with words and celebrate everything by the book, the nonprofit Litquake is now in its 20th year and still growing. Litquake produces year-round literary programming plus its annual namesake event – the 10-day Bay Area-wide Litquake, a celebration of the written word held each October with hundreds of author readings, writing workshops, films, panels, discussion groups and so much more.

And of course, since 2004, the festival always closes with the super-popular Lit Crawl, a one-night boozy, bookish pub crawl of epic proportions (this year scheduled for Oct. 19). The literary bacchanal draws about 10,000 people to the city’s

Litquake co-founder Jane Ganahl, above.

Mission district for bevs, books and readings, set in venues that range from pubs and galleries to tattoo parlors and laundromats. And always with literary luminaries. Past presenters have included the likes of Dave Eggers, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Michael Chabon, Isabel Allende and Ishmael Reed.

We recently chatted with Ganahl about this wild and wacky wordy world:

QSo this all started at the humble Edinburgh?

AYep. Back in 1999, it was one of the only pubs in the Bay Area that was doing literary events, mainly because the manager was from Scotland and had connections with a lot of great Scottish writers. Jack and I were kind of inspired by that, and we thought about how we could do a little festival with all the writers we knew that had books coming out. We called it Litstock back then, and we had 22 people do 10-minute readings in the bandshell in Golden Gate Park on a Friday afternoon. We really didn’t think anybody would come, but something like 400 people showed up. It was just a big success, and we realized we were kinda onto something there.

QTell us about Lit Crawl.

AThe Lit Crawl was a separate thing at first. We thought of the idea of just doing a free kind of ramble through the Mission, but it was another crazy idea people just jumped on. And before we knew it, it became sort of an export for us – we had people in different cities asking to do

Book lovers surround an impromptu stage at the Ritual Roasters coffee house.

The baby sleeps, but everyone else gives an author their attention.

Lit Crawls. Now they’re all over the U.S. and places like Helskini, England, New Zealand. Maybe one this year in Australia. We are now officially the octopus literary festival with tentacles around the world.

QWhy the unusual event venues?

AThat kind of happened organically. While it sounded charming to do all these readings in bars, it can be fraught with potential chaos and noise. In fact, for our very first Lit Crawl, we were scheduled to do a reading at an Irish bar on Valencia. But when our team got there, the manager said he didn’t know what they were talking about and wouldn’t turn down the TV.

So they took a chair and went out on the sidewalk in front of an appliance store and had the readers do their readings standing on the chair. It was amazing. I happened to be walking by with my clipboard, checking on things, and there was this huge crowd, spilling into the street. It was kind of the official launch of the Lit Crawl mayhem.

QWhat’s the weirdest location you’ve used?

AWell, the Mission changes all the time, so it’s always something new. A few years ago, we did one in a beekeeping-supply store. We did a reading for dogs once, for books about dogs, in a bookstore near Market and Valencia. We had about 20 people and about 30 dogs. The readers really had to project over all the barking. It was really cute. Oh, and there was a gourmet sausage store on Valencia. I heard there was a hilarious moment with the people, who were standing in line to buy their sausages. Someone told them to be quiet and one man shouted out, “I don’t give a (expletive) about books, I’m here to buy my sausage!”

QWith hundreds of events during Litquake, what’s the best way to navigate it?

ABelieve it or not, I’ve heard the complaint that there’s too much to choose from. To me, that’s kind of a first world problem if I ever heard one. In the last few years, we’ve started using something on the website where you can click on a date

If You Go

The 2019 Litquake festival is scheduled for Oct. 10-19 with events across the Bay Area. Find details at www.litquake.org.

The 2019 Lit Crawl will be held at the close of Litquake, from 5 to 9 .m. Oct. 19 in San Francisco’s Mission District; www. litquake.org/lit-crawl-sf.html.

and it will spit out all events that are happening that night. We also have things listed by genre.

QLots of folks know about the October events, but many don’t realize you have programs year-round.

AYep, all year. We have writing classes, workshops, just a variety of things. Plus we now have Kidquake and Teenquake for public school kids and the Elder Project. We have Lit Cast podcasts. We also present things at other festivals, at everything from the NoisePop music festival to the Silent Film Festival.

QAre there special moments that stand out over the years?

AWell, for Kidquake, we have authors come and talk to the kids about writing. We always give away free books. For some of the kids, especially the little ones, it’s the first book that they own. Lots of times, teachers will have the kids write thank-you notes, and one of them really grabbed my heart. One little girl said that up until that day, she didn’t know that books came from people. I hadn’t thought of that before. To a kid, a book is just a thing that’s just there. They don’t think about the creative process that goes into it. But for a young brain to suddenly go, “Oh my gosh, a person creates a book. I’m a person, and I can do that, too.” That’s pretty special.

The Beauty Bar in San Francisco’s Mission hosts A Litquake Lit Crawl, held each year on the last night of the festival. A burst of blossoms provides an artsy backdrop for an intimate reading at the Wildhawk bar in the Mission.